Community Knowledge Centre - Toronto Community Foundation

About this organization

Mission

Diaspora Dialogues supports the creation and presentation of new fiction, poetry and drama that reflect the complexity of the city through the eyes of its richly diverse writers. Publishing and mentoring activities, as well as a monthly multidisciplinary performance festival, help encourage the creation of a literature that is vibrant and inclusive, while bringing these works to a wide audience.

History of Organization

Launched in 2005, Diaspora Dialogues had an enormously successful start-up period. In our first year, we hit the ground running by establishing partnerships with presentation venues, arts groups, mainstream and community-specific media, organizations serving ethno-cultural communities, arts service and industry organizations. Our funding base has diversified each year, to include public and private foundations, arts councils, government and individual support. Diaspora Dialogues has become, in a short time, an important organization that specializes in programming involving culturally diverse and Aboriginal artists, and a credible voice in artistic programming and audience development.

Accolades and Accomplishments

Since our launch in 2005, we have engaged over 400 emerging and established culturally diverse and/or Aboriginal writers/artists from literature, spoken word poetry and theatre (occasionally dance, music and visual art as well). Our mentoring program has quickly become a respected calling card in the literary community, and our reading performance events are always very well attended. Our work has also attracted national and international attention.

Programs

>Commissioning/ Mentoring Program
>Multidisciplinary Performance Reading Series
>Young Writers from the Edge

Diaspora Dialogues has three major programming streams. The first is a commissioning/mentoring program, which commissions work from established writers while finding the most promising new voices from culturally diverse and Aboriginal communities. Out of that, we produce a yearly anthology called TOK: Writing the New Toronto of stories, poetry and drama set in or inspired by Toronto. We also run a popular multidisciplinary reading performance series, producing 15-20 events per year to capacity-filled rooms, and drawing an extremely diverse audience. Lastly, we offer a constantly expanding program of artist-run workshops for youth in high needs neighbourhoods teaching fiction, graphic novels, spoken word poetry and drama.

Commissioning/ Mentoring Program

Diaspora Dialogues runs an annual program of commissioning original, previously unproduced work from established writers, spoken word artists and theatre professionals who come from culturally diverse and/or Aboriginal communities. We also distribute a yearly open call for submissions from emerging writers and, through a juried process, select approximately fifteen to twenty new voices each year to participate in a free, four-month mentoring program. The work commissioned and created through this program is shared with audiences through our multidisciplinary reading performance series and/or our annual anthology TOK: Writing the New Toronto. Diaspora Dialogues also provides free professional development and networking opportunities to the program participants. In addition, we also undertake special commissioning programs for specific projects, such as Toronto’s 175th Anniversary, the Luminato Festival or international collaborations.

Funding and Program Partners

Maytree has generously supported this program since its inception (2005). A portion of our operating funds from Ontario Arts Council is directed towards these activities. The Metcalf Foundation provided a strategic grant for 2010-2012 for a new artistic collaboration project under this program stream.

Program Impact

This program has facilitated the professional development of many culturally diverse and/or Aboriginal artists by helping them hone their craft, giving them exposure to audiences, and assisting them in creating industry relationships that lead to more opportunities. It has also contributed to a growing, vibrant collection of literature of an ever-changing city, helping ensure that the lasting record of this city is as truly diverse as thr people who call it home.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

“Toronto scores third among its peers (ahead of Boston and Chicago) on the ‘Bohemian Index’ – a measure of a region’s proportion of professionally creative people.” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2009)

Diaspora Dialogues’ mentorship program contributes to keeping Toronto’s high score on the ‘Bohemian Index’ through encouraging the development of emerging writers and artists into professionals. In addition, it assists in increasing the visibility of diversity in our literature and theatre by encouraging the dissemination of new work.

Participant Vignette

Mayank Bhatt is an emerging fiction writer that participated in our mentorship program in 2009. He says of his experience in the program: “After working as a professional writer in India, I found myself without having to write anything on my arrival in Toronto in July 2008. The only writing that I did as a security guard was maintaining a log of the people and the vehicles. I missed writing. So I wrote a short story. I had never written fiction before. In May 2009, I submitted it to Diaspora Dialogues’ mentoring program. To my disbelief, I was selected. And to add to my amazement, MG Vassanji, the award-winning Canadian writer, was my mentor. Through a slow and steady process that lasted three months, I painstakingly modified my prose by following his instructions. The exercise emboldened me and yet it’s been a humbling experience. Immigrating to Canada and living here has changed me. In no small measure, Diaspora Dialogues has contributed to this change. By selecting me for the mentoring program, it opened a new path of creativity for me — a path that gives me tremendous joy and satisfaction. The Diaspora Dialogues team has --without knowing or trying -- given a new direction to my life.”

Since completing the program, Mayank has been published in our anthology, TOK: Writing the New Toronto, and is developing his story into a novel through the Humber School for Writers.

Multidisciplinary Performance Reading Series

Diaspora Dialogues produces between 15 and 20 events every year in Toronto. These events are multidisciplinary in nature, mixing readings of poetry and fiction with spoken word performances, play readings, and sometimes music or dance. Most are held in partnership with other festivals and organizations such as the Toronto Public Library, The Word On The Street, Luminato, Doors Open Toronto, WinterCity Warm Up Series, Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, Keep Toronto Reading, and others. In addition to mixing forms, our events always mix writers and artists from different communities and stages in career. This helps give exposure and networking opportunities to artists, and to introduce audiences to new forms and artists they may not have encountered or considered before. We also undertake international events, and will be launching a major new collaborative project between London (UK) and Toronto, exploring the interplay between the physical underbelly and the human built environment of a city, particularly cities which have enjoyed large demographics flows.

Funding and Program Partners

The City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council has supported this program since its inception (2005). Ontario Trillium Foundation facilitated the growth of this program through a multi-year grant (2006 through 2008); Canadian Heritage (Canada Book Fund and Arts Presentation Canada) has continued their generous support yearly since 2006. The Canada Council for the Arts provided project grants in 2008, 2009 and 2010. The Metcalf Foundation provided a strategic grant in 2009/09 towards a community building initiative to supplement the program’s activities. This program is delivered in partnership with festivals (including Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, Luminato, Doors Open, The Word on the Street, WinterCity), the Toronto Public Library and other venues across the city.

Program Impact

This program connects audiences and artists to each other. It is often through narrative that we connect most easily with one other, appreciating commonalities – hopes, fears, experiences – while better appreciating difference, leading to a more socially cohesive Toronto. We partner with established festivals to bring our artists to a wide variety of audiences, and thus potential markets for them. We also undertake events in neighbourhoods right across the city in order to bring professional level art to the communities where people live. We produce international events to bring Toronto to a world stage, and facilitate further markets for our artists.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

“Canada’s artists outnumber autoworkers, but half earn less than $13,000 per year:

• Median earnings for Canada’s 140,000 artists are half what other workers bring home” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2009)

Diaspora Dialogues' multidisciplinary reading performance series contributes to the employment of artists. We pay writers, poets, musicians, and actors every time they read or perform publicly. In addition, by promoting a mix of artists and forms in all of our events, we reflect the city’s diversity back to its people – a major part of helping people (both artists and audiences) feel they belong.

Participant Vignette

Donna-Michelle St. Bernard is a playwright, director, spoken word artist and musician who has been a featured artist in Diaspora Dialogues' multidisciplinary performance series (as well as a mentor in our Young Writers from the Edge program) a number of times over the years. In her typical irreverent style, she describes her experience with Diaspora Dialogues this way:

"Performing with Diaspora Dialogues has been like an unguided tour through my own unexpected capabilities. Through their auspices I have channeled the spirits of pigeons, heckled the Mayor and knelt on a golden pillow beneath a copper parasol. Walking through the door DD opened found me convening creatively with young people from Malvern to Etobicoke, broadening the boundaries of my personal city along with my skills and perspectives. This new relationship with the city has since been explored and expanded through my participation in Toronto City Summit Alliance’s 2010 DiverseCity Fellows. Thanks to my constantly growing profile, I have been appointed spoken word editor of a new literary journal run by a poet I met at a DD event.

Lately, I spend more time than ever speaking to students in high schools across the GTA with a renewed sense of confidence and impact gained in my DD workshops. Of course much of my time is also consumed with updating my press kit, which abounds with coverage from Word on the Street, Malvern Public Library, Winter City

…at this point, it’s pretty obvious Toronto should just ask me out, but I am going steady with Diaspora Dialogues."

Young Writers from the Edge

Young Writers from the Edge works in partnership with schools, community centres, libraries and/or local arts groups to create a customized series of free after-school creative writing workshops for high school youth. Led by skilled professional writers, the workshops culminate in a public reading event showcasing the young writers alongside their mentors at a local venue. The basic structure consists of two to three one-hour workshops for three weeks, with each week focusing on a different topic such as fiction, playwriting, spoken word/poetry writing, graphic novel and journalism. Topics are determined in consultation with the youth participants.

Funding and Program Partners

Activities began in 2008 with funds from our operating budget (supported by Maytree and the Ontario Arts Council). A grant from TO Live with Culture (Arts in the Hood) in 2009 allowed us to solidify activities into a cohesive program. Their continued support in 2010, along with a Vital Youth grant from the Toronto Community Foundation (2009/10) and the support of new funder RBC Foundation, enabled us to double the capacity of the program in 2010. This program is delivered in partnership with the Toronto school boards, Assembly Hall, Lakeshore Arts and branches of the Toronto Public Library.

Program Impact

This program help youth develop writing and communication skills, and through the collaborative nature of the work, their social networking skills. Our emphasis on cross-cultural mentoring facilitates leads to a greater sense of shared experience and space and thus cross-cultural dialogue. The program also has tremendous impact on the artists involved, who tell us repeatedly how moved they are at the effort students put into their writing, the honesty with which the youth deal with issues ranging from mental illness to poverty to discrimination to faith, and the willingness of these students to stand in front of an audience and share their most personal hopes and fears.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

“58.2% of Toronto residents reported a strong or somewhat strong sense of belonging to their local community; a sense of belonging tends to decline as the community becomes more urban and is highest among the young (77.45% of the 12-17-year age group) and weakest among younger adults (54.5% of the 18-29- year age group.” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2009)

By giving a forum to young voices in high-needs neighbourhoods and/or areas with high levels of immigrants, the program helps to foster a sense of belonging and feeling valued. In addition, by engaging youth with local writers and artists in a mentoring capacity, the program encourages youth to explore arts and culture as a career path, contributing to Toronto’s high level of arts and culture workers.