SK Arts staff and board has been undertaking significant work and learning around the areas of equity, diversity, and inclusion over the past year. Keep visiting this page over the coming months, as we provide details regarding our current and future activities in this area.

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Beliefs

SK Arts believes:

• The arts create opportunities to engage and interact. [This aligns with our stated values of inclusivity, accessibility]
• Engagement in the arts promotes empathy and understanding of diverse communities. [inclusivity]
• Art allows people to meet each other and share experiences. [inclusivity]
• Art supports education, health, and well-being. [accountability]
• Welcoming and supporting artists from a variety of perspectives creates and contributes to a healthy artistic community. [accountability, inclusivity, adaptability]
• Society benefits when everyone is treated equitably. [inclusivity, accessibility]
• Opportunities must exist for all Saskatchewan residents to experience art. [accountability, accessibility]
• Our programs and services empower individuals and groups whose activities impact the arts in Saskatchewan. [achievement, leadership, adaptability]
• We can lead in equity, diversity, and inclusion (ED&I) in the arts. [leadership, inclusivity, accessibility]

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Commitments

SK Arts is investing in:

• Providing a culturally respectful and safe environment through mandatory training for the board, management, and staff in ED&I.
• Continuing to work, internally and externally, toward a true sense of community built around ED&I.
• Regular assessment of our ED&I objectives to challenge our continuing and successful growth.
• Achieving ED&I engagement strategies that will have an impact on our organization and the arts community.
• Connecting regularly with the board, management, staff, stakeholders, and the community as our ED&I engagement strategies evolve.
• Strengthening our communications strategies and community engagement with a focus on access for rural and other underserved communities.
• Cultivating partnerships with communities and organizations to create user-friendly experiences and communications with SK Arts.

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Understandings and Actions

Organizational Culture

SK Arts understands:

• We must continually be aware of our privileged position and platform as we work to enact change.
• We must welcome, without hesitation, diverse arts and cultural communities.
• Unconscious and conscious biases, harassment, and discrimination inhibit and corrode participation in the arts.
• We must examine our agency and continue to listen to diverse communities as we make our values more evident in our work.
• We must prioritize a welcoming, supportive, and appreciative workplace that strives to respect the cultural and lived experiences of everyone.
• We must champion an environment of open and transparent communication free of recrimination.

Short-Term Deliverables

• Provide mandatory training for all staff and leadership with emphases on:
  • Indigenous awareness;
  • Other marginalized groups, creating learning opportunities through activities such as speaker series, workshops, and events;
  • Active listening;
  • Conscious and unconscious bias;
  • Mental health; and
  • Work culture.
• Continue the work of the Equity Working Circle in order to expand outreach to diverse communities and organizations and provide updates on our commitments and deliverables.
• Prioritize ED&I in hiring practices in trusting collaboration with SGEU.
• Contract an outside consultant to gather feedback from staff to create a plan for workplace wellness and to develop progress measurement.
• Consider a dedicated staff role in ED&I.
• Centre ED&I work in strategic planning processes.
• Provide more opportunities for Board participation in ED&I work.

Desired Environment

• SK Arts is an agency of empathy, humility, and diversity, modelling a supportive environment and recognizing the contributions and achievements of all.
• Curiosity fosters innovation, creativity, and improved relationships internally and externally.
• Ongoing conversation and active listening minimize obstacles to full participation, and reflection on ED&I is a regular activity in meetings and gatherings.
• Our relationships with our stakeholders and the community reflect our positive and supportive work environment; internal relations among board, management, and staff reflect the qualities of openness we bring to our external relationships.

Programs and Services

SK Arts understands:

• Opportunities, funding and support (including practices around art collection) must reflect the diversity of Saskatchewan.
• Racialization, ableism, patriarchy, and socio-economic bias play a role in responses to requests for support, funding, recognition, and inclusion.
• Our Permanent Collection is influenced by Eurocentric art practices that have contributed to bias and exclusion.
• Equity requires the removal of barriers and disadvantages to enable artists and arts organizations to fulfill their potential.
• Funding models and art acquisition policies must undergo thorough and ongoing reviews to provide equitable support to artists and arts organizations regardless of culture, community or access to privilege.
• Our Permanent Collection has grown to serve as a record of the development of art and craft in Saskatchewan, and we must engage with diverse communities for inclusion in and stewardship of the collection.

Short-Term Deliverables

• Continue to revise and experiment with application, assessment, and reporting processes, in consultation with both those who currently apply and those who do not, in order to remove barriers faced by underserved communities.
• Review the agency’s use of cyclical deadlines.
• Review the structure in which submissions to the Permanent Collection are considered, including the potential for targeted calls for submissions.
• Launch a program supporting Indigenous-led projects around Truth and Reconciliation.
• Evaluate Indigenous funding programs based on Indigenous worldviews, principles, and ways of knowing. Consider the ways in which this learning could inform all funding streams.
• Develop ED&I training materials for review panels and the Curatorial Working Group that address unconscious bias and other assumptions that privilege Euro-centric perspectives on art.
• Investigate and improve culturally specific knowledge, conservation, care, and public access opportunities for the Permanent Collection.

Desired Environment

• Everyone feels seen, heard, and included in a way that works for them.
• The flexible nature of art is embraced, allowing for experimentation even if it leads to unexpected outcomes.
• The health and well-being of artists and arts professionals are centered in our programs.
• Processes and systems that reinforce white supremacy and colonialism have been disrupted and replaced.

Community Engagement and Outreach

SK Arts understands:

• Diverse partnerships, based on empathy and equity, are key to our ED&I work.
• Community liaisons, spread throughout the province, would support artistic diversity and societal change through creativity.
• Relationship-building leads to better understanding and appreciation among diverse communities.
• We must communicate with diverse communities in ways that best meet their needs.
• We must maintain and grow partnerships with artists, organizations, government, and communities.

Short-Term Deliverables

• Provide support and opportunities for management, board, and staff to build relationships that contribute to an agency of empathy, humility, and diversity.
• Cultivate a more vibrant web of community contacts throughout the province.
• Build more authentic relationships with agencies and groups that serve communities comprised of newcomers and other racialized individuals.
• Complete a full audit of communications vehicles and their appropriateness for the deaf and disability communities.
• Create a communications strategy to guide how we communicate with all diverse communities.

Desired Environment

• SK Arts models practices for ED&I across the Saskatchewan arts landscape.
• A network of community liaisons exists throughout the province’s arts community.
• A wide representation of diversity and marginalized voices are represented across SK Arts programming.
• We model effective relationships with diverse communities by being flexible in our communications and ensuring two-way dialogue.
• Our partnerships across diverse Saskatchewan communities are based on empathy and equity.