Reframing Board Structures

This is the second post in a series of artist responses to the Get on Board: Workshop and Speaker Series by the Creative Champions Network, an initiative of the Toronto Arts Foundation. As a co-creator of the series in 2022/23, Generator has engaged Artist Responders to attend each session, to summarize, reflect and respond to the emerging conversations and activities. In this post, Aria Evans (interdisciplinary artist, intimacy coordinator, activist, filmmaker, and educator) reflects on the Organizational Culture and the Partnership between Board and Leadership session on November 23, 2022.

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Following the October 4th Creative Champions Network workshop about Governance Reimaginings, I attended the November 23rd gathering that investigated: Organizational Culture and the Partnership between Board and Leadership facilitated by Erin Kang.

Building on the ideas from the first session, we looked at ways to approach governance differently and more imaginatively. It was expressed that so often nonprofits look for templates that are not necessarily aligned to their organizational purpose, values, or current circumstances. This workshop offered that a way forward could be to find where the organizational and artistic visions can be aligned and in balance.

In my experience, the bulk of the conversations by those that attended this workshop centred around the fact that there are no cookie-cutter approaches to nonprofit governance, no quick fixes or 1-2-3 steps to follow. It offered that individually as organizations we can start by being self-reflective then make unique assessments and finally carve an individual path forward.

The workshop started with a sentiment from Claire Hopkinson that surprised me. There are 2000 volunteer arts board members in our city (Tkaronto). That is 2000 people dedicated to advocacy in our sector who are engaged in this kind of governance! Facilitator Erin Kang went on to point out that there is a larger nonprofit sector that arts organizations get grouped into and our organizations actually need vastly different structures that directly support the ways our industry works as opposed to adopting strategies from these other sectors. 

Right from the beginning of the workshop care and sustainability were themes that came forward.

I think about the ways artists have been having conversations about this internally; in creative processes and on stage. I wondered how often we consider these themes from a board perspective.

In our first breakout discussion we were asked to define governance for the nonprofits we are connected to; is it the governance rules that make the organization function? Is governance a set of values that ensure mission statements align with the actions of the organization? Is governance something else? We were also asked about how we define the responsibility of the board in relationship to the staff and who the board is accountable to.

A beautiful offer that came out of this discussion was to centre humanity vs. the rules or the technical legislature - to think about what the spirit of your nonprofit is. We were encouraged to look at: what is the legal minimum the board needs to do, and to think about intentional governance design that launches from that foundation. 

The conversation flowed to the idea of innovation; innovation, as it pertains to new ways of making decisions …  and thus other questions were posed: “what are your organization's issues and what is at the root of them?”. We were given an example of an organization struggling with communication that had no clarity around roles … the root of this points to the idea that the way governance has been designed isn’t working.

Are our boards just fitting into models that we think can work vs. are we finding systems that work on a project-to-project basis that aren’t always prescribed?

In contemplating the questions posed during a second breakout session, another consideration came up around what the culture of decision making looks like. Accountability plays a huge role in this and we were asked to consider if decisions are guided or directed by funders, by members of the organization, by artistic leads, by staff etc. and what the implications of these realities are and what a governance structure that supports this could be.

A metaphor about the way we think of family was used that really resonated with me. Yes, there is the dominant model of family in society but there are also queer families, people who adopt children, chosen families, non-monogamous families and so on. 

How can this perspective allow us to re-imagine, re-model or turn over and start anew with our governance models?

A question I am interested in carrying forward from this workshop is: How do we work toward a cyclical ecosystem as opposed to a hierarchical one?

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Written by

Aria Evans (she/he/they) is a queer, Toronto-based, West Coast-born award-winning interdisciplinary artist who’s practice spans dance, theatre and film. As a public speaker, activist and creative leader, Aria draws on their experiences of being mixed race. Aria is a certified Intimacy Coordinator and with a large-scale vision, collaboration is the departure point to the choreographic work that Aria creates under their company POLITICAL MOVEMENT. Advocating for inclusion and the representation of diversity, Aria uses their artistic practice to question the ways we can coexist together.

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The Need to Reimagine Learning

This is the first post in a series of artist responses to the Get on Board: Workshop and Speaker Series by the Creative Champions Network, an initiative of the Toronto Arts Foundation. As a co-creator of the series in 2022/23, Generator has engaged Artist Responders to attend each session, to summarize, reflect and respond to the emerging conversations and activities. In this post, Coman Poon (arts consultant, creation doula, interdisciplinary artist, activist, curator and producer) reflects on the Governance Reimaginings session on October 4, 2022.

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At the October 4, 2022 Creative Champions Network (CCN) workshop promisingly entitled Governance Reimaginings, Generator Board member and keynote speaker Brendan McMurtry-Howlett referenced “relational governance structures”, a concept he attributed to Indigenous decolonial theory and ways-of-knowing. Acknowledging Indigenous arts leaders Yvette Nolan and Cynthia Lickers-Sage, he cited the need for “relational” governance structures in the arts, where “the strength of the decision-making process rests on the strength of interpersonal relationships within the organization”. 

What does this REALLY mean? Does relational ‘strength’ refer to both structure and quality of ONLY internal collaboration and decision-making? Short of assuming or fantasizing about some generalized indigenous cultural imaginary, couldn’t it be argued that solely self-propagating, diminishingly relevant, insular and/or nepotistic, colonially powered Arts Boards can also potentially be included in the above broad definition? 

While puzzling over this feel-good word/idea of “relationality”, contrasted with how I, as a Board member of CanAsian Dance, experienced the very formally* structured Governance Reimaginings CCN workshop, I had the opportunity to converse with Michael Caldwell, Creative Director: Programming at Generator. 

Following on the heels of their own internal governance ‘think tank’ journey, Generator is newly partnering with the Toronto Arts Foundation’s lauded Creative Champions Network to deliver a co-learning series that aims to reignite action to address the so-called crisis of governance in the arts. The result is the CCN’s four part Get On Board: Workshop and Speaker Series.

WHAT CRISIS? you may ask. Let’s start at the beginning.

For nearly a hundred years, board governance of the not-for-profit sector (of which 9% lies within the arts sector) has been following the corporate model of “authority”, “responsibility” and most importantly, “accountability”. The latter seems to consist of:

1. monitoring and mitigating risk, and

2. measuring results (for corporate stakeholders).

Brendan powerfully untangled that when faced with the application of this to a complex of ecosystems within the arts, there is often the weaponization of “fiduciary duty”. Itself simply referring to the onus of making decisions in the ‘best interest’ of an organization, fiduciary duty is often conflated and used interchangeably with ‘liability’, which refers to taking on responsibility for damages. 

Art-making and participating in the co-witnessing and gift-exchanging of art is arguably far from generating the type of liability engineers may face when building a bridge. In fact, what artists and audiences revel in as “risk-taking” in art is arguably the essence of the “unique value proposition” of art. 

What is needed in this period of initial transition from the strictures of pandemic coupled with the ongoing awareness and outrage at systemic inequities in the arts sector (and beyond) is none other than a radical act of collective unlearning and reimagining. 

As Michael metaphorized, the boat (moving toward positive change) comes around in cycles and it is up to each one of us to examine our privilege/resistance and pursue our willingness to wrestle with the complexity involved in sustaining change-making.  

WHAT IS CO-LEARNING (aka. collaborative learning)?

A quick online search provided me with refracting definitions such as:

1. Co-learning is a manner of group learning that enhances communication skills, cultural awareness, thinking skills and so much more

2. Co-learning aims at the collaborative construction of knowledge, in which co-learners are able to expand their social networks

3. Collaborative learning is rooted in Lev Vygotsky's concept of learning called “zone of proximal development”. Typically there are tasks that learners can and cannot accomplish. Between these two areas is the zone of proximal development, which is a category of things that a learner can learn with the help of guidance.

4. Indigenous people of the Americas utilize collaborative learning through their emphasis on role sharing and responsibility sharing within their communities. 

My wish for future CCN activities and sessions?: A more flexible structure and framework for co-learning as a baseline strategy for movement building around reimagining/decolonizing ‘governance’. 

Collaborative learning challenges assumptions and questions “business as usual” or “this is how it’s always been done”. Afterall, it’s not everyday where I get to engage with board members from long-standing performing arts organizations who proudly declare that their organizations are on “autopilot” and cite that succession planning is simply about “who gets to be the Chair”. 

*This session was hosted in the office spaces at Adaptivist. White square tables were organized in a relatively tight grid with a podium for the speakers at one end, and bar and catering table flanking the seated participants at the other. The intros and keynote speech took up the majority of the two hours followed by a quick round of prompts and questions from rotating facilitators who hurriedly captured themes and insights from workshop participants. A small amount of time was left for networking and informal conversation at the end.

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Written by

Coman Poon | 潘灏文 is a Tkaronto-based arts consultant, creation doula, interdisciplinary artist, activist, curator and producer working within the context of decolonization and intercultural exchange. He is a bilingual, English/Cantonese community-centred Torontonian of Hong Kong & Canadian upbringing. He writes about live art, dance and performance and profiles diverse artistic practices as a journalistic act of re-centring on the margins. He is the current Board President of CanAsian Dance, a 25 year-old arts organization engaging in its own governance transformation.

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