Updates
News about our organization and information related to our programs.
Team Transitions: Keshia Palm
“After over three beautiful years creating and producing content for ArtistProducerResource.com, I will be taking a small step back from my role to make space for other things (hello, Paprika Festival!).”
It’s a season of big staff transitions! Generator is launching into a new era as many of the staff who have stewarded it for the past several years move on to different opportunities and priorities (you can read a note from Sedina on transitioning out of their role here). The staff have all been so flexible and generous in supporting the needs of the organization in this time of immense transition, and have helped bring Generator into its next phase with care and deep consideration.
We know it’s not goodbye, just a transition into a different form of engagement with Generator—and we’re so excited to see the many ways our paths will all continue to intersect.
A note from Keshia
After over three beautiful years creating and producing content for ArtistProducerResource.com, I will be taking a small step back from my role to make space for other things (hello, Paprika Festival!).
Like a friend that babysits on the weekend, I’ll still be around to support ArtistProducerResource.com until the next incredible human steps in to bring all their ideas and expertise to the program, and I will join in the celebration of birthdays and other milestones.
Shifting into this new relationship with Generator and ArtistProducerResource.com, I am struck with an overwhelming sense of gratitude – for you who believe in the website so much you have dedicated a portion of your income towards supporting it; for the many artist producers who have contributed to the website writing pages, editing and reviewing content, adding alt text, captioning videos, creating videos and infographics; and for Generator Generations – the smart and insightful and brave and challenging and bold artist producers that have inspired and fed me over the years (and who have probably also edited the website and/or subscribed to Patreon at some point or another).
The expansion and growth of ArtistProducerResource.com was guided by these conversations and relationships. A collaboration with Sage from Deaf Spectrum on Infographics for ASL and Spoken-language Interpretation in 2019 blossomed out of the Woke 2.0 d/Deaf Jam Workshop in 2018, leading us to produce a 3-part ASL vLog series together a few months later. Carlisle, the graphic designer, created an graphic celebrating ArtistProducerResource.com the following year. Many Artist Producer Training folks have become core editors and reviewers for the website, and Resident Companies and Company Collaborators have generously shared their expertise. It really does take a village.
When I first started at Generator in 2018, I was working 5 hours a week. Over the years, I worked my way up to 12 hours a week, always feeling like it was never enough time to really dig in, but also feeling incredibly proud of what Kristina, Annie, Sedina and I were able to accomplish with limited resources.
Our first photo together as a four-person staff team - left to right: Annie Clarke, Kristina Lemieux, Sedina Fiati, Keshia Palm (October 2018)
Keshia collaborating with Tsholo Khalema to produce a series of videos for Generator’s YouTube channel (April 2019)
There are some changes that I am particularly proud of. Reviewing the list of new pages year over year and the values they exude makes me glow. They reflect not only Generator’s priorities, but also a response to the moment – like a time capsule of what was happening in our sector.
There are also places where I wish we had grown deeper faster, like shifting Harassment to better encapsulate other forms of discrimination, and increasing the amount of non-text-based resources across the board. We’ve struggled to upload images and get those dang download links to work. Pages have haunted my and Kristina’s to-do lists for years – like Front of House, Insurance, and Volunteers (if you are dying to write about these topics, please email us!). New content for pages like COVID-19 Health and Safety for Artists becomes out-of-date before we even update them. The call to expand national resources to support artist producers outside of Ontario, and to make the website platform itself more accessible, grows ever stronger.
These changes will come. They are coming! We’re in the midst of a process of collecting feedback from the community that will help shape our decisions and priorities about where to take ArtistProducerResource.com next, and I can’t wait to be on the other side, discovering small but significant changes as a user.
Keshia transcribing notes for ArtistProducerResource.com from the Woke 2.0 d/Deaf Jam (June 2018)
Kristina and Keshia at the on the MOVE conference for dance artists (February 2019)
The number of folks using ArtistProducerResource.com has increased 337% from 2017/18 to 2020/21. Over 20,000 folks a year are searching for answers, and our small but mighty team has done our best to provide timely, accurate, and quality information to the community within Generator’s current operational model. Much of this is thanks to you.
I want to leave you with a little look back at ArtistProducerResource.com over the years. Imagine Vitamin C’s Graduation playing in the background. Thank you for reading, supporting, and sharing. Please join me in celebrating all that we accomplished together in the last few years, and dreaming of what’s to come. The future is bright!
New ArtistProducerResource.com things in 2021:
Childcare (brand new and beautiful; please read)
Expansion and creation of 11 topic-specific Playlists on YouTube
Learning Pathways – a series of blogs and companion resources to inspire self-guided learning on various producing topics
New in 2020:
New in 2019:
Not represented: the innumerable copy edits, major page revamps, broken-link-fixes, templates added, social media campaigns, and accessibility changes year over year.
Keshia + Annie filing the Social Media Playlist (photo by Steph Raposo - January 2020)
Keshia nesting at the Trinity St. Paul’s office (September 2019)
Most joyful projects over the years:
Producing Social Media Playlist with co-conspirator and fellow comms nerd Annie Clarke 🤓
The genesis of the Generator Instagram grid 🙌
Witnessing Sedina facilitate the Woke 2.0 Workshop series (I was there to take notes on the content, and literally was taking notes on how they held those spaces) 🤩
Designing, renovating, and nesting in the new office at Trinity St. Pauls with Kristina (have you seen those before and after photos?!) 👷
Moving day with Annie and the plantmobile 🌱
Coordinating Generator Generations staff parties and creating fun and creative ways to raise money for organizations we care about 💸
Collaborating with so so so many brilliant artists and learning from them in the process ❤️
Keshia + Annie moving the office’s most prized possessions: the plants (September 2019)
The December 2018 Generator Generations Holiday Gathering - back row, left to right: Keshia Palm, Sabah Haque, Deanna Galati, Annie Clarke, Sedina Fiati; front row: Kristina Lemieux, Lisa Alves, Faline Park
“I have had the honor of knowing Keshia in many capacities: first as a program participant, and before long as a collaborator, co-worker, leader, artist, and friend. I can think of few folks who are as deeply invested and passionate about making things better for people—whether that is through working conditions, access to knowledge, or projects that introduce new ways of thinking about art. Keshia’s cleverness and determination have led to so much information being made accessible and spread joyously across the country (and beyond). I have learned so much from their tenacity to stick with what matters to her, and to be in connection with those we know—as well as those we have yet to meet. ”
About Keshia
Keshia Palm (she/her and they/them) is a queer, Toronto-based Filipinx-Canadian settler from Treaty 6 Territory who seeks to expose, challenge and dismantle systems of oppression by creating thoughtful and inclusive art/spaces. Her creative practice includes dramaturgy, direction, producing and performance.
Keshia wants to re-imagine theatre: what it is, who it’s for, and how we do it. She has developed, workshopped and performed new works with theatre companies across Canada and is the dramaturge for a number of works in development by IBPOC, queer, women and trans artists.
Favourite projects include: Shadow Girls (co-created with Claren Grosz) — a bisexual love story featuring a team of queer women in all its iterations; coordinating the Reading the 49 monthly play-reading series for fu-GEN, performing in The Cherry Orchard (Modern Times) and FEARLESS (fu-GEN). Her latest project Make Me An Alleycat invites people to connect over stories and destinations while social distancing by going for a bike ride. Keshia is a playwright in the 2020/2021 Hot House Lab at Cahoots Theatre.
Keshia stumbled into Generator’s Artist Producer Training Program in 2017 and managed to stay despite all odds. She has been tinkering away at ArtistProducerResource.com since 2018.
Photos of Keshia Palm (top and bottom of page) by Haley Garnett
Announcement: Michael Caldwell is Incoming Leadership for Generator
We are delighted to announce Michael Caldwell as incoming leadership for Generator! “I am thrilled to join Generator in this pivotal moment, as we collectively vision a future of shared action and responsibility.”
We are delighted to announce Michael Caldwell as incoming leadership for Generator.
Photo of Michael Caldwell by Ömer Yüseker
"I am thrilled to join Generator in this pivotal moment, as we collectively vision a future of shared action and responsibility. My appointment is simply the next step along a journey towards expanding the ways-of-working for the organization and I am excited to dig in, learn more and uncover all of the possibilities.
“I look forward to engaging with the Generator Staff, Board of Directors, and Strategic Advisors in the next few months, to ask questions, challenge assumptions, and arrive at a future-forward organization structure that is responsive to the field and the creative communities in which we serve." —Michael Caldwell
“This hiring process was a months-long series of inspiring conversations about Generator’s future, its role in the ecology, and how Generator can continue to support independent artist producers. After meeting with several exciting candidates, the committee was unanimous in our support of Michael’s vision, experience, and values. We’re so pleased to have him joining Generator to help us move into the next phase of building a collaborative leadership model for the organization.
“I’m grateful to the whole team of Staff, Strategic Advisors, Board, and consulting artists who helped build this process and respond adaptively to the proposals we received, to Michael, for offering a compelling vision of how Generator can continue to evolve, and to our outgoing leader, Kristina, for planning and leading a generous and caring transition for all involved.” —ted witzel, Generator Board Chair
Michael will be officially starting with Generator on Monday, October 4 and working part-time hours. He will be working closely with outgoing Lead Producer Kristina Lemieux during a period of training and transition this fall.
About Michael
Michael Caldwell is a Toronto-based choreographer, performer, curator, director, producer, and arts advocate. His prolific career includes engagements with over 50 of Canada's esteemed performance creators and companies, with performances across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, and earning two (2) Dora Mavor Moore Awards for outstanding performance. His choreography has been commissioned and presented throughout Canada at major festivals, in traditional venues and in site-responsive and community-engaged contexts and he is a two-time finalist for the K.M. Hunter Charitable Foundation Artist Award, as well as a nominee for the 2021 Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize. As a producer/director, Michael has contributed to the growth and development of Fall for Dance North in Toronto and the Festival of Dance Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia, among others, and he currently serves on the board of directors at The CanDance Network. Read more on our website here.
Announcement: Means of Production Partnership
Generator and Means of Production announce a year of partnership, focusing on the development and innovation of values-based live performance production practices.
Generator and Means of Production announce a year of partnership focusing on the development and innovation of values-based live performance production practices.
MoP is a collective of live performance Production Managers and Technical Directors in Canada with the aim to empower leadership, develop sustainable practice, and prioritize equity for workers in live performance production. Through education, research, and professional development, MoP is advocating for better working conditions, better pay structures, and generating more interest in the field of production leadership. Means of Production, with support from Generator, is planning a year of peer-led industry workshops, long tables, and community-engaged qualitative research, funded by Canada Council for the Arts.
Mission Statement
Means of Production is building a support network with shared resources for freelance Production Managers, Technical Directors, and related Arts Workers. We advocate for a safe, equitable, and supportive work culture rooted in creating the conditions for workers to thrive in the gig economy. We engage in research, dialogue, outreach, and education to:
Promote a values-based approach to production
Address barriers to working in the field
Provide professional development and mentorship opportunities
Develop standards and guidelines for our work
Advocate for individual well-being and equitable pay
Upcoming Events
May 13 (1pm ET): PACT Town Hall
May 13 (6pm ET): MoP Accountability Roundtable
May 19 (2:30pm ET): PACT Peer2Peer
Learn More
Generator and Means of Production gratefully acknowledge the support of Canada Council for the Arts, without whom this partnership would not be possible.
Meet the Strategic Advisors!
We are thrilled to be working with this incredible group of Strategic Advisors, who have just begun their focus on four primary strategic areas: leadership transition, governance model, taxonomy review of ArtistProducerResource.com, and expanding our networks.
We’re thrilled to be working with this incredible group of Strategic Advisors! We're working with a few of these wonderful folks for the first time, and we're continuing relationships with many. We are so grateful to each of them for the generosity of heart and mind they are bringing to Generator in this transition period.
As Generator looks to the next chapter of our work building the capacity and resilience of the independent performance sector, we are engaging the Strategic Advisors as a paid advisory body. Through our open call for applications in March/April, we sought experienced and active producers and community members, with close ties to Toronto’s performing arts scene. (You can view the call for applications here. Thank you so much to all those who applied!)
The Strategic Advisors will help inform Generator’s next transformation. This transformation will include a leadership transition, governance review, and ongoing development of online community resources. The Strategic Advisors have just embarked on their work, with those strategic areas as a focus.
The Strategic Advisors Welcome Meal at the end of April! The advisory was joined by board members ted witzel, Claire Burns, and Quinn Harris, and staff members Kristina Lemieux, Annie Clarke, and Keshia Palm.
Generator Board Statement on Public Report: Equity & Justice Organizational Review
We're sharing the Public Report of our Equity and Justice Organizational Review, together with a statement from our Board of Directors, a workplan, and notes about the process.
Statement
After Generator released its BLM solidarity statements in the summer of 2020 we received significant criticisms surrounding our working culture and learning environment, including our flagship program, Artist Producer Training (APT). As a result of folks coming forward with critical feedback, Generator leadership hired facilitator Zainab Amadahy to conduct an internal review. The abridged Report shared today reflects the recommendations of that review and the process in which the review was undertaken and approached.
At this time, Generator’s governance and leadership is largely white. The Board is made up of white people and our Lead Producer is white. We are a PWI (Predominantly White Institution). As a service organization that prioritizes supporting artists from equity-seeking groups, we have failed to ensure power dynamics are not skewed along racial lines. Our white governance and leadership are working to understand and address the lived and living experiences of the individuals we aspire to support, particularly artists who identify as racialized, while also creating a long term plan to introduce a broader spectrum of voices into our leadership and governance.
The report created by Zainab outlines this discrepancy between intention and impact. We have read it, are absorbing the concerns of those who participated in the process and are committed to creating an organization that measures our “successes” (however fraught that term may be) in terms of racial equity.
We recognize some members of our Generator community encountered harm while engaging with us. We have heard feedback around equity, paternalism, passive-aggressive communication, lack of clear policies, rigidity and lack of racial representation among our facilitators and leadership. We apologize for the distress and pain our members experienced.
All of us became members of Generator’s board because we believe in the game-changing impact that Generator’s programs can have on individual artists and the Toronto performance sector as a whole. Zainab’s investigation, while framed and targeted to solicit critiques and concerns, also affirmed the essential value of the organization and the Artist Producer Training Program. By Zainab’s account, many participants noted the important professional development APT offered and how it has benefitted their practices.
Under Kristina’s leadership, Generator made a clear commitment to supporting artists from equity-seeking groups, and investing in their capacities to create platforms for their work. We have not always met their needs or supported them on their own terms, and we’ve hurt some of the artists we care about as a result. We are grateful to the interviewees for their honest feedback, and to Zainab for her thorough and candid work in investigating the feedback we received, speaking hard truths with compassion, and for helping us to learn where we must foundationally shift our practices to dismantle White Supremacy Culture within the organization.
We, as a board, are committed to repairing the relationship between the organization and the community. We understand that repair and reconciliation does not follow a linear path, but rather is a circle, a web, a thick braid, which we will attempt to weave laterally, with increased community involvement over the next two years. In the following pages, we have shared our plans for the short, medium, and long terms.
Our first step in this process is to invite other folks to become involved in shaping the next chapter of Generator’s future. We are excited about the energy and ideas that additional voices can bring as we look toward a leadership transition and Generator’s next iteration. In the next few weeks, we will be putting out calls for people to get involved in both volunteer and professional capacities in the coming year, as members of a strategic advisory, by joining us on the board, or by becoming a knowledge contributor for ArtistProducerResource.com.
We encourage you to email feedback or questions to board@generatorto.com, please introduce yourselves. We would love to start a conversation.
We have our sleeves rolled up.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
In solidarity
the Generator Board of Directors
Claire Burns, James Foy, Quinn Harris, Kristina Lemieux, Brendan McMurtry-Howlett, ted witzel
Workplan
Our goal is to rebuild/build trust between:
the organization
ie. the board, the staff, the leadership
AND
our community
ie. program participants, resident companies, community members and past Generator Generations.
Trust first and foremost between the individuals who make up the community and the organization. How do we rebuild trust? We know it will not be easy and will be a continuous process. We do not know the exact pathway but have been set up remarkably well through Zainab’s recommendations.
We are committed to transparency in this process. As Zainab writes, “Decisions can’t be made anonymously or behind closed doors”. The work plan is a work-in-progress developed to put the recommendations into action. The work plan is subject to change based on input from the Strategic Advisors, and we will update our community regularly on our progress. If you are interested in receiving updates or feeding into this process, either as a community member, by joining Generator’s board, or becoming a Strategic Advisor, please subscribe to our mailing list to hear about these opportunities.
SHORT TERM (March-July 2021)
a) Revising organizational values statement to ensure core priority of racial justice
b) Develop Board Work Plan and Matrix for skills development re. dismantling white supremacy
c) Call for professional paid, community Strategic Advisors to support the implementation of recommendations from this report
d) Call for Board Members with goal of racial parity or 50% BIPOC folks in leadership and governance positions
e) Creation of leadership transition plan with an emphasis on models with decentralized and/or shared organizational power structure
MID TERM (July-December 2021)
a) Building a work plan for authentic relationship building between Generator and BIPOC communities
b) Review of Accountability Process including the creation of a Grievance process with clear complaint mechanisms and alignment with goals of social and racial justice
c) Program and Curriculum review including methods for approving facilitators and confirming their commitment to racial justice, ensuring the self-determination of participants, holding folks accountable to their community agreements, and ensuring curriculum is assessed through an equity/social justice lens.
d) December 2021- Board Review- Board reviews its own performance guided by internal/external stakeholders
LONG TERM (January-June 2022 + beyond)
a) Comprehensive strategic review and planning process facilitated by an external consultant
b) 2022- Staff Performance reviews
c) Ongoing recruitment of Board Members with goal of racial parity or 50% BIPOC folks in leadership and governance positions
d) Continue to publicly share our learnings and goals as we identify next steps beyond this work plan
Process
In the spirit of Generator’s mandate as an educational service organization we’ve outlined the process leading up to the release date of this Report and Statement.
Organizational Statements
BLM Solidarity Statement (June 5)
Organizational Update (October 7)
Process Working with External Reviewer
Process of working with Zainab can be found in the Appendix of the Public Report
Consent to share the Public draft of the report was confirmed by Zainab and Participants in late February 2021
Process of Creating this Statement
I’m one person drafting this letter. My name is Claire (she/her). After I drafted this the other board members – Quinn (she/her), James (he/him), ted (he/him), Brendan (he/him) and Lead Producer, Kristina (she/her) – read this, contributed their ideas and suggested edits. Some but not all edits are incorporated in this final doc. We also shared the doc with the Lead Producer who had time to review it before forwarding it to Communications staff, Annie Clarke, to disseminate.
View this statement as a PDF signed by Generator’s board here.