Anti-racism

Dear listeners of Calgary, and the wider New and Experimental music communities,

In June of 2020, Black Lives Matter global protests in response to the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and many others spurred a renewed urgency around the need for institutions and organizations to reflect on the roles we play in systems of oppression.  These protests began in the United States as a way to push back against police violence in an American context. Canada, as a nation-state founded on Anti-Indigenous Settler-Colonialism, has its own systems of institutionalized racial violence to acknowledge and dismantle.  A year later, we began to experience the gradual unveiling and exposure of mass graves of Indigenous children by the hands of Canada’s Residential School System, a process that is ongoing as the number of graves rises with each investigation.

The legacy of British Colonialism, which at its core is a form of White Supremacy, permeates all levels of normative cultural production in Canada, including our own artistic culture within contemporary classical music.  This statement addresses the relevancy of Black Lives Matter, Indigenous Lives Matter, and Asian Lives Matter mass movement to our organization and field of practice, and outlines our strategy for moving forward.  This is a living document; we began to write it shortly following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 - while we are choosing to go public with this current version, we will continue to update and supplement this document as we learn and grow as an organization.

While we aim to shift our programming to be more inclusive of Black, Indigenous, and racialized artists, we also know that representation is not a comprehensive diagnostic for structural or operational progress.  Yet we do think organizations with access to public financial resources can and should acknowledge past and current harms, and model anti-racist practices that we wish to see integrated in Canadian culture at large.  We also don’t wish to diminish or invisibilize the work of arts leaders and administrators (particularly the legacy of work done by Women of Colour) at our own or other organizations; we know that maintaining a non-profit organization over many years, amidst competition from commercial art forms, is a challenging and precarious process.  That said, in order to foster safer spaces and lasting material support for Black, Indigenous, and other racialized artists, we must sincerely hold ourselves accountable for our own racist and colonial biases and practices, past and present.  

While we continue to learn and confront our own biases through discussion and consultation, we have established a set of commitments towards instigating and sustaining change at New Works Calgary, and within the field at large. To read further details surrounding context and concrete actions, please read our full Anti-Racism Statement, linked below.

Finally, we wish to express our deep regret at the ways our field of music has been complicit in  upholding harmful systems, and has failed to actively acknowledge the inequities within. As leaders, we also want to express our remorse at ways we have individually contributed to, or failed to contest, the culture of white supremacy around us and within us.

COMMITMENTS

As an organization that holds responsibility for championing skilled performers and composers in our field, New Works Calgary (NWC) has been complicit in upholding a tradition of white supremacy in contemporary classical music, and has failed to acknowledge and challenge the many barriers and biases that keep our work centered around white artists. NWC has done a disservice to its audience by allowing a narrow definition of what constitutes “new music” to guide its programming, and in doing so has excluded the works of many, most obviously that of Black and Indigenous musicians and artists.

1. We think that reparative action must include a redistribution of resources as well as affirmative action practices, so that more Black, Indigenous, and racialized artists are able to access commission fees, adequate compensation for performances, and equal access to representation within concert seasons.  As outlined above, barriers to access for Black, Indigenous, and racialized artists can begin at a young age, and continue to the professional level.  As a result, the Canadian new classical music scene features an overrepresentation of white performers and composers.  We believe a first, tangible step in repairing this is to widen our definition of the musical genres that we include within our aesthetic bracket.  We aim to welcome musicians working in fields that don’t fit easily on Euro-centric classical programs.  We believe this inclusion will have the joint effect of redefining musical value, and also creating safer, more welcoming places for Black, Indigenous, and racialized artists and audience members.

2. We will track our progress with the first goal by committing to increasing the programming of non-white composers and performers in our seasons, while also fostering interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collaboration in the community, and commissioning new works by non-white artists. In this, we also commit to ongoing transparency in documenting this progress.  

3. We will make this statement easily accessible to the public through our website and at performances, and actively update the resources provided herein. In this way we can measure our work to repair harms against a clearly defined set of principles and values. We invite our publics to hold us accountable to these principles and values.

4. We will create a Safer Spaces policy and process that is easily accessible to the public through our website and at performances.  We invite our publics to hold us accountable to this policy, and aim to have it completed by late 2022.

5. The leadership at our organization will undergo professional anti-racist and equity training, as well as Indigenous Cultural Awareness Training. We have already begun this learning journey by attending an Anti-Black Racism Workshop with Sankofa, in partnership with Sled Island and the University of Calgary in October of 2021. We have set aside money in our budget to pursue further training in 2022 and 2023.