Residency Call

At a time of greater dependence on digital devices, apps, and communities, our global society is faced with the emergence of digital ecosystems that are both helping and harming the health and well-being of individuals, communities, and the planet.

Arts and culture workers in Canada are especially vulnerable to the consequences of such multifaceted realities, as are communities of disabled, Indigenous, people of colour, those living outside of urban cores, and other diverse groups.

Together There is an imaginative gathering of changemakers, caregivers, and caretakers devoted to boosting the potential of artistic creativity to nurture more equitable and caring pathways to justice in, and through, the digital world.

In a supportive online environment, residency participants will be paid to investigate their curiosities around caring digital futures within real, virtual, or natural spaces, and to share their learnings with their communities through their own creative medium(s) of choice.

Potential topics of interest may include: the promotion of digital access for people with disabilities, Indigenous data sovereignty, algorithms of inclusion, consentful design and technologies, equitable delivery of internet access, ethics of artificial intelligence, rights to ownership of data and technology, labour rights for gig workers, protections against planned obsolescence of software and devices, a feminist internet, and much more.

Overall, the residency is a chance for participants to deepen their awareness of the many ripple effects technologies have on the welfare of our own lives and communities and what we as creatives might do about it. With their fellow residents, participants will investigate how the intersecting wisdoms of arts and culture may help bolster greater ingenuity and togetherness in digital justice movements in the future, including creative artmaking, advocacy, activism, and more.

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Together There is a 16-week creative thought residency on digital justice in Canadian arts and culture. It is incubated by ArtsPond with generous support from the Digital Strategy Fund at Canada Council for the Arts.

Part intimate experiment, part intentional study group, and part immersive creation lab, this online residency invites eight (8) artists, educators, producers, and other visionary creatives from any region or discipline in Canadian arts and culture to come together and undertake supported deep dives into digital issues that impact their lives and communities.

The residency features ample opportunities for creative self-expression, collective storytelling, and supportive mentorships with experts from the field. Participants will be invited to experiment with creative artmaking, knowledge sensemaking, and other hybrid lenses to help document and share their journeys with fellow residents and the public. By doing so, we hope participants will be better prepared to help boost creativity and togetherness within digital justice movements led by arts and culture into the future.

Residents are expected to commit 80 hours over four months from November 7 to February 24, 2023. On average, the anticipated time commitment is 5 hours per week. Compensation includes a $4,500 residency fee, plus $1,000 for materials to help participants document and share their learning journeys with the public.

Participants must be residents of Canada and self-identify as belonging to at least one of four priority groups, including Indigenous, Racialized, Disabled, or Outside the Core. Individuals with intersectional identities that combine any of these four plus other equity-seeking groups are most welcome to participate.

Extensive digital experience is not required. Successful applicants will be deeply invested in cultivating cross-movement solidarity between diverse communities. Participants will be motivated to explore creative means to advance equity, justice, safety, connection, care, and belonging in our rapidly evolving virtual worlds within feminist and anti-oppression mindsets. Participants will also be eager to deepen their awareness of the ways digital infrastructure can help strengthen the embodied wisdoms of equity-seeking groups in real, virtual, and natural spaces. Opportunities for learning includes principles of disability justice (a legacy of countless people with disabilities), combining Indigenous and Western ways of knowing (such as Mi’kmaw Elder Albert Marshall’s Etuaptmunk, or Two-Eyed Seeing), and much more.

Our residency care team also appreciates that access is an open and ever-evolving conversation. We are deeply invested in making the residency work for anyone regardless of their circumstances. By default, residency communications will take place in English through online platforms. Language supports available on request during the residency include ASL interpretation, CART live captioning, and English-Français translation. Other forms of multi-modal communication also include the availability of written, audio, graphic, and video-based notes and recordings, plain language summaries, visual and audio descriptions, non-digital or lo-fi conversations such as teleconferencing, texting, snail mail, radio, and more.

Other accommodations as needed on a case-by-case basis may include the availability of support workers, access doulas, flexibility in fee scheduling and terms, and other types of care. Accommodations during the application process include interviews in lieu of formal written materials, and more. At any time, please let us know what you need with regards to access and care at care@togetherthere.ca. Our team will do our darndest to accommodate you.

The deadline to apply is October 17, 2022. D/deaf and other disabled people may apply until October 24, 2022. Successful applicants will be invited to participate by October 31, 2022.

A Q&A for D/deaf and other thinkers (with plain language, ASL, and CART support) is scheduled for October 12, 2022 from 6 to 7 pm (TBC, subject to change).

For additional information, please visit TogetherThere.ca. For general inquiries, please contact the residency team at hello@togetherthere.ca.

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There are many possible outcomes for the residency.

We are eager to help all participants realize a journey that is wholly their own while also co-creating a collective experience that is comfortable, safe, and welcoming for all.

Depending on their individual curiosities and circumstances, examples of potential outcomes for participants may include:

• Cultivate awareness and appreciation of the ways that digital ecosystems and infrastructure both help and harm the health and well-being of our lives, communities, and the planet
• Foster greater familiarity and facility with digital tools that help strengthen wisdom, creativity, connection, and care in real and virtual spaces
• Through creative experimentation, identify whether and how further exploration of digital justice issues may be incorporated into your career in the future
• Document and reflect upon your learning journeys in collaboration with fellow residents, mentors, and the residency support team
• Highlight possible ways to inspire others to engage more deeply with digital justice movements through the power of arts and culture.
• Complete a personal project that captures your evolving perspectives on digital justice in a creative way, such as journaling, artmaking, community-engaged or academic research, or other forms of expression that are relevant to your career. For example, you might decide to:
  • Explore ideas for a new digital, analog, or hybrid media artwork, performance, movement, video or sound installation, curatorial framework, community-engaged event, intervention, activism, or other creative investigations that help inspire the public to engage with artistic perspectives on such digital harms as algorithms of oppression, surveillance capitalism, or other topics. Document and share your journey via a portfolio of sketches journal entries selected from different points during the residency.
  • Research an annotated bibliography, linked hypertext, white paper, blog, or other knowledge sharing resource summarizing insights on such emerging digital topics as Indigenous data sovereignty, ethics of artificial intelligence, protections against abuse in the metaverse, the environmental impacts of blockchain technology, cooperative alternatives to the exploitation of platform capitalism, open data and governance policies, affinities between disability and digital justice movements, or other topics of interest.
  • Outline an evocative story, poem, journal, video, real or virtual artwork, manifesto, non-fungible token, or viral meme stacks to illustrate the importance of personal life wisdom and experience to advance a truly just and caring digital future.
  • And many more possibilities that are too infinite to imagine!

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If you have any questions about your eligibility or fit to participate in the residency, please reach out to the curatorial team at residency@togetherthere.ca.

Participants must be 18 years of age or older, be residents of Canada, and be legally entitled to work in Canada for the duration of the residency.  All work takes place remotely from anywhere in Canada. Emerging, mid-career, established, and elder professionals may apply.

Individuals from any of the following four priority groups are eligible to apply:

Individuals from one or more of the following industries and disciplines are eligible to participate:

Individuals from any practice or profession in the industries outlined above are eligible to apply. These include:

• Artists, artisans, creators, curators, designers, makers
• Critics, educators, researchers, knowledge seekers and knowledge keepers
• Directors, managers, producers, consultants
• Engineers, entrepreneurs, caregivers, caretakers, changemakers
• Other diverse practices and professions.

Participants will be required to prioritize one of following focus areas or lenses for their residency, including artmaking, sensemaking, or hybrid.  These lenses will be used to help structure the type of support required during the residency including their personal projects described in more detail in Activities below.

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The residency spans a total of four months (16 weeks) from Monday, November 7, 2022 to Friday, February 24, 2023. It takes place in three stages:

The anticipated time commitment is 80 hours (average 5 hours per week) distributed between five different types of activities which are described in further detail in the next section.

In summary, these five activities include:

For the duration of the residency, each participant will undertake a personal project to explore a topic of interest related to digital justice.

By the conclusion of the residency, this personal project will result in the creation of a type of “journal” with original (or third-party, appropriately cited) content to help document and share their learning journeys with their fellow residents, communities, and public.

These “journals” may take different forms according to the resident’s lens of choice. For example:

Personal projects do not need to result in a completed artwork or resource by the conclusion of the residency. Rather, participants will work towards this completion to a degree they are comfortable while documenting their learnings along the way. It is this record of their learnings that is of primary interest for the residency, such as how their perspectives on a particular topic change over time. While a finished artworks, reports, or other products are most welcome, they are not required.  The residency will hopefully generate new ideas and content that participants will continue to explore after the residency.

This self-directed “deep dive” will take place on a flexible weekly schedule with the support of the residency team, mentors, and fellow participants. The anticipated time commitment is 45 hours, or an average of 2.75 hours per week for 16 weeks. A recommended timeline follows.

Six all-team convenings (three per stage) will bring each of the residents and residency support team members together to share stories and cultivate collective trust and wisdom. Proposed dates and times are outlined below. They are subject to change depending on the availability of participants.

One-on-one weekly check-ins with a residency team member for individual project care and support. Flexible weekly scheduling as required in Stages 1 and 3.

Proposed dates and times for creative labs are outlined below. The schedule for these sessions are subject to change depending on the availability of selected applicants.

Subject matter and format for these “drop-in” labs are also flexible and to be confirmed at a later date in direct response to participant needs.

One-on-one or small group mentorships with industry experts for individual learning and inspiration. Flexible monthly scheduling as required in Stages 1 or 3.

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If you have any questions about how your access needs might be met during the residency, please reach out to the care team at care@togetherthere.ca.

As we strive to bolster the digital futures we hope to inhabit, our commitment is to make the residency experience welcoming and accessible space for all regardless of personal circumstances, experiences, backgrounds, or access needs.

We acknowledge that care is communal.  We commit to co-designing a mutually agreed upon set of values and principles for access and care that we will continue to develop together with all participants over the course of the residency. We ask that all participants remain open to sustained processes of self and collective reflection in order to foster a caring and regenerative environment that prioritizes comfort, respect, safety, and trust among all participants.

We also appreciate that access is an open and ever-evolving conversation. We are committed to responding meaningfully to access needs of all participants with care and consideration both as they are in the present and over time. Please let us know what you require to participate fully in the residency. Our care team will do our darndest to accommodate you!

By default, residency communications will take place in English. Language supports are available upon request during the residency, including ASL live interpretation, CART live captioning, and translation of key reports from English to French.

By default, the residency will prioritize online communications via popular videoconferencing platforms. Other forms of multi-modal communications supported by the residency also include the availability of written, audio, graphic, and video-based notes and recordings, plain language summaries, visual and audio descriptions, and more.

Given the challenges we continue to face in the real world due to the pandemic, this residency will prioritize collaboration and knowledge sharing through remote, online, “digital-first” streams. However, digital-first is not meant to imply “digital only”. This is our essential commitment to support those who may not be able to reliably access digital tools online.

For instance, participants will be invited to engage, as they are able, through either synchronous or asynchronous collaboration tools online. They may include Zoom, Office 365, Google, Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, Miro, or others within the collective comfort zones of the participants.

Other non-digital or lo-fi alternatives to communicate may also be used to help connect and share with the team in a more accessible manner. They may include mobile texting, teleconferencing, snail mail (mailing physical / analog postcards or mail art), exploring radio, sharing memes or gifs, creating simple paper-based illustrations or animations, and more.

The tools to be ultimately used by the residency will be selected collaboratively by the participants. While the topics are primarily digital, mediums for self-expression also need not be digital. For example, they could involve primarily nature-based investigations about the adverse impacts of digital on the environment.

To support digital-first engagement, participants may request to apply their $1,000 materials budget towards the purchase of such temporary digital assets as additional or faster internet access, specialized software, hardware, etc. Permanent hardware or software purchases must be returned to ArtsPond at the conclusion of the residency for use in future programming.

On a case-by-case basis, other access accommodations may include the availability of support workers, access doulas, flexibility in fee scheduling and terms, and other types of care.

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All creative content produced by the participant as a part of their personal project shall remain the intellectual property of the participant. Other content, including collateral and knowledge produced collaboratively, shall be owned collectively by its creators. ArtsPond is committed to ensure that all creators are acknowledged appropriately for their contributions to the project.

ArtsPond typically shares its own intellectual property as resources in the creative commons. While participants are invited to consider also doing so for some, or all, of the work they create during the residency, they are not required to do so.

ArtsPond and Together There shall be granted rights in perpetuity to publicly disseminate content approved by the participant for presentation, publication, or other forms of public sharing. Any reproduction for the purpose of sale would be arranged through separate contract.

The resident may publicly disseminate this content through other means at any time following the conclusion of the residency. ArtsPond and Together There shall be recognized as the original presenting entity for any subsequent dissemination of the content.

If you have any questions about the application forms or process, please reach out to our team at hello@togetherthere.ca.

The deadline to apply is October 17, 2022 @ 12 midnight Pacific. D/deaf and other disabled people may apply until October 24, 2022 @ 12 midnight Pacific.

Submit your application here: https://togetherthere.ca/residency-apply

Applicant responses may be submitted in any of the following formats:

• Written text, point-form acceptable
• Video format
• Audio format

Those requiring accommodations during the application process may request a 30-minute conversation with a member of the residency support team in lieu of submitting a formal application. Request a conversation by telephone or videoconference before October 17, 2022 at care@togetherthere.ca.

In addition to basic contact and profile information, the online application form includes the following core questions:

Applications received before the deadline will be examined to confirm their eligibility before being passed onto the residency curatorial committee for assessment. Shortlisted applicants may be invited to discuss their fit with the residency in a video or teleconference with a member of the committee. Successful applicants will be notified no later than October 31, 2022, which is one week before the start of the residency.

The curatorial committee includes Together There Residency Curators, Knowledge Lead, Care Lead, Access Doula, Working Leads, and other support team members. While the residency format and criteria are open to individuals from many backgrounds, the curatorial committee will strive to select a cohort of participants that both reflect the diversity of Canadian arts and culture and have the potential to work well together.

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If you still have questions, a Q&A for D/deaf and other thinkers (with plain language, ASL, and CART support) is scheduled for October 12, 2022 from 6 to 7 pm (TBC, subject to change).

Contact us at hello@togetherthere.ca for questions and support of a general nature. For more detailed requests, please write the curatorial team at residency@togetherthere.ca. For access related questions, please contact the care team at care@togetherthere.ca.

ArtsPond is a changemaker of a different sort. Established in 2014, our mission is to bolster the evolution of ecosystems of care in real, virtual, and natural life through the creativity of arts and culture.

The launch of Together There was inspired by personal conversations on digital inequalities and harms shared with Indigenous, racialized, disabled, outside the core, and other diverse groups from across Canada as a part of several of our other digital activities. These include DigitalASO (2017 to present), Hatch Open and Artse United (2018 to present), and Access Art (2021 to present).

In addition to this national residency, we are in the planning stages for a public international learning exchange on digital justice and the arts in Spring/Summer 2023. We will also be “passing the torch” to participants at a second international digital justice residency in Winnipeg in Summer 2023. Stay tuned for updates on these and other opportunities to participate in Together There.

Digital justice is an emergent topic for almost everyone. It defies simple definition.

Broadly speaking, digital justice is a social justice movement that seeks to inspire diverse individuals and communities to work together to cultivate alternative digital futures that are more sustainable, respectful, inclusive, equitable, and accessible for all.

At a hyperlocal to global scale, calls for digital justice seek to amplify solutions that protect against technologies of oppression and its harmful effects on our human, virtual, and natural worlds. At the same time, digital justice also seeks to elevate the positive contributions of caring digital technologies and infrastructure that have helped strengthen the connection and prosperity of marginalized communities who would have otherwise been excluded.

In the early 2010s, Detroit Digital Justice Coalition was one of the groups to start developing basic principles of what digital justice looks like based on input from their community. Their four key digital principles include Access, Participation, Common Ownership, and Healthy Communities.

Over the past decade, many others have contributed to a deeper appreciation of the complex issues underlying digital justice and its relationship to other social justice movements.

Among others, and in no specific order, these include:

• Digital rights as human rights
• Algorithms of inclusion
• Consentful design and technologies
• Digital access for people with disabilities
• Equitable delivery of digital infrastructure, including internet access
• Ethics of artificial intelligence
• Open and accountable digital governance
• Emergence of platform cooperatives and other forms of community-owned digital governance
• Indigenous data sovereignty
• Respect for traditional culture protocols, languages, and knowledge in digital platforms
• Safety and protections from abuse in the metaverse
• Rights to ownership and to financially benefit from digital dissemination of cultural content and intellectual property
• Labour protections for gig workers
• Environmental protections
• Feminist internet
• Autonomy from planned obsolescence of digital software and devices
• Protections from surveillance capitalism, including smart cities, internet of things, online behaviours, and more
• Protections from deep fakes and other types of misinformation
• And more

Through Together There, we hope to inspire participants and the public to deepen their awareness and understanding of various digital justice issues as they relate to the diverse artistic, creative, and cultural industries in Canada. We believe the wisdom and experiences of these communities are essential to shaping a holistic understanding and sustaining a positive path together towards a more caring future.

The support team for Together There features a group of artists, curators, caregivers, ecosystem engineers, futurists, and technologists dedicated to guiding the journeys of people who are creating visionary pathways to the vibrant and accessible digital worlds we most crave to live in.

Collectively, the support team resides in different parts of Western and Eastern Canada and holds diverse and intersectional identities and experience including Indigenous, Black and other racialized, disabled, suburban, rural, remote, 2SLGBTQIA+, and more.

You do not need to be an expert. However, we anticipate most participants will have some background curiosity and/or knowledge on a variety of issues, challenges, and possible solutions to strengthening equity, diversity, access, and inclusion in the digital world. You also need to be curious about different experiences and open to considering worldviews that are different from your own.

Generally, no. However, we do have a limited amount of access supports available. Let us know what you require. We will do our darndest to accommodate you.

Yes. We will not consider applicants who are unable to fully commit to all the required elements. While all group meetings are currently planned for Mondays, this could be changed to another day of the week depending on the availability of selected participants.

Generally, no. However, participants may apply some of their supplies and materials budgets to acquire tools they require to participate in the residency (for example, extended data or internet bandwidth plans for rural or remote residents). Expensive equipment purchases (such as mobile devices) will need to be delivered to ArtsPond at the conclusion of the residency for use in future programming.

Generally, no. There are a limited number of spaces available. Groups or collectives may apply as a cohort with one individual as the lead applicant. The compensation ($4,500 fee + $1,000 materials), mentorship hours, and other supports will have to be shared among all group members.

No. You must be a resident and legally entitled to work in Canada for the entire duration of the residency to participate.

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