In the last decade, Black artists have put Canada on the map. Across the globe, contemporary Canadian culture is recognized as the look, sound and feel of Black Canada. Musicians like Kardinal Offishall, Drake and Kaytranada, and producers like WondaGurl have made defining contributions to global popular culture in the last decade. Despite the cultural and economic contributions we’ve made, we continue to see a reluctance from institutions to invest in Black Canadian artistic production. In the 15 years that has operated, we’ve seen that art is a life-sustaining practice. The organization was borne out of the recognition that our communities thrive when we invest in their creativity.

School Engagement: A class at Toronto’s Etobicoke School of the Arts participates in an exhibit, “Ears, Eyes, Voice.” Photo is courtesy of Nia Centre.

Black youth too often find themselves discriminated against in our schools, in the media and when navigating the public sphere. Yet, everyday we see young people enthusiastically using their talents to envision a different kind of world. Our work began in 2008, as a response to increased youth violence in Toronto. From early on, our founders to young people. Since then, we’ve developed a holistic approach to working with young people that honors their creativity.

The Work

Nia Centre has : introducing youth to the arts, supporting local artists and creating opportunities for Canadians to experience art from the Black diaspora. Through our in-house programming, we connect young people to established mentors in the arts sector, provide artists with skills-building workshops and link young people to career opportunities in the arts. Young people who engage with The Centre frequently receive opportunities to showcase their work to the public, helping them to build their portfolios and reach new audiences.

“Thank You for Keeping Us on Track,” by Jordan Sook, one of three art exhibits at “Here Again, At the Crossroads,” presented by Nia Centre and Union Station and shown at Union Station, in Toronto. Photo by Spring Morris. See end of this article for links to Sook and the exhibit.

In a city as diverse as Toronto, it’s important for people to engage with artists who make meaning out of our collective experience. In the last few years, we’ve brought public art projects to Harbourfront Centre, Union Station and along the Ossington corridor. Each of these projects invited citizens to engage with Black cultural production in public spaces where our voices had often gone unheard.

A fourth, and still developing, pillar of our work is documenting our community. Canada’s decision to not collect race-based data has made it difficult to uncover the true impact of systemic racism in the lives of Black Canadians. In the last few years, it has become increasingly clear that in order to create change in our community we have to begin collecting data ourselves. Last year, we began . Through a nationwide survey and a number of dedicated focus groups and interviews, we’re tracking the impact of anti-Blackness online. As an arts organization, we recognize the importance of including artists’ voices in conversations about larger social issues. The research findings have been interpreted by a number of selected artists, who will be exhibiting their works later this year.

The Challenges

Nia Centre for the Arts is located at 524 Oakwood Ave., in the historic neighborhood of Little Jamaica, in Toronto. The neighborhood has become collateral damage to the Eglinton Light Rapid Transit development, rapidly rising rent prices and devastation as a result of the Covid pandemic. Still, local residents, businesses and organizers continue to build a new future for the neighborhood. Photo is courtesy of Nia Centre.

The work of an organization like ours is to uplift and support the people we serve. This responsibility becomes increasingly difficult each year, as expenses rise and funding doesn’t. As a nonprofit organization, finding consistent funding has always been our biggest challenge. At Nia Centre, we find ourselves at a difficult intersection between lack of funding for Black charities and a lack of funding for the arts sector.

A report (Unfunded: Black Communities Overlooked by Canadian Philanthropy), by the Foundation for Black Communities and ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University, found that only seven to 30 cents of every $100 donated in Canada goes to Black-led charities. Additionally, a majority of the Black community organizations that participated in the study indicated that they will run out of funding in less than six months.

These numbers are staggering, considering that Black charities play integral roles in our communities when local and federal governments fail us. In the last two years, the pandemic has decimated the arts sector, and our biggest funders have been unable to keep up with inflation and the increasing financial pressure on our community. This reality makes it increasingly difficult to provide services to the ever-growing number of youth and artists in search of support.

The Pathway

Alica Hall, Executive Director of Nia Centre for the Arts.

Acquiring a physical space has always been a top priority for us. Black artists are the heartbeat of Toronto, and yet, there’s no dedicated gathering place where people can connect to their work. In 2020, we announced that we’re building Canada’s first, multi-disciplinary, professional art facility. Located in Little Jamaica, a historically Caribbean neighborhood, the Centre features a 150-seat theater, studio space, a digital media lab and a youth hub.

In a city where space is increasingly financially inaccessible and often racially discriminatory, it’s important that Black communities have spaces in their neighbourhood that serve them. The facility is a space where young people, local artists and community members can create and dream. We offer a place where people can experience art, divorced from imposed notions of what “Black art” should be.

We’ve been working on the front lines of preserving and nurturing Black artistic talent in Toronto for over a decade. In that time, it’s become increasingly clear the Black artistic traditions aren’t valued by the philanthropic or government sector in the same way that Eurocentric traditions are. What we know about our society changes when we make space for new stories and new experiences. This kind of knowledge is what Black art offers us, and is exactly why it’s so urgent that Canadians see it as their duty to support local artists.

Nia Centre for the Arts is @niacentre on all social media platforms. “Thank You for Keeping Us on Track” is one of three exhibits in at Toronto’s Union Station.

is giving a $1 million endowment and $350,000 in unrestricted donations to the . PANL Perspectives spoke with Sadia Zaman, CEO of Inspirit Foundation, to learn about the process behind this historic capital transfer. Inspirit and Laidlaw foundations were Canada’s first and only foundations to answer FFBC’s call for support, pledging . Inspirit promotes inclusion and pluralism through media and arts, support for young content creators, and impact investing—specifically addressing discrimination based on ethnicity, race or religion.

Can you explain the process behind  the capital transfer to the Foundation for Black Communities?

Sadia Zaman, CEO of Inspirit Foundation

Zaman: I don’t think anything we did was something that anybody who is looking at the sector from a position of abundance wouldn’t do.

Given the data, given the historical implications, the role of slavery in Canada, given proximity to blackness — however that happens for people, whether it’s through your board, your employees, your personal life, whatever — in the context of all of that, I think that it would have been deeply problematic had we not acted, because inaction is also its own form of violence.

For us, there were no big moments at the board meeting where people had to be convinced. I think the board is so incredibly connected on the ground, but also in different ways to all sorts of issues. And there was no ‘sell.’ It was implicitly something that the board understood. The only thing for us was that we’d never done a capital transfer before. That was what was new.

Can you speak about the significance or difference between making a capital transfer and giving unrestricted grants?

Zaman: Yes, that was very deliberate. We wanted to give the Foundation for Black Communities immediate access to unrestricted funds because they needed to hire people. There are all kinds of fiduciary structures that have to be set up. And the Foundation for Black Communities staff are all working day and night trying to make this happen. So, how do we ensure that they don’t burn out, that they’re able to actually have some bricks in place? The capital transfer is about giving up power and letting the leadership of the FFBC decide what’s best for communities. This transfer of power was key to our decision-making.

As you saw in the Unfunded report, Black-led organizations receive significantly less grant money. What’s your grantmaking process like? How can you advise other grantmakers to make their grants more accessible and inclusive of marginalized communities?

“Unfunded: Black Communities Overlooked by Canadian Philanthropy” reviews Canada’s top 10 foundations and finds that they gave only 0.03% of their grants to Black-led organizations and 0.13% to Black-serving organizations.

Zaman: In the past two years, we’ve been focusing the work on narrative power and shifting narrative power. Within that, we’re always prioritizing two areas (reconciliation and Islamophobia) when we can. But we also know that there’s intersectionality between all sorts of groups, and our priority areas overlap.

I think everyone just understood the systemic nature of what happened to Black communities and other communities as well. So, most of our grants are unrestricted. During the pandemic, we moved to virtually the bare minimum in terms of reporting from grantees. We were really working with trust, being careful about our fiduciary duties, but not letting them paralyze us. I think the process, as we’re now a year into the pandemic, is still very much unrestricted.

What was your biggest takeaway from the Unfunded report? What was surprising to you, if at all, and how do you think it will help advance other foundations to take the same step as you and Laidlaw Foundation, in terms of supporting FFBC?

The FFBC’s mission is to ensure Black communities have the resources they need to thrive and define their own futures.

Zaman: The sector saw the report. There are no surprises in it. There was  very significant media coverage of the report. The question for me is, knowing that, what are the things that people are still struggling with? Nothing in the report surprised me. And maybe that’s it. Maybe it just affirmed what we already knew.

Sadia Zaman is the CEO of Inspirit Foundation. She’s on and .

Sherlyn Assam is an MPNL student at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University. She’s also a freelance journalist on , , and . Her work can be found at . (Photo of waves is courtesy of Chris Chan and Unsplash.)

is giving $1.85 million towards an endowment to the . PANL Perspectives spoke with Jehad Aliweiwi, Executive Director of Laidlaw Foundation, to learn about the process behind the historic contribution. Laidlaw and Inspirit foundations were Canada’s first and only foundations to answer FFBC’s call for support, pledging . Laidlaw Foundation supports young people impacted by the justice, education, and child-welfare systems to become healthy and engaged by investing in innovative ideas, convening interested parties, advocating for systems change, and sharing learning across the sector.

What led to the decision of Laidlaw Foundation making such a large capital transfer to FFBC, and when did the partnership begin?

Jehad Aliweiwi, Executive Director of Laidlaw Foundation

Aliweiwi: As a foundation, we’re really interested in being connected to the community and funding grassroots, community-led initiatives that many others won’t look at. This presented us with an opportunity to be deeply connected to that particular demographic of organizations and initiatives. The leadership of the working group that led the formation and the development of the Foundation for Black Communities has been impressive in forwarding this compelling vision that’s grand but practical — an argument for something that hasn’t been done before but should have been done way, way sooner.

Can you explain the decision-making process behind funding and choosing programs?

Aliweiwi: We reach communities, we do workshops, we try to make the target of our outreach and communications communities who we know are at the forefront of community change that we’re interested in. We’re interested in youth engagement and leadership in a number of areas. The issue area we’re most concerned with is education, justice and child welfare. And these tend to be marginal conversations at the margin of society for those who are really even further marginalized.

In terms of grantmaking, it seems Laidlaw is proactive, because you seek communities that probably don’t have access to as much administrative help as the bigger organizations.

Aliweiwi: We know that grants and fundraising is the game of those who have resources already. There are people, communities and organizations that have full-time, dedicated staff expertise that can put together the compelling, convincing and beautifully appealing submissions. That’s not what we’re interested in. Within philanthropy, we’re also extremely conscious of the fact that private foundations are really an exclusive private club that’s disconnected from the realities of people that they want to work with and ideally serve.

“Unfunded: Black Communities Overlooked by Canadian Philanthropy” reviews Canada’s top 10 foundations and finds that they gave only 0.03% of their grants to Black-led organizations and 0.13% to Black-serving organizations.

One of the most compelling things that we heard in the Unfunded report: “We need you to fund what we need, not what you would like.” Foundations and philanthropists tend to fund people they know; they tend to be from their own circles and focus on issues that they’re passionate about, and issues that they think need to be addressed. And very often, they’re really not connected to the community.

And how do you get connected to communities? You have two things: you have staff on your teams that are from the community, and you have board members on the decision-making tables who are from the community.

It’s not a coincidence that the only two foundations who answered the call for the Foundation for Black Communities and transferred the requested amount of 3.5% of assets, is led by non-white people and have non-white people on their board and on staff.

These are systemic issues in the philanthropic sector that’s making it hard for foundations, boards and leaders to say, “Yeah, Black communities are disproportionately impacted by just about every single issue.” It’s overwhelmingly demonstrated that Black and Indigenous communities are most impacted by the system. So, for us, it made sense to say, “We’re going to work with these communities.”

Your foundation’s priority is evidence-based policies and supporting youth and vulnerable communities. How do you see policy change and advocacy converging with FFBC’s mission?

The FFBC aims to be a first-of-its-kind philanthropic organization dedicated to Black people in Canada.

Aliweiwi: The main thing is that a lot of the issues tend to be systemic. They’re not just issues that happen to be randomly created by a series of unfortunate practices. No, these are embedded in a system that has had the interests of particular groups. The interest of policymaking, the focus of creating legislation, has not been our community’s. That’s why we also want groups we work with to actually be mindful of that. They also have a role to play in advocacy, direct action, and a clear call to change policy, not only to ask for and to expect funding — but also to expect change.

Jehad Aliweiwi is the Executive Director of Laidlaw Foundation and is on and .

Sherlyn Assam is an MPNL student at ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ University. She’s also a freelance journalist on , , and . Her work can be found at . (Photo of waves is courtesy of Chris Chan and Unsplash.)

Prepared by the and ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´â€™s Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership Program, the report provides the first in-depth examination of the relationship between Canadian philanthropy and Black communities.

Download from the Foundation for Black Communities: .

On Dec. 2, 2020, CBC ran an article about the report: