Preparations are underway for Arts Day on the Hill 2026, which will be happening in Ottawa on October 5 and 6. This annual advocacy event allows representatives from Canada’s arts sector to meet with politicians and officials to advocate for increased arts funding and federal support.
Delegates need to be members of the Canadian Arts Coalition, and Individual Memberships are available. We also have a special membership rate for organizations that are members of an Arts Service Organization with an active membership with the Canadian Arts Coalition. You can find out more at this link.
If you would like to be a delegate in 2026, please complete the application form linked below and submit by JULY 20, 2026.
This summer, help your MP experience arts and culture in their community. Summer is one of the best times to connect with your Member of Parliament, and help them see how federal support for arts and culture strengthens communities in their own riding. Whether you are an independent artist, a board member, a volunteer, a cultural worker, or part of an arts organization, you have a role to play. You do not need to be a professional advocate; you simply need to share your story. Arts and culture exist in every riding in Canada. Every community has artists, audiences, festivals, performances, exhibitions, cultural traditions, creative businesses, and spaces where people gather. When elected officials experience that firsthand, they gain a better understanding of why federal investment in arts and culture matters. The summer advocacy guide linked below includes easy ways to get involved, a guide to speaking with politicians, key messaging for the arts, and a form to let us know how it went. Together, we can help Members of Parliament understand the power of the arts firsthand.
Please join us for the virtual launch of the “Transforming Cultural Equity in Canadian Arts” with co-presented with Diversity Arts Australia (DARTS) and the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Health Equity and Community Wellbeing. The video will be followed by a Panel Discussion with Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO) and the Nunavut Independent Television Network (NITV/Uvagut TV). This event is free and open to the public.
Abstract: Diversity Arts Australia (DARTS) and the Canada Council for the Arts (CCA), in partnership with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Health Equity and Community Wellbeing at Toronto Metropolitan University, invite you to an Imagine Talk conversation on cultural equity and systems change in the arts. This session brings together cultural equity leaders from Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO) and the Nunavut Independent Television Network (NITV/Uvagut TV) to explore how organizations are actively shifting power within the arts and media sectors.
Through two case studies, speakers will discuss practical approaches to:
● Shifting decision-making power within arts organizations ● Building long-term equity systems rather than one-off initiatives ● Supporting Indigenous, racialized, and marginalized artists and communities ● Developing leadership pathways that transform who leads and who makes decisions ● Creating media and arts platforms that strengthen language, identity, and visibility ● Responding to funding inequities and institutional resistance
Facilitated by DARTS, this conversation draws from the Imagine Case Studies Project, which documents 72 international case studies from 42 countries focused on cultural practice and structural change in the arts.
Part of The Gathering Divergence Multi-Arts Festival & Conference Spring 2026 📅 May 12, 14, and 15, 2026 📍 Nancy & Ed Jackman Performance Centre 877 Yonge St, Toronto, ON M4W 3M2
This three-day hybrid festival and conference centers Indigenous, Black, racialized, Deaf, disabled, Mad, women, and other historically marginalized artists and arts communities.
Featuring performances, literary readings, visual arts exhibitions, panels, workshops, and creative investigations across diverse artistic practices, Gathering Divergence is grounded in cross-sectoral understandings of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Pluralism (EDIP). The festival explores transformative change in the arts through critical reflection, collaboration, and visionary practice.
The exhibition takes place in the Rehearsal Hall at the Nancy & Ed Jackman Performance Centre. Exhibition is free and open to the public.
The Gathering Divergence Spring 2026. Artwork by Yafang Shi
Exhibition Hours
Day
Hours
Tuesday, May 12
4:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Wednesday, May 13
12:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Thursday, May 14
10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Friday, May 15
10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Saturday, May 16
11:00 AM – 3:00 PM
Sunday, May 17
11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Artists
Anupa Khemadasa
Anupa Khemadasa is a Sri Lankan-Canadian interdisciplinary artist and musician whose work moves through layered terrains of memory, identity, and transformation. Working across painting, drawing, sound, and mixed media, she creates hybrid, symbolic worlds where bodies merge with flora, fauna, and myth—spaces where boundaries soften and new forms of becoming emerge.
Rooted in a transnational experience, her practice reflects the quiet tensions and resonances of inhabiting multiple cultural and psychological landscapes. As a BIPOC artist, she engages with inherited histories and lived realities, exploring how identity is shaped through displacement, resilience, and imagination.
Khemadasa has presented work in exhibitions and public art contexts in Toronto and Sri Lanka, including large-scale immersive installations for Nuit Blanche. Alongside her studio and musical practice, she contributes to community-based arts initiatives that foster dialogue around equity and representation.
Her work invites viewers and listeners into intimate, shifting spaces—where multiplicity is held, and transformation is ongoing.
Lita (they/them) is a self-taught multimedia artist currently residing in Durham Region. lita is a self-ascribed Mad/disabled Black queer spoonie. lita uses art as a means of catharsis for themself and others with a focus on other Black queer Mad/disabled femmes as a way to find relationship through experiences where they do not see themselves represented.
Sara Oveissi
Sara Oveissi is a Toronto-based Iranian-Canadian multidisciplinary visual artist working across photography, film, and mixed media. Her practice explores the emotional and psychological impact of displacement, identity, and systemic control, often drawing from personal and collective experiences shaped by migration and sociopolitical conflict.
With a background in photography and film production, Sara’s work blends narrative and visual experimentation to create immersive, emotionally charged pieces that center marginalized perspectives, particularly those of women navigating structures of power, tradition, and autonomy. Her projects have been exhibited internationally, including at Berlin Art Week, and span gallery installations, short films, and independent publications.
Through her work, she seeks to make visible the internal states of fear, memory, and resilience, inviting audiences to confront the invisible consequences of inequity while imagining new forms of connection and understanding.
Yafang Shi is a Chinese settler living in Aurora, on the treaty lands of the Mississaugas and Chippewas. She is a feminist, journalist-turned-artist, and poet whose practice explores gender, race, class, censorship, body, identity, and human-nature relations through a decolonial, intersectional, and transnational feminist lens. Her work spans an ongoing long-term documentary project on social movements for women’s rights and social justice which began in 2017, poetic and emotionally driven creative works, and socially engaged, collaborative public installations.
Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions across art galleries, museums, universities, public libraries, community spaces, and outdoor public sites, including exhibitions at the CONTACT Photography Festival. Her solo exhibitions have been hosted by the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto and the School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at York University.
Through both her artistic and advocacy practices, she continues to champion artists’ rights to freedom of expression and human rights.
About EMILIA-AMALIA
EMILIA-AMALIA is an intersectional, intergenerational, feminist experimental working group, initiated in Toronto in 2016. The group takes its name and structure from the practice of affidamento—the relationship in which one woman entrusts herself symbolically to another.
Chinese Feminism Toronto is a grassroots collective engaged in feminist advocacy, transnational activism, and community-based organizing in relation to Sinophone and East Asian feminist and queer movements.
Follow their work on Instagram at @cnfeminismto.
Accessing the Building
The entrance to the Nancy & Ed Jackman Performance Centre is downstairs and the door is locked. Please ring the bell and wait to be let in during exhibition hours.
For stair-free access, please go to the main floor and ask the concierge for access to the basement level.
For more accessibility information about the Nancy & Ed Jackman Performance Centre, including barrier-free access details, please visit: https://jackmanperformance.ca/how-to-find-us/
We aim to host a fragrance-free event. Please do not wear perfume, cologne, or other scented products.
Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO) is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, the City of Toronto, and the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration.
Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO) 
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