IBPOC Digital Strategy – Phase II: Digital Tools Professional Development Series

IBPOC Digital Strategy – Phase II: Digital Tools Professional Development Series 
 October 2020 – March 2021  via Zoom 

Essential Digital Tools – Schedule update
Presented by Jessa Agilo Founder, ArtsPond
Friday, October 2, 2020 | 1pm-4:30pm EST
Friday, October 9, 2020 | 1pm-4:30pm EST (postponed)
Friday, October 23, 2020 | 1pm-4:30pm EST – now Day 2
Friday, October 30, 2020 | 1pm-4:30pm EST – now Day 3
Thursday, November 5, 2020 | 1pm-4:30pm EST – now Day 4 Digital

Accessibility in the Arts
Presented by Victoria Anne Warner and Sean Lee, Tangled Arts
Thursday, November 19, 2020 | 11am-2:30pm EST
Thursday, November 26, 2020 | 11am-2:30pm EST
Thursday, December 3, 2020 |1pm-4:30pm EST
Thursday, December 10, 2020 | 1pm-4:30pm EST

Culture Brew’s IBPOC Artists Database
Presented by Anju Singh and Valerie Sing Turner, Culture Brew
Tuesday, January 19, 2021 | 12pm-4:00pm EST
Thursday, January 28, 2021 | 12pm-4:00pm EST
Thursday, February 19, 2021 | 12pm-4:00pm EST
Thursday, February 25, 2021 | 12pm-4:00pm EST

Digital Engagement with Large Arts Organizations
Presented by Amy Mushinski, The Canadian Opera Company and Christopher Sonnemann, The National Ballet of Canada.
Thursday, March 4, 2021 | 1pm-4:30pm EST
Thursday, March 11, 2021 | 1pm-4:30pm EST
Thursday, March 18, 2021 | 1pm-4:30pm EST
Thursday, March 25, 2021 | 1pm-4:30pm EST


Registration for the Essential Digital Tools is now open!
Registration for other sessions will open shortly!
Register on Eventbrite: https://digital-tools.eventbrite.ca


About the session: 

Essential Digital Tools
Presented by Jessa Agilo Founder, ArtsPond
October 2, October 9,  October  23 and October 30, 2020  

Producer Jessa Agilo (Founder, ArtsPond) provides a whirlwind but fun and informative introduction to the essential digital tools and software in her front and back pockets for managing time, money, people, building creative programming, and engaging community. Learn from her 30 years of experience combining free, open source, and low-cost tools and applications to manage small to large teams from home on a tight budget.

 
DAY 1 

Compare the benefits and challenges of popular productivity suites including Microsoft Office365 E2 for Nonprofits, Google for Nonprofits, Open Office, and other alternatives for free/low-cost internal and remote back-office admin. Receive tips on other helpful free, open source, and low cost tools for managing internal digital assets, time, people, and money in demanding cross-platform environments for OS/iOS and Windows/Android. See examples of ArtsPond’s growing remote national digital office in action and learn about the factors that influenced its design and implementation. Explore strategies and templates for using spreadsheets like Excel and Google Sheets as viable alternatives to expensive databases and business enterprise software. Explore browser extensions/add-on’s, security, and syncing of devices and profiles across multiple domains.

 
Day 2

Compare the benefits and challenges of popular design and communications suites like Adobe with open source, free/low-cost alternatives to amplify your public outreach, accessibility, and interactivity on-the-ground and in-the-cloud. Explore CPanel and WordPress website hosting for non-developers without breaking your brain or emptying the bank. Look at free and open source constituency relationship management (CRM) options with CiviCRM, SuiteCRM, and MailChimp, livestreaming to Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, Instagram and other services with OBS Studio and YellowDuck, accessibility services with Otter.ai and other alternatives, research support with Zotero, strategies for sharing remote desktops, cloud and onsite digital asset backups, best practices for Zoom video conferencing and other alternatives.

 
DAY 3

Become a power Quickbooks and spreadsheet user for managing people, time, and money. See examples and learn how to build all the tools that you need. Explore how just a few spreadsheet features (filters, pivot tables, mail merges) and functions (VLOOKUP, SUMIF, IFS and more) can boost efficiency and automation of everyday business activities. Gain access to sample financial, HR, and activity reporting templates from ArtsPond’s office and learn how to build them on your own. Ask questions about financial and project management challenges and received thoughts or recommendations on how to improve or do things differently.

 
DAY 4

A hand’s on workshop for non-developers to learn how to install and powerup a multi-user Office365 environment and a new WordPress website on a custom domain with CPanel hosting (or hosted by WordPress). For Office365, setup and use SharePoint, Teams, Planner, Yammer, OneNote, OneDrive, and more.  On WordPress, learn how to install themes, create and update content, address site SEO settings, backup and keep it secure, migrate content to another location, set up a testing server on your local machine for play before launch, choosing between the best of free and paid plugins to extend functionality, examining options for hosting ecommerce or social networking functionality, setting up multiple user accounts with permissions, syncing up content and contact lists with Mailchimp and social media. Explore SSL certificates, hosting other open source software solutions to extend functionalities, and choose a hosting plan that works for you for the future.  

For this workshop, if you do not already have access, participants from nonprofit organizations in Canada are encouraged to request accounts for Microsoft Office365 E2 for Nonprofits from TechSoup Canada. Approval process can take 10 days. For those that are unable to do so, a temporary account will be provided to participants by ArtsPond for 90 days to explore the platform.


Bio:
 

Jessa Agilo is an integrated arts producer with a three-decade career boosting social, economic, spatial, and digital justice for equity-seeking groups in Canadian arts and culture.  As Founder of ArtsPond, since 2014 Jessa has led ground-breaking efforts including de-gentrification (Groundstory), digital transformation of arts services (DigitalASO), open source software (Hatch Open), platform cooperatives (Artse United), creative land trusts (Groundtrust), shared charitable platforms (Arts Working Group), COVID-19 pandemic (I Lost My Gig Canada), and more. As a consultant, Jessa has helped grow such diverse companies as Creative Users Projects, Roseneath Theatre, Ontario Culture Days, Workman Arts, Queer Arts Festival, Dreamwalker Dance, and many more. Jessa is a mentor to young spatial and digital justice changemakers from Humber College, University of Toronto, Ryerson University, and Cultural Human Resource Council’s Talent2Lead. She was recognized with the Humberto Santos Award in Business and Administration in 2006 and Toronto Arts Council’s Leaders Lab in 2019.

DigitalASO + Artse United are two digital strategy initiatives led by ArtsPond with the support of Canada Council for the Arts’ Digital Strategy Fund. Artse United is an emerging platform cooperative providing open source arts management and impact investing digital tools for small creators and producers in arts and culture. Phase 1 prioritizes the financial management needs of equity-seeking groups in the visual, performing, and disability arts. DigitalASO is a national strategic effort to bolster digital justice and foster an inclusive ecosystem for shared digital innovation in Canadian arts and culture. Phase 2 explores the scope and design of a Digital Arts Services Alliance to help break down traditional silos and steward a shared national strategy for the transformation of Canadian arts and culture to the digital world with a focus on underserved, equity-seeking groups. Through digital meetups and public consultations across Canada, the project will help connect national champions, strengthen literacy and regional advantages across the country, boost cross-disciplinary and cross-regional collaborations, and foster shared human-digital infrastructure and resources.

Visual Representation: The Problematic Nature of the Gaze for IBPOC Visual Artists session is on Sep. 24

The importance of visual representation of IBPOC artists and organizations has been amplified by the recent events occurring in our world. Articles have surfaced about the problematic of a  Euro-centric gaze and interpretation of visual Arts for IBPOC identified persons.   

What are some of these experiences? How do we begin to shift perspectives, invite multiplicity of approaches and representation into Visual Arts? How can the invitation and representation of the works of IBPOC artists also be amplified in gallery settings in Canada?

We hope you can join us. It is our intent to offer further a space for networking with artists and organizations, asking the same questions about IBPOC visibility, inclusion and their intersections with artistic/organizational practices while speaking to many perspectives in the arts and the changing demographics of audiences and participation within the Arts sector.

Panelists:
– Karen Carter
– Diane Montreuil
– Julius Poncelet Manapul
– Akshata Naik
– Michael Chambers
– Vero Diaz
Moderated by: Alana Traficante 

For panelists bios visit: https://tinyurl.com/y3n7xcz9

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/the-gathering-online-tickets-105192573820

Information Session – Sep 25: OAC’s New Arts Response Initiative Funding

Information Session : OAC’s New Arts Response Initiative Funding

Friday, September 25, 2020 at 10 am  Via Zoom 

 Register on Eventbrite

At this session, you will learn about the Ontario Arts Council’s (OAC) new Arts Response Initiative. The initiative was launched to support artists and arts groups and organizations as they navigate the negative impacts on their artistic practices and operations due to COVID-19. Join Maura Broadhurst, Arts Sector Development Officer, as she reviews the Ontario Arts Council’s regular programs and outlines the purposes of this new funding opportunity. She will explain the priorities of the program, the kinds of activities it supports, how to make an application and offer tips on writing a strong application. There will also be time for questions and answers.

The Ontario Arts Council designed this program in recognition of the barriers and challenges artists and arts groups and organizations have been experiencing since the emergence of the pandemic. It encourages exploration, adaptation, and the development of new ways of working that will increase the inclusiveness and resilience of Ontario’s arts sector, both now and into the future.

The Arts Response Initiative has three categories:

Project Grants for Individuals
Deadline: October 20, 2020 at 1 PM
Fixed Grant amount: $4,000

Project Grants for Ad Hoc Groups, Collectives and Organizations
Deadline: November 3, 2020 at 1 PM
Grant maximum: $15,000

Project Grants for Organizational Partnerships
Deadline: November 3, 2020 at 1 PM
Grant maximum: $30,000

For more details visit OAC’s website: 
https://www.arts.on.ca/news-resources/news/2020/oac-launches-arts-response-initiative

The information session is being hosted by Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario.