The Gathering Divergence
Multi-Arts Festival & Conference Spring 2024
June 4, 2024: Online
June 6-7, 2024: Nia Centre for the Arts & Online
The Gathering Divergence Interdisciplinary Festival & Conference (GDMAF/C) is a festival and conference with a specific focus on Indigenous, racialized, deaf, disabled and mad, women and other historically – marginalized arts communities. Held over 3 days, GDMAF/C features performances, literary readings, visual arts exhibition, panels, workshops and creative investigations from diverse practices.Held at Nia Centre for the Arts – Toronto’s newest multidisciplinary Arts centre.
Tickets: General Admission: $15 | Accessibility Pricing: $5
Outreach for Grassroots Arts Organizers: Finding Resourceful Ways to Reach Participants workshop | June 4, 2024 at 12:15 pm via Zoom
This workshop will address actionable steps and techniques for often resource-strapped IBPOC organizers to identify and build relationships with groups and media that share their audiences.
As a case study, Pam Lau will use the past 3 years of data running outreach for their community arts program Ideas From I:
- Nearly doubled the number of applicants from previous years, from 65 in 2022 to 118 in 2023 in a 2-week application period
- +801% accounts reached, +1782% accounts engaged and +17.5% follower growth in a 3-week period of announcing and talking about the program
- Got platforms with up to 272k reach to share our call for applicants
- Got articles written about us in RepresentAsian Project, A Photo Editor, Women of Influence
- Ad spend: $35. The rest was organic and word-of-mouth
Techniques discussed will include:
- Building rapport with your network year-round so when it’s time to share your call for applications they’ll happily oblige
- Outlining a strategy for targeting existing communities and groups that your potential applicants frequent
- Putting together a press kit and pitching earned media press coverage for your program to establish trust
- Structuring the copy of your marketing materials to make it easy to understand what your program is and who is it for
- Using testimonials and past participants’ work to validate the effectiveness and impact of your program
- Reducing the overwhelm of the application form and making it more seamless for people to apply
Bio:
Pam Lau is an independent photographer and edu
cator. Ambassador for Canon Canada and Curatorial Advisory Board Member for PhotoED Magazine. She is a recipient of the Applied Arts Young Blood Photography Award and was named a photographer to watch in a 500px spotlight on Asian Heritage Month.
Frustrated with a culture of gatekeeping and lack of transparency, Pam co-founded Ecru; a grassroots educational initiative for those who face financial, cultural and institutional barriers to entering creative industries. From 2021-2023, Pam has co-facilitated ‘Ideas From I’; a free film and photography program for pan-Asian youth funded by ArtReach via Toronto Arts Council and the City of Toronto.
Khadija Aziz (she/her) is a textile and digital artist investigating the making and transformation of patterns through the play of analogue and digital processes. She marries slow textile-making techniques and tools with spontaneous digital manipulation methods to create digital images, GIFs, installations, and Augmented Reality experiences. Khadija has taught several textile courses at the Textile Museum of Canada, Arts Etobicoke, Workman Arts, and Neilson Park Creative Centre. She is an MFA candidate at Concordia University’s Fibre & Material Practices program. Her textile and digital art have been exhibited in Canada, Australia, and Austria. In recognition of her creative practice, she received the Shanks Memorial Award in Textiles from Craft Ontario and the Creative Promise Award from Surface Design Association in 2020. As an emerging writer, she has recently written for the Canadian Art Gallery Educator’s online blog, Shameless Magazine, and Concordia University’s Media Studies MA Virtual Conference.
Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO) 
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