Gathering Divergence Multi-Arts Festival / Conference Spring 2023
Call for Submissions: Performing Arts and Workshops
The Gathering Divergence Interdisciplinary Festival & Conference 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.
Geared towards meaningful conversations, professional development, sharing strategies, it encourages divergence across arts practices and collaboration. This year’s theme for Gathering Divergence Multi-Arts Festival & Conference SPRING 2023 | Visioning Canada’s IBPOC Artistic Transformation: Implementing Future Strategies.
We facilitate
- an interactive space where arts organizations artists and attendees share
- dedicated to advancing, visual arts and performing arts , while advocating for pluralism in the arts
- dialogue on common interests, experienced and strategies towards a better more equitable and inclusive arts sector.
We believe
Systemic change is more effectively achieved through collective, creative action, and seeks to:
- create, support and learn through open-source resources and toolkits
- advance strategies to understand how we are influenced by issues of equity and digital technology in and out of
- amplify the artistic practices and administration of IBPOC individuals
We aspire? We hope that everyone arrives at a better understanding of the many ways in which we support, create from and within the Arts sector as indigenous / ethno-racially identified artists with a pluralist lens.
APPLY NOW! Deadline: March 31, 2023
When is the festival and conference?
Week of May 15 – 19, 2023
Location: Online / In-Person events (with consideration of CV 19 safety guidelines)
What we offer:
Opportunity to display / showcase / facilitate a workshop or performance (performances should be NO more than fifteen minutes in length)
Required for consideration:
– Explanation of how your proposed work relates to the Conference’s Themes:
- Broadening capacities for IBPOC Arts makers
- Implementing creative process for the future
- Advancing Equity, Diversity and Inclusive Learning
- critically understanding IBPOC Artists & Organizations and their work
– Works where contributors / artists or those self identify as IBPOC
– Works created by Black / IPOC artists and Organizations
– Artist / Organization Website URL, Social Media Info, Biography (150 words)
– Headshot / Company Image / Bio Image 300 dpi
– Links to previous work(s) or work proposed.
For Performances or Workshop Proposals include:
- Set up and installation requirements
- Estimated time for set up and striking
- Whether assistance is needed or included
- 300 Word Explanation on how your work applies to the CPAMO Call for Submissions
Compensation Range varies:
Administered by a Selection Committee including: CPAMO Board member(s), Program Manager, Executive Director, and Pluralism in Organizational Change (CPAMOPOC) members.
AN IMPORTANT NOTICE: CPAMO operates in a Cloud-based platform. Documents MUST be submitted via (Google Drive, Box, One Drive, Dropbox etc.) and the link should not require permission for the Selection Committee to view.
Submission Link: https://forms.gle/JqdhwvPNRPwQnVzA7
Please make sure all submitted links are functional and include accessible links to a headshot and your support materials. Personal links from your computer / laptop should not be sent. Please upload all required
QUESTIONS? Contact: Kevin A. Ormsby programming@cpamo.org
Applicants will be notified by April 14, 2023
Maria Victoria Mata
Y Josephine
Lillian Allen is an acclaimed foremother of Canadian Poetry. She is a poet, writer/performer, and a long-time arts activist. She is an international exponent of dub poetry with its politically charged reggae-infused aesthetic of resistance, a call to poetic arms. Lillian has also been a successful Cultural Strategist who played a key role in transforming the Toronto and Canadian cultural landscapes and is a mentor to the mentors, mentoring individuals and groups across many cultures. Termed a ‘cultural de-programmer’ in the arts, she imagined initiated and led community-building BIPOC youth-supporting programs such as Fresh Elements and Fresh Arts as well as net works and programs such as Groundings and Minquon Panchayat. She has received numerous accolades and awards and is the recipient of The Toronto Cultural Champions Award, The Margo Bindhardt Award for significantly impacting the arts in Toronto through both creative work and activism, the William P. Hubbard Award for Race Relations. Lillian is the author of Make the World New- selected works, old & new, edited by Ronald Cummings, WLU Press 2021, other books include Women Do this Every Day, Psychic Unrest, plus books and recordings for children and young people. Also a globally recognized recording artist, Ms. Allen is a two-time Canadian Juno award winner for her recordings Conditions Critical, and for Revolutionary Tea Party which was recently nominated for the prestigious Polaris Heritage Prize in Canada. A creative writing professor at OCAD University, she initiated and led the development of a BFA in Creative Writing Program that acknowledges community connected writing, traditional and new writing forms and writing as possibility as service and transformational possibilities. 
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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