Dear friends and colleagues,

We are writing to congratulate our founder, Executive Director/ Convenor, charles c smith on his new adventure.  After 20 years of effort to develop CPAMO and bring it to its current level of professionalism, leadership and service in the arts community on issues of decoloniality, anti-racism, equity and pluralism, charles will be with CPAMO to the end of 2024 in an advisory role as he is moving on to another adventure as he leads the newly-established initiative entitled Canadian Network for Equity and Racial Justice (CNERJ), an exciting partnership between Canada, Mexico and the U.S bringing together leaders across diverse sectors, e.g., the arts, business, labour, academia, health, education, sports, etc.

The purpose of the Partnership is to share best practices and commit to taking concrete steps domestically and trilaterally to combat systemic racism, discrimination, and hate while striving towards cohesiveness between national laws and mutual commitments to international human rights conventions.

Funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage and supported by the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, the Chinese Canadian National Council Social Justice, Colour of Poverty-Colour of Change, charles will be the project lead for this exciting project.

We at CPAMO will certainly miss him – his leadership, vision, inclusive approach and his voice in matters of decoloniality, anti-racism, equity and pluralism in the arts.  Since the initial working days with Community Cultural Impresarios (now Ontario Presents) and the publication of Pluralism in the Arts in Canada: A Change is Gonna Come, charles pioneered many initiatives that have now become more regularly involved in conversations about the arts in Canada.  For example:

• Writing, editing and soliciting books and articles on these issues;
• Convening public forums first called Town Halls and now Gathering Divergence: Multi-Inter Arts Festival and Conference;
• Organizing in-person and online panels, webinars and artistic showcases;
• Advocating to all arts funders on the challenges and pressing needs of Indigenous, Black, People of Colour and other historically marginalized artists, i.e., the Deaf and disabled, immigrants and refugees, 2SLGBQTI, women and others
• Conducting organizational reviews of large, medium-sized and small arts organizations;
• Developing and delivering education and training sessions for a wide variety of organizations, including the CPAMOPOC pluralism organizational change program as well as the series of Anti-Black Racism in the Arts training program.

Just have a look at our website! www.cpamo.org

All in all, charles’ work for CPAMO has clearly made an impact in the arts world as now funders and arts organization are more involved with intent to address the issues CPAMO has raised.  While we will miss charles, we wish him all the very best for his new adventure.

And as CPAMO moves forward, we will keep you informed of how his invaluable expertise will be followed as we continue our work with our partners, colleagues and friends to embed decoloniality, anti-racism, equity and pluralism into the arts practices, goals, aspirations and concrete outcomes for funders and arts organizations.

Until the end of this year (2024), charles will be with CPAMO to start our strategic planning where we are working with BeSpoke Collective Consultants. In the interim, CPAMO will be exploring a Co-Director model with Erin Jones in the Convenor role as part of her current work as Curator, Transformational Change and Kevin A. Ormsby’s in his role as Curator, Programming will now include, engaging in CPAMO’s advocacy work with such organizations as the Canadian Arts Coalition.

Sincerely,

CPAMO’s Board of Directors