The Gathering Divergence
Multi-Arts Festival & Conference Spring 2025 
Now and for the Future: Steps Towards Dismantling Inequities in the Arts 
May 21-23, 2025 
Online and at East End Arts (Toronto, ON) 

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. Join  us online on May 21 and May 22-23 online and in-person at East End Arts (St. Matthew’s Clubhouse, 450 Broadview Avenue, Toronto, ON M4K 2N3).

Thursday, May 22 Schedule: 

10:05 am     Land Acknowledgment and Welcome 

10:15 am     Keynote 

10:30 am     Session: Wellness for IBPOC Artists and Arts Organizations in a Sector of Continued
                     Inequities

11:45 am      Artist Showcase: Neena Jayarajan

12:00 pm     Break 

12:15 pm     Weaving Workshop facilitated by Ebru Winegard

1:15 pm       Artist Showcase: Olga Barrios 

1:30 pm       Session: Stories / Strategies to Address Aging as an IBPOC Artist: What do we need                         to Consider?

2:45 pm       Artist Showcase: BaKari Lindsay

View the full schedule here!

About the sessions: 

Wellness for IBPOC Artists and Arts Organizations in a Sector of Continued Inequities 
There are increasing conversations about supporting artists in the arts. What are the many perspectives around wellness in the arts? What strategies can organizations and artists consider in supporting and envisioning the importance of embedding care within the Arts. This panel will look specifically at the larger conversation around well-being and care within the art centre, but it will also focus on the wellness and well-being of IBPOC artists within the sector that continues to marginalize and visualize the work of impact, artists, and arts organizations.

Stories / Strategies to Address Aging as an IBPOC Artist: What do we need to Consider? 
We are aware of the benefits of the arts on ageing, yet rarely do we talk about what it means for artists themselves to age. What are the challenges and opportunities for artists as they age, and navigate both their careers and lives in a society that seems to celebrate youth over maturity? From financial security and retirement planning to healthcare and evolving creative identity, aging artists have many things they must consider. Join us for a lively conversation, stories and strategies as mature artists reflect about retiring, and age in the arts.

About the workshops: 

Weaving Workshop facilitate by Ebru Winegard 
Weaving, an ancient practice shared by cultures worldwide, embodies interconnectedness—each thread contributing to a larger whole. In this workshop, participants explore the act of weaving as a symbol of dismantling inequities in the arts, interlacing individual narratives into a shared tapestry.

Using diverse looms and natural fibers, attendees will create their own small woven pieces. All materials are eco-friendly and ethically sourced, reinforcing the importance of sustainability alongside equity in the arts. Each participant keeps their woven piece, and those willing can contribute to a larger collaborative tapestry, symbolizing our interconnected struggles and hopes for the future of the arts.

Ebru Winegard is a multidisciplinary artist. Ebru is a graphic designer, visual artist, filmmaker, and art educator. She presented a solo exhibition at the 2024 Contact Photography Festival and has participated in over 30 national and international group exhibitions and festivals. Her short film HandMade Paper Font has been screened in Germany, England, Bosnia, USA, and Canada. It was an Audience Choice Award finalist at the UNCG International Sustainability Shorts Film Competition.

In 2020, her design for Creative Mornings Toronto won the CMTO virtual background design contest. She has recently earned the Ontario Culture Days 2024 “Spotlight People’s Choice Award”.

Ebru’s art is rooted in her family’s creative heritage, with members skilled in painting, music, and crafts. Her works are inspired by culture, nature, and community.

Her projects often focus on community-oriented initiatives. Since migrating to Canada in 2018, Ebru has participated in and created numerous projects. Her latest endeavor, Looms of Heritage, is a weaving workshop series designed for Turkish newcomers affected by the recent earthquakes, showcasing her commitment to community building and cultural preservation.

About the artists: 

Neena Jayarajan is an independent dance theatre artist with extensive experience in Bharatanatyam and Odissi dance techniques. Her primary training was under the tutelage of Dr. Menaka Thakkar, and Sujatha Mohapatra. She served as the Assistant Artistic Director of Menaka Thakkar Dance Company for 7 years, as well as assistant teacher at Nrtyakala for 20 years. She currently is an Associate Artist at Nova Dance involved in both creative and organizational roles. Neena completed her MA in Dance from York University where her research was a comparative analysis of the Bharatanatyam Aramandi to the Ballet Plie. Neena was a 2016 recipient of the Chalmers Arts Fellowship Grant which fueled 3 contemporary projects using Bharatanatyam including this work Tejas. She made her theatrical debut in Theatre Smith’s Gilmour’s Metamorphosis in 2023. Neena is currently on her own choreographic journey of exploration using her classical roots to fuel a contemporary outlook.

Olga Barrios is multi-award choreographer and dancer for more than 25 years, also an arts educator and the co-founder and co-artistic director of Vanguardia Dance Projects since 2008. MFA at York University of Toronto. Olga has collaborated with dance, theater, musical and multidisciplinary projects in Canada, USA and Colombia with diverse companies and troupes. As dance teacher she has worked in Montreal, Hamilton, Kitchener, Toronto, San Francisco, New Jersey and varied cities in Colombia.  Olga is original from Bogotá and currently working with exchange projects between Colombia and Canada. Her more recent works include – choreographer and performer for “Dreaming in Blue” (Underwater Dance Film), “Hybrid Women” (Vanguardia Dance Projects creation), and currently in development “Memories of Water” with Latitude-s Collective and “Conversations” a collaboration between Aanmitaagzi and Vanguardia.

BaKari Ifasegun Lindsay is a Trinidad-born, Canadian dancer, choreographer, researcher, and author who blends African and Caribbean traditions with contemporary movement aesthetics. With over three decades of experience, he developed A-Feeree – The Physical Language, a training method rooted in Africanist principles. A former performer in the original Canadian cast of Disney’s The Lion King, BaKari has danced with the Danny Grossman Dance Company and created choreographic works for companies including Philadanco (The Philadelphia Dance Company). His choreography has been presented internationally, and his acclaimed solo work Ancestral Calling earned him a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination. BaKari is the author of In Healing Steps – A Dance with Destiny, a reflective memoir on his personal and artistic journey. A dedicated educator, he has taught at Toronto Metropolitan University, York University, and various institutions across Canada and the Caribbean. BaKari continues to shape and uplift the global dance landscape through performance, pedagogy, and cultural advocacy.

SpiritYouAll is a dance performance drawn from my memoir In Healing Steps: A Dance with Destiny, a reflective journey of survival, spirituality, and the reclamation of self through Africanist cultural knowledge. This performance is a physical manifestation of my path through cancer diagnosis and remission, shaped by ancestral wisdom, ritual, and the embodied practice of A-Feeree—The Physical Language, a methodology I developed to articulate African diasporic movement systems.

In alignment with the conference theme Now and for the Future: Steps Towards Dismantling Inequities in the Arts, SpiritYouAll offers a deeply personal and culturally specific narrative that confronts the ongoing erasure of African diasporic voices in contemporary performance spaces. It asserts that healing—both individual and collective—is political, and that to dismantle inequities in the arts, we must first make space for stories that live at the intersection of identity, illness, and inherited knowledge.

This work does not just represent my personal transformation; it invites the audience into a ritual of witnessing, where movement becomes testimony, and survival becomes resistance. SpiritYouAll challenges Western-centric models of dance by privileging embodied storytelling rooted in spirituality, cultural memory, and Black survivance. In doing so, it offers a vision of an artistic future that is inclusive, affirming, and deeply connected to ancestral truths.