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).
Wednesday, May 21st schedule:
10:05 am Land Acknowledgment by Cara Loft and Welcome
10:30 am Artist Showcase: Reequal Smith
10:45 am Who’s Talking About Advocacy in the Arts?: It’s Continued Importance (in partnership
with Canadian Arts Coalition)
12:00 pm Artist Showcase: Laurie Dumont-Bal
12:15 pm Break
12:30 pm Artist Showcase: Ana Luísa Ramos & Eric Taylor Escudero
12:45 pm Artist Showcase: Camille Fontaine
1:00 pm Closing Remarks
Tickets are $15 general admission $ $5 accessibility pricing.
About the sessions:
Who’s Talking About Advocacy in the Arts?: It’s Continued Importance panel in partnership with Canadian Arts Coalition
Advocacy arts can be a demanding and tricky conversation and many artists and arts organizations consider it an added challenge in a world where funding is dwindling, and the need to create art is ever present. The panel will discuss why advocacy is important, and provide solutions and examples to how artists and arts organizations can continue to advocate for their practice.
Moderator: Andrew Walker
Panelists: Karla Etienne and Barbora Racevičiūtė
Bios:
Andrew Walker
Andrew Walker is Director, Arts, Culture and Procurement for PAA. Based in Ottawa, Andrew has previously worked for Members of Parliament in both government and opposition, including the former Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage. Andrew has also worked in advocacy for over thirty arts and culture organisations, ranging in interests from arts infrastructure funding and grant applications to cultural policies, such as broadcasting and copyright.
Andrew is also a working professional musician, having sung for over fifteen years with Grammy- and Juno-nominated groups around Canada, Ontario, and abroad. He is the former President of Choirs Ontario, the arts service organisation which represents over 1 000 choirs, musicians, and administrators across the province of Ontario, and currently sits on the board of the Network of Independent Cinema Exhibitors (NICE).
Karla Etienne
A distinguished graduate in cultural management (HEC Montreal) and environmental sciences (UQAM), Karla Etienne, a marathon runner in every sense of the word, has travelled the plurality of roads and pathways which lead to a deeper and more accurate appreciation of what today constitutes the strengths and the potential of our artistic and cultural community in Canada. While being more generally associated with Nyata Nyata, the dance arts organization she has led alongside its founder, Zab Maboungou, since 2003, Karla Etienne has, in fact, unfailingly devoted herself over the years to advancing the cause of inclusion – through better representation – in the arts, at all levels of practice, management and dissemination, within the institutions and organizations mandated to work in this area, including, among others, the Regroupement québécois de la danse, the Conseil des arts de Montréal and the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec. Drawing also on her experience acquired within various community organizations (including ENvironnement JEUnesse, Regroupement des femmes en environnement, and Maison d’Haïti), Karla Etienne uses her skills as a director, coordinator, writer and facilitator to advance Canada’s artistic and cultural development.(Photo Credits : Mathieu Gaudreault)
Barbora Racevičiūtė
Barbora Racevičiūtė is the National Director of the Independent Media Arts Alliance. Born in Vilnius, is lives between Montréal and Toronto. She earned a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto and an MFA from the Ontario College of Art and Design. She is an independent curator and co-runs the curatorial collective shell.
About the artists:
Reequal Smith
Reequal Smith, Founder and Artistic Director of Oshun Dance Studios in Prince Edward Island, is a multidisciplinary artist originally from The Bahamas. She seamlessly blends her Bahamian heritage with Canadian dance culture, creating a vibrant fusion of Afro-Caribbean movement, contemporary dance, and funk jazz. With over a decade of performance experience and a diploma from Holland College’s School of Performing Arts, Reequal is also a dedicated arts leader. She serves as the Program and Events Coordinator for the Black Cultural Society of PEI and the Administrator/Outreach Coordinator for the Canadian Women of Colour Leadership Network. Her leadership extends to boards like The Fringe Festival, Fusion Charlottetown, and Kinetic Studio Dance in Halifax. Reequal’s work spans festivals, music videos, documentaries, and self-produced shows, earning her the 2025 Kerri Wynne MacLeod Women of Impact Award in the Arts. As a fire dancer, choreographer, and mentor, she champions diversity, empowering artists and youth in PEI’s arts scene. (Photo credit: Stewart MacLean)
Laurie Dumont-Bal
Laurie Dumont-Bal is a Montreal-based biracial theatre artist with Indian and French-Canadian settler origins. She works as a playwright, director, playback theatre artist and theatre teacher.
In 2024, she worked as a playwright for “Something Will Survive/Quelque Chose Survivra”, a bilingual verbatim theatre play on climate change. The project, led by Yvette Nolan and Joel Bernbaum, was created by a team at Imago Theatre in collaboration with wâhkôhtowin Project.
Since 2023, Laurie’s play “Here” has received support from the Playwrights Guild of Canada’s Mentorship Program and Craft Bites International Program, Imago Theatre’s Nested Circles artist residency, and Teesri Duniya’s Fireworks Playwriting Development Program. In April 2024, Laurie directed a staged public reading for “Here”.
Laurie has directed more than fifteen musicals at the Segal Centre Academy, where she also worked as the lead book writer for three original musicals named “Silent Knight”, “Our First Day” and “Magic All Around Us”.
Ana Luísa Ramos & Eric Taylor Escudero
Ana & Eric are a Brazilian duo based in St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador, blending Brazilian bossa nova and North American indie-folk. They have performed across Brazil, Europe, and Canada, gaining international recognition.
In 2020, they released two singles, Hope and Lights My Way, followed by their debut Ana & Eric EP, earning a 2021 ECMA nomination and three MusicNL nominations. Their 2023 album, Our House From Here, along with singles I Can See Our House From Here and Manhã de Abril, received acclaim in Brazil, Portugal, and Canada. The album was nominated for Global Recording of the Year at the 2024 ECMA and received three 2023 MusicNL nominations.
Ana Luísa Ramos, the duo’s vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, also won Jazz Artist of the Year and Global Artist of the Year at the 2024 MusicNL Awards, further cementing their impact on the international music scene.
Camille Fontaine
Camille Fontaine is a multi-disciplinary creative from London, England. She utilises digital photographic techniques to document society, with authentic narratives and inclusive representation at the core of her projects.
Camille’s practice explores themes surrounding the shifting notions of identity and societal belonging, by combining her media background and interest in centering underrepresented voices. Her work focuses on expressing the human experience through a multifaceted and intersectional gaze; to decolonise pre-existing approaches to creativity and unpick the frameworks of ‘normative’ identity narratives within media, design and cultural arts.
The HOME Series (2017 – present) is an ongoing project documenting concepts of sanctuary from within the global African/ Black diaspora, by capturing participants in spaces that they currently inhabit. The project explores shifting notions on identity and social belonging through location. It also investigates freedom of movement, ownership, migration and citizenship in relation to blackness in society.
The project is always in production, seeking stories to capture both locally and globally. Get in contact to take part.
Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO) 
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