Our mission is to amplify the power of the arts to build community, deepen access to creativity, increase well-being, and create the conditions for inner and outer change.
Art Not Shame is a community-engaged, multidisciplinary arts organization serving youth and adults in Guelph and across Ontario. Founded in 2017, we strive toward a world where belonging is unconditional and creative practice is accessible, and both are recognized as fundamental to well-being, community-building, and possibilities for a just future.
Our work bears witness to the power of community-making through the arts, and art-making through community, to not only envision but to enact the more just futures to which we are striving. With a focus on speaking back to systemic forces that perpetuate cycles of shame and the undermining of self-worth (including racism, white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism, and other intersecting forms of oppression), we seek to shape community by intentionally building supportive and transformative social spaces.
We are committed to:
equity-seeking spaces and practices
honouring complex histories and relationships to trauma, loss, privilege, and oppression
the necessity of creative, supportive communities to our individual and collective well-being
offering welcome, without the need for apology, fixing, or saving
Our Deep Purpose
Creativity
To support participants in expressing their creative voice, with the deeply held belief that everyone is uniquely creative.
Community
To engage in community-making through the arts. The arts give us greater access to ourselves and to each other.
Well-being
To recognize that creativity and a sense of belonging are part of what makes us well.
Social Justice
To challenge systemic sources of shame as barriers to learning, self-acceptance and community-building, with care and accountability. And to use the arts to learn and unlearn together so we can work toward the well-being of all.
TOWARD brave space
We create spaces for the creativity, stories, and voices of youth and adults in our communities through equity-seeking and community-building multidisciplinary art-based engagement. Opportunities for connection, a sense of belonging and purpose are all protective measures in maintaining mental health. Our approach is committed to social and racial equity, as we believe we cannot build communities of care and creative expression without actively working to make those spaces accessible and equitable for all. We take an anti-oppressive approach to this work, and we invite participants, leaders, and community members into our learning and unlearning about how we can actively work against stigma and discrimination of all kinds (including, but not limited to: ableism, racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, transphobia). We believe that each of us belongs only when we all belong, and that building community through art is an incredible way to mirror to the world a microcosm of what community care and accountability can look like. This is what brave space means to us.
Our Approach
Our Principles
we are all creative
we are all exactly who we need to be, and we don’t all have access to what we need
we need to unlearn that we are not enough
we can learn to hold ourselves, our stories, and each other
together we can transform systemic injustice into the worlds we envision
Acknowledging Tensions
we know that it takes constant love, work, and accountability to create safe(r) and more accessible, equitable spaces AND we do not have all the answers AND we will keep working with this uncertainty
we know that no one needs to be fixed or saved by us AND we can use our advantage and resources to be part of change-making
we are always learning AND we will make mistakes AND we will work to make it right
we are artists and educators AND we are not therapy AND we want healing to happen for all
Our programming model is at the intersection of arts, community, well-being and social justice. Our community-facing programming is offered free-of-charge or pay-what-you-can (PWYC), and focuses on the bravery and healing of creative process, rather than the outcome of a final product. Access is prioritized for BIPOC, LGBTQ2I+ individuals, people struggling with mental health and/or addictions, and/or people with visible and invisible disabilities.
Programs
Art for Community Care
Projects
Capacity-Building
Our free multi-arts workshop series explore issues of local relevance and build capacities for community care and healing through creative arts practice. Risk, experimentation, and skill-building foster voice, connection, and inclusion for both individual and community benefit.
As the need for care-mongering and mutual aid networks became more prevalent through the COVID-19 pandemic, we channeled the power of creative practice to support neighbourhood well-being. Some of our artistic supports have included:
Mask-making, distribution and community sewing lessons by Art Not Shame artist Alisa McRonald
The creation and distribution of free art-activity booklets for people in isolation with Otherwise Studios
Our community-engaged arts projects are responsive to emergent community needs, developed in partnership with like-minded local organizations, and delivered by Art Not Shame artist-facilitators. Our projects include The Mural Project: Art in Hard Times, Landscapes of Community: The Grove Mural Project, and Art in a Just Recovery.
We provide a variety of training and mentorship opportunities, as well as fee-for-service offerings:
Training: Pay-what-you-can training for facilitators, educators and artists in arts-based, trauma-informed and anti-oppressive creative facilitation methods.
Mentorship: Support to emerging artists/arts leaders, to develop and enhance facilitation and administrative skills, building local capacity.
Fee-For-Service: Arts workshops, facilitation, facility rentals, consultation, and program design, drawing on ANS best-practices; fees supplement community-facing programming costs.
Meet Our Team
ORGANIZING & COORDINATING
Michelle Peek
Executive Director
Maeve Hind
Programming Lead
Kavya Yoganathan
Artistic Programmer
Kira Alexanian
Artistic Programmer
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Liz Jackson, Board Co-Chair
Norma Mendoza, Board Co-Chair
Carmen Chui, Vice-Chair and Secretary
Ruth vanLoon, Board Member
Our Roots
JAMES PEEK MEMORIAL GOLF CLASSIC
Art Not Shame originated from a single-story of sibling suicide loss, when at the age of 15, Co-Founder and Executive Director Michelle Peek lost her brother James to suicide, initiating profound questions about what it means to belong, and what we need to be well.That same year, The James Peek Memorial Golf Classic launched and ran for 17 years in memory of Michelle's brother, run by her family and dear friends, and raising over $500,000 for local mental health initiatives in York Region.
When the annual tournament came to a close, Art Not Shame was born. As a concept, "art not shame" sprouted from the idea that creativity (the birthright we all possess to create from our unique differences), might be an antidote to shame (the messages of not-enoughness that are internalized at the individual level and reinforced at the cultural and systemic levels). This, in combination with many years experiencing the formal mental health system and observing the need for non-clinical, creative, and equity-minded approaches to well-being, grief, and loss, and a deepening belief in the power of community and/through the arts, led Michelle to the founding of Art Not Shame in 2017 in conversation with Board members Liz Jackson and Jamie Ashforth.
In wanting to create a space of belonging where everyone could thrive, as well as a space that unequivocally celebrates and removes barriers to accessing our creativity, Art Not Shame was created, and has necessarily grown to be deeply rooted in principles of equity and the celebration of diverse human experience.
To learn more about the James Peek Memorial Golf Classic, check out the TSN produced documentary "Talk To Me: The Story of James Patrick Peek:"