» STRATEGIC PRIORITY 1 FUNDING IS SUSTAINABLE AND ADAPTABLE TO CHANGING NEEDS
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Engaging community to build better programs
Listening to community leads to meaningful support
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his past year, SK Arts, in partnership with SaskCulture, held 10 virtual community consultations (talking circles) with First Nations Elders, Residential School Survivors, artists and Knowledge Keepers, to discuss how arts and culture funding programs could be created to meaningfully support Truth and Reconciliation initiatives in the province. Consultations, which took place Oct. 2021 to Jan. 2022, provided an opportunity to explore the idea of “participatory grantmaking”, which brings community-level insight into funding program design.
Carol Greyeyes, program consultant, SK Arts, was tasked with developing the framework for a Truth and Reconciliation projects grant program for SK Arts. She invited Damon Badger Heit, supervisor, partnerships and inclusion, SaskCulture, to help identify options for this framework. SaskCulture, in its funding renewal process, is also interested in hearing from community and exploring new ways to deliver funding, particularly those that support Indigenous leadership of programs.
SASKCULTURE A YEAR IN REVIEW / 2021-2022
Lottery funding supports a wide range of successful Indigenous programs, such as the John Arcand Fiddle Festival.
“As we were doing some revisions to our Artist in Schools/Artist in Community programs, which SaskCulture and SK Arts partner on, I recognized that there were limited opportunities for an exclusively Indigenous-led project. There was always opportunity for Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers to be a part of a project, but they were usually peripheral, they were not the lead artists, and it was not an Indigenous organization that would typically apply. This new framework was an opportunity to change that," said Greyeyes. The consultations with Indigenous Residential School Survivors, artists and Elders were the result of early discussions. According to Greyeyes, “We recognized the two of us couldn’t just sit in our rooms at our computers and develop a Truth and Reconciliation program. This had to come from the community,” she says. “Instead of launching something right away, we really took our time and did these consultations, which happened on Zoom because of COVID.” Holding consultations online increased the ability to get people from around the province to participate, without the challenges of travel.
