Last June, we shared an accountability contract with our community. This post was to ensure that we continue expressing our values and strive to create an accessible and adaptable organizational culture people with diverse backgrounds and lived-experiences can feel excited to participate in.

As we said then, there will never be a point where we can say “our anti-racism and anti-oppression work is complete.” We feel it is important to publicly share updates and we invite others who created statements like this last year to as well. This is a continuous process, which needs continuous attention, and this update aims to provide accountability.

Last year, we shared the following three action points and goals, in hopes to move our organization toward a future we saw at that time as being more open and accessible for the Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour in our local and global community. 

As we worked toward these goals over the last year, and with COVID lasting far longer than initially suspected, the foundation of our organization shifted dramatically. With that in mind, we offer the following updates and amendments to ensure we stay accountable to being an anti-racist organization. We welcome your questions, ideas, and call outs. 

HERE’S WHAT WE SAID IN JUNE 2020

1.  We have hired Kevin Sutton, an equity and inclusion consultant at Threshold and founding member of Black Lives Matter Guelph. Kevin will guide our strategy on a continual basis, helping us to evaluate and integrate ongoing accountability measures to remove racial bias and inequitable practices within all arms of The Making-Box.

THE RESULT: 

• With Kevin’s guidance we spent many months clearly defining The Making-Box’s core values. These core values led to us reshaping many parts of our organization. It is our hope that by leading from these values, our organization will be more actively anti-racist in every facet.

• Our goals and success measures are now being vetted through these values. We will continue to work with Kevin through quarterly check-ins to explore areas of learning, unlearning and growth.

HERE’S WHAT WE SAID IN JUNE 2020:

2.  Our founders, leadership team, and staff are mostly white, so we are redesigning roles to reduce power in current hands and give power to new voices. We will create new paid leadership positions for BIPOC staff, producers, instructors and performers by Fall 2020.

THE RESULT:

• Since June 2020, 5 courses and 12 workshops have been led by Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour instructors.

• After a few months of live online comedy shows, we determined these events were not delivering high value in helping us reach new audiences. We moved away from producing comedy events and towards team-building workshops to help fractured-feeling remote work teams foster joy, adaptability and a deeper sense of connection. As such, producer and performer roles no longer exist within our organization. The staff profile of The Making-Box pre-pandemic was 4 full-time and 11 part-time. Currently, we have 3 full-time and 2 part time staff. If and when we’re in a position to bring on new staff, we will resource Kevin to help us hire someone who expands the cultural fabric of our organization.

• This May we pitched an idea to our students: transition the community-spirit surrounding live comedy built by The Making-Box into a brand new co-operative non-profit theatre at 43 Cork St E. This would be an entirely separate entity from The Making-Box (as we will continue serving our online learning and team-building clients). So far, 40+ people have rallied around this idea and the group is assessing feasibility and next steps. We believe this is a stronger step towards achieving the goals above and in the long term will make live comedy in Guelph more sustainable, creative, and diverse. 

• To kickstart this initiative, The Making-Box has also pledged to give $20,000+ of our equipment and furniture to this potential co-operative effort. Staff at The Making-Box has and will continue to consult with this group, but we will not have any decision-making power. This group has begun inviting more people into this discovery process. If you’re curious, you can learn more by emailing guelphcooptheatre@gmail.com.

HERE’S WHAT WE SAID IN JUNE 2020:

3.  We are offering free improv classes, emcee training, marketing/production assistance, and rehearsal space for individuals and organizations to encourage BIPOC voices in our spaces and across our community. For more details reach us by emailing talkbox@themakingbox.ca or calling 1-800-930-9892

THE RESULT: 

• Since June 2020, we ran 50+ free workshops with hundreds of participants from around the world

• We started the Give One program. Every organization who books with us is given the opportunity to give a session to an organization in need. No extra costs. It’s baked into our model. We say “in need” to encapsulate a wide range of organizations including charities, non-profits, and more. This allowed us to support hospices, wildlife conservancies, sexual health centres and social services across Canada. 

• We’ve implemented a “no questions asked” scholarship which completely removes the costs associated with individual paid courses for anyone experiencing financial barriers. This is achieved using a publicly available coupon code within the course description. 

• We partnered with Syobin Blanco to produce a free workshop for the Black Students Association at the University of Guelph.

THE JUNE 2021 UPDATE

That’s where we are at right now. Here’s the next set of measures we want to be accountable to. 

1. We will continue quarterly check-ins with Kevin Sutton to explore areas of learning, unlearning and organizational growth.  

2. We will continue offering free introductory workshops. 

3. We will continue the Give One program for organizations, and Scholarships for individuals.

4. We will routinely guide session participants to an anonymous feedback form to help us acknowledge blindspots in our programming and/or behaviour. 

We aim to do this again in 2022. Thanks for reading. We welcome your questions, ideas, and call outs.