Now more than ever…
A new blog for SPARC by Erica May-Wood
Image Description: A collage of photos of diverse groups of people doing art, dancing, standing together.
Now more than ever…
I feel like I use these words alot these days.
Whether writing a grant application about giving voice to ideas of the next generation or talking about the importance of uniting as community to tell our stories and maintain our place.
Now more than ever…
I feel like we need to keep our creative pilot lights on. While we scale back, are patient, ride things out, we also need to keep dreaming, laughing and playing. And there’s something powerful and special about when we do that in community.
I was recently in Australia and had the wonderful opportunity to visit https://backtobacktheatre.com/ for a few hours of their CAMP (their annual weekend of “delightfully ruthless theatre and art making workshops for community members…”). As I wandered from one workshop space to another, I grew a little with each moment of shared conversation, connection and learning. I learned about what one person’s neighbourhood looks like while we drew together and I was surprised how hard (and fun) it is to run backwards as a fish. I also discovered a simple, accessible way to make costumes for all sizes and characters and felt my energy levels rising each time I uttered the phrase “wow, that is so cool.”
There is a special kind of magic that occurs in a space where people gather in community, share ideas, stories and experiences and feel the joy and power of creating something together.
It is essentially simple and exquisitely complex.
It is expansive. comfortable. uncomfortable. frustrating. exhilarating. calming. exhilarating.
While in some ways we are connected with more people than ever before (via social media/online platforms) in many ways our Western culture has siloed the individual away from the community; we reside and work in more compartmentalized spaces. Our communal spaces – public transit, office buildings, gyms - are not necessarily spaces that encourage interaction. We tend to focus on ourselves, our family, our lifetime vs. the future of our communities/the land. An Indigenous colleague once described it as a focus on seven decades [to retirement] vs. the Indigenous practice of focus of seven generations – for our communities and our land.
And the current political climate? Well that just encourages even more separation/division.
These systems and paradigms bolster ego and the individual but have the power to diminish collective strength and ignore the truth that we are intrinsically connected and interdependent.
When we share story, when we tell our stories together, we can’t ‘other’.
When we gather in community, we experience an ecosystem to hold each other up, which creates a net, balances strengths and weaknesses, builds resilience - and power.
I have both witnessed and experienced this in my inter-abled work with the Unique Stories project – a multi-year project that started as a book of lived experience stories of eight neurodivergent artists which became a play showcasing a sold-out workshop production at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto last winter. There were so many wonderful aspects of creating together in this community – including inter-abled conversations about creation, and a remarkable shift in my relationship with the leader of the group; we became creative colleagues, after years of working together in many different roles.
Unique Stories was a project that had its genesis in the pandemic, in virtual community, and became a thriving in-person community who together, created a piece of theatre that audiences called “uplifting, funny, and poignant” and noted “how humbling it was to suddenly recognize limited insights and misconceptions about people living with disabilities.”
This was a powerful process that impacted both artists and audiences.
@uniquestoriestheplay
The isolation of the pandemic created an urgent call: performing and teaching artists were unable to work, communities could not gather, and the world was in crisis. In response, Simon Sharkey
(of https://www.thenecessaryspace.com/) and I gathered a group of ‘artivists’, and co-curated the Conference of the Birds project.
Artists and community members from seven countries, five continents, came together to create 40 hours of collective art captured on video, loosely following the quest in the Sufi poem which tells the story of the assembly of the birds, in a time of existential crisis ( https://www.thenecessaryspace.com/team-4).
As in much of my experience with this work, we learned what we had in common and what was uniquely different. We tapped into the power of story, humanity and connection and as a result the world felt less bleak, less impossible, less fearful somehow. And remarkable art was created.
It can be difficult to put this work into words - (as I would imagine many of you in this SPARC community may find as well) - to quantify and qualify the benefit and impact of creating in community for folks who have not experienced or witnessed this in action.
While I am still very dubious of AI, my Scottish colleague used this to ask about the top 10 reasons for businesses to invest in this kind of community engaged work for positive impact on environment, social and governance pillars…and here’s the list that was provided:
Top 10 Reasons Businesses Should Invest in Inter-Relational, Inter-Generational, Inter-Active, Inter-Connected Approaches to ESG
Humanise the ESG Agenda – Move beyond metrics into meaning, through experiences that embody values in action.
Break Silos – Artistic processes foster deep inter-departmental and inter-generational dialogue.
Enhance Well-being – Creative engagement reduces burnout, supports resilience, and boosts morale.
Foster Innovation – Diverse thinking and emotional intelligence lead to smarter, more sustainable solutions.
Cultural Fluency – Navigate complex global contexts through empathy-driven practices.
Future-Proof Teams – Engage Gen Z to Boomers with practices that invite voice, respect difference, and build cohesion.
Purpose Activation – Help employees feel the company’s mission and values—not just read them on a poster.
Stronger Storytelling – Use creativity to turn ESG commitments into compelling internal and external narratives.
De-risk Culture – Prevent toxic dynamics and disconnection by building emotional literacy and trust.
Embodied Leadership – Develop leaders who are adaptive, aware, and aligned with the company’s social and environmental values.
Hell, yeah.
I think this list could apply to many approaches and situations – not just business. I believe these are amongst the top reasons we do what we do.
It’s why I do what I do.
But when the going gets tough, funding doesn’t seem to materialize, and we feel isolated, it’s easy to forget.
And so, now more than ever…
It’s important that we find the time and the space to play, think creatively, and engage with our peers and community – whether that’s a full-out community-engaged creation project, seeking out events and classes on local community calendars, creating a class or event of our own (even a low key one), or starting a virtual check-in (book club, chat group, stich and bitch, sip and doodle) with a group of peers and/or community members. Not necessarily as projects, or for work – for fun, for connection, to help keep our creative pilot lights on, and be ever ready to ignite for the next adventure that awaits us.
Erica May-Wood is a Theatre Maker, Facilitator and Project Manager/Producer that lives in the village of Colborne, Ontario. https://www.linkedin.com/in/erica-may-wood/
