Co-hosted by Gendai, Xpace Cultural Centre, and OCAD U’s RBC Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers Why DIY when you can Do It Together? is a panel on what it means to form, build, and sustain a collective creative practice. 

This panel features BAM Books, Art, Music Collective, Tea Base and Gendai who are part of the inaugural cohort of Gendai MA MBA (Mastering the Art of Misguided Business Administration). 

Gendai MA MBA is a year-long think tank and workshop series for art collectives to improve capacity-building skills in a co-learning environment. Addressing sector-wide challenges of precarity and isolation, this project creates a network for collectives to resource-share, co-learn, collaborate, and improve workplace sustainability. Gendai MA MBA is supported by Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council.

This event is part of OCAD U’s Cultural Community Expo. 

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BAM – Books Art Music Collective is a youth-led collective aiming to empower equity-seeking young individuals through art and community engagement in both Ontario and New York. 

Tea Base is a curious community arts space tucked away in Tkaronto/Toronto’s Chinatown Centre Mall. We aim to make accessible space for intergenerational activists and artists who support social justice movements in and around Chinatown. Tea Base is a space that develops solidarity across marginalized groups through relationships, joy, and collaboration. 

Throughout its 20-year history, Gendai has supported experimental curatorial and organizational practices. Originally founded as Gendai Gallery, the organization created space for East Asian artists and artists of colour. As the new stewards of Gendai, Marsya Maharani and Petrina Ng are building upon the organization’s legacy of decentering whiteness by investing in the future of BIPOC arts leadership through collective research and practice.

Xpace Cultural Centre is a not-for-profit artist-run centre dedicated to providing emerging and student artists, designers, curators and writers with opportunities to showcase their work. We approach our programming as a form of world-building: providing exhibitions, events, panels and workshops that respond to the direct needs and interests of our communities and membership. Expanding notions of theory and aesthetics, we seek to hold space for thought-provoking and experimental collaborations

OCAD University’s RBC Centre for Emerging Artists & Designers is committed to supporting the early-career advancement of all students and recent alumni at OCAD U. Our team delivers specialized programs and services that connect individuals to meaningful opportunities, communities of practitioners, skill-building resources and facilitated learning experiences.