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MayWorks Keeps Growing
Every year around this time advertising for Mayworks begins — but you won’t likely see any sign of it on billboards, or even in newspapers. That’s because Mayworks is a low-budget arts festival that depends mostly on word of mouth, notices to unions and flyers on telephone poles to bring out audiences. Each year the crowd gets bigger, as does the program, which is all about getting artists and workers together to celebrate.
Twenty years ago you would have had to be in Toronto to catch a show. Now, the festival takes place in several Canadian cities during the month of May (under the name of Mayweek in some places). Each is organized by a small group of union, community and artist activists who are passionate about drawing attention to the cause of social justice through music, visual art, spoken word, poetry, theatre and other cultural acts.
“The idea of having a festival of cultural events to celebrate working people was inspired more than twenty years ago by a similar festival in Glasgow, Scotland, called Mayfest,” explains Toronto Mayworks coordinator Florencia Berinstein. “Catherine Macleod, a union activist and writer, went to check it out. She came back excited and suggested to the Toronto Labour Council’s media-and-arts subcommittee that it do the same here. A few years later, Mayworks set up as an organization in its own right, and we’ve been expanding since.”
Toronto Mayworks is the largest festival, with an annual budget of $115,000, a board of directors, two permanent, part-time employees and a small but strong contingent workforce of five. Mayworks festivals in Winnipeg and Edmonton are able to raise enough money to pay someone a few months a year to coordinate their events. The festivals in Moncton, Montreal, Ottawa, Hamilton, Saskatoon, Calgary, Vancouver and Vancouver Island are organized strictly on volunteer labour, often in partnership with other community cultural organizations.
Each year Mayworks produces an impressive, if eclectic, lineup of concerts, theatre shows, film screenings, art exhibits and occasional educational workshops on topics ranging from “how to write protest songs” to “exploring art as community, not commodity.”
The point of it all is to make social change by touching people’s hearts as well their minds, and have fun doing it. Mayworks also gives visibility and concrete financial support to artists, many of whom work for little pay under difficult circumstances.
“I really appreciate how Mayworks recognizes artists as real workers,” says Chris White, a musician who joined the Ottawa committee a few years ago. “I recall how one of the visual artists in the festival a few years ago spoke so movingly about her health being damaged by the toxins in the materials she was using. You wouldn’t likely have heard that kind of thing anywhere else.”
This year, Mayworks in Toronto, Edmonton and Winnipeg are collaborating on a three-city tour of young, award-winning poets who were commissioned to write on the theme of work.
This project is supported by a Canada Council for the Arts grant, and was conceived and arranged through the national Mayworks coordinating committee, comprised of local festival organizers who communicate by teleconference calls convened by the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC).
“This kind of collaboration between the different local groups is really important to us,” says Glen Michalchuk, chair of the Winnipeg Mayworks festival. “We’re hoping to find more ways to share resources and artists next year.”
Raising money is a never-ending chore for Mayworks organizers. Only groups legally incorporated can apply for dwindling government funds. Most of the revenue comes from union donations in cash or services, like printing, graphic design and postage. Arts and culture are not a priority for most unions, although an increasing number are trying to get their message out in creative ways.
Toronto Mayworks’ year-round operation generates revenue by helping unions and other organizations with arts-and-culture projects, and Berinstein reports that she is contacted for help more frequently and by more unions.
At the last CLC conference of union educators, a special evening cabaret was organized to demonstrate and explore ways of using music, theatre, poetry, dance and visual art to get the labour movement’s messages out to new and diverse audiences. Still, neither Berinstein nor White think that arts and culture are recognized by many unions to be part of their mainstream work.
“I think often it is because of the work and passion of one or two people in a union that a lot of this creative stuff happens. It would be nice to be able to depend on it still happening after those people leave,” says Berinstein.
Chris White points out that a big challenge for Mayworks is how busy union activists are. White, who also serves as artistic director for the Ottawa Folk Festival, knows what it takes to organize a well-attended festival. “It amazes me what Mayworks has achieved, but it would really help if we had more people who could focus more completely on the project. Imagine what could be done if the work was seen as important enough to dedicate full-time staff.”
At the same time, working in the margins has advantages. Almost all the Mayworks committees have organized themselves as independent groups, not as committees of labour councils. They recruit from the union rank and file and from the community, and they can organize their artistic program in any way they want. Some Mayworks organizers worry privately that full integration of arts-and-culture work into regular union structures could compromise its diversity and curtail the involvement of artists, non-union workers and the broader community.
As one committee member puts it, “the great thing about Mayworks is that it creates space for all kinds of people to get involved, and it gets messages out in ways that connect differently. We need unions to see and foster that potential without wanting to control it too much. It’s a hard balancing act for some. So far, unions are doing pretty well, but we need a lot more support.”
Despite a few setbacks (at least one local group is only just pulling out of a financial deficit), Mayworks continues to grow and expand. That’s a good thing, says Don Monet, a visual artist and owner of CUBE gallery in Ottawa. “What I like about Mayworks is it helps unions recognize the value in having artists help to tell our stories. In some cases it also helps artists break through stereotypes of labour and celebrate it for what it is. More than ever, we need a politicized art that reminds us about solidarity — in the past and for the future.” This article, written by Morna Ballantyne, appears in the May/June 2008 issue of Canadian Dimension.
Matthew Brett is the Canadian Dimension weblog manager. The views expressed on this blog do not necessarily represent his own. Read more by Matthew Brett.
