Several people featured in this issue embody these values. One of Canada’s foremost experts on poverty, John Stapleton has been a Metcalf Innovation Fellow since 2006. Over the last decade John has been an essential resource to the community and all levels of government as they grapple with effective poverty reduction strategies. He has also been a prolific author and influential thinker – Metcalf is proud of the nine reports we have published with John. In the long-form Metcalf Interview, John discusses how far he thinks Canada has come over the last fifty years in creating a just society and how far the country still needs to go.
Raised in England and now based in New York City, Richard Evans is the thoughtful and provocative powerhouse behind EmcArts, the arts consultancy which the Foundation has recently engaged to help deliver the Performing Arts Program’s new initiative Staging Change. Having worked with over three hundred cultural institutions across North America and at large organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts, Richard draws on his experience, talking about his profound belief in the transformative power of adaptive change: a process rooted in bringing multiple organizational and community voices together in order to address and find solutions to the challenging questions that beset arts organizations. He also conveys his hopes and ambitions as he gets ready to begin working with members of Toronto’s performing arts community.
In Good Food, Good Jobs, Metcalf Innovation Fellow Tom Zizys takes a look at the quality of work in the food sector. In Ontario, agri-food is big business and food industry occupations account for over eight percent of all jobs. Unfortunately, a high proportion of these jobs are low wage and low quality. Tom sets up the inquiry and poses two questions to five peers who focus on the food movement through a social justice lens. Their responses are illuminating and explore a wide range of perspectives and strategies for improving the quality of food jobs while also addressing the need for food to be accessible and affordable.
Our Environment Program has welcomed an impressive slate of new advisors to all three funding streams and Cycle City has announced its new grantees. The Inclusive Local Economies Program kicked off the second year of its highly subscribed Toronto Sector Skills Academy with a four-day retreat in April.
I hope you enjoy this newsletter and invite your feedback.
— Sandy Houston, President and CEO
To locate the issue of poverty within the control of an individual is a mistake. It’s not the fault of an individual that the only work they can get is part-time, doesn’t pay much, or is provided through the informal economy.
With Staging Change, we hope to support Toronto’s vibrant artistic community and create new ways of doing things of which the rest of the country will take notice.
