OCAD University has received two of the 41 Knowledge Synthesis Grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to support research on The Arts Transformed, one of the 16 Future Challenge Areas identified through the agency’s Imagining Canada’s Future initiative.
One project, being undertaken by the Cultural Policy Hub at OCAD U, is responding to the urgent need to develop a clear, evidence-based understanding of how precarity is conceptualized, measured and distributed across Canadian non-profit cultural organizations. This is especially pertinent at a time when Canada’s arts and culture sector faces precarity, from financial strain to systemic workforce and labour issues, within the context of digital transformation and the rise of AI. Without proper frameworks or tools to measure precarity, cultural organizations cannot effectively assess their own status and well-being, and funders cannot evaluate the impact of their interventions to mitigate precarity.
The second project, led by Assistant Professor Dr. Fidelia Lam in the Faculty of Arts and Science, is exploring the importance of materiality and the role of third places – shared spaces outside the home and workplace where people gather, build relationships and exchange ideas – in alternative media making. This is especially relevant given the current context of accelerated immersion and reliance on globally interconnected media, technology and information infrastructures and ecosystems that pose challenges to Canada’s digital sovereignty and governance. While artistic and creative communities persist online within those ecosystems, there has been a renewed interest in analog and material modalities of shared media-making and creative practice. The project’s inquiry begins with looking to how artists, activists, and community organizers can use creative community building to resist authoritarianism, exploring Greater China as a case study.
The Knowledge Synthesis Grants support the synthesis of existing research knowledge and help identify knowledge gaps. Funded researchers will produce knowledge synthesis reports and briefs that support the use of evidence in decision-making and the application of best practices and assist in developing future research agendas.
OCAD U RESEARCH PROJECTS
From Data to Action: A Digital-Era Framework for Measuring Organizational Precarity in Canada’s Arts and Culture Sector
The project, which received a grant of $29,970, is being led by Dr. Hamidreza Sheshajavani, policy advisor with the Cultural Policy Hub at OCAD U, supported by Miriam Kramer, executive director, Government and Community Relations and Public Policy at OCAD U.
Canada’s arts and culture sector faces undeniable and multifaceted precarity, from financial strain to systemic workforce and labour issues. Despite the persistence of precarity in the sector, its impacts are hard to quantify due to the absence of appropriate tools to do so – this includes digital-era indicators critical for addressing emerging forms of digital precarity.
Digital transformation and the rise of AI has further complicated the issue, underscoring the urgent need for effective solutions. Without proper frameworks or tools to measure precarity, cultural organizations cannot effectively assess their own status and well-being, and funders cannot evaluate the impact of their interventions to mitigate precarity.
This project addresses the urgent need to develop a clear, evidence-based understanding of how precarity is conceptualized, measured and distributed across Canadian non-profit cultural organizations in the digital era. By producing a quantitative, coherent, and adaptable precarity assessment framework, the project will support more equitable, forward-looking cultural policy, inform funding criteria and streams, strengthen organizational resilience, and help Canada navigate the profound transformations shaping the future of the arts.
The project will synthesize peer-reviewed and grey literature across various disciplines, including cultural economics, arts management, cultural studies, and public administration, to develop a comprehensive quantitative framework for measuring organizational precarity in the digital age among Canadian cultural organizations.
The outcome will be a framework that includes variables, indicators, metrics, thresholds and related measurement methods across four key dimensions of precarity: organizational finances, management and governance, the availability of cultural and administrative spaces, and workforce issues.
The framework will allow organizations to quickly determine whether they are precarious; assess how severe their risk is; identify weaknesses across key dimensions; and track changes over time. For funders, it will offer a streamlined approach to allocate resources where they will have the greatest impact and will provide a shared platform for greater coordination between policymakers, governments, funders, and cultural organizations.
Doing-It-Together: Untangling Global Technological and Media Ecologies through Alternative Media and Creative Community-building in Third Places
The project, which received a grant of $29,974, is being co-led by OCAD U Assistant Professor Dr. Fidelia O. Lam in the Faculty of Arts and Science and Dr. Jessica L.R. Hatrick from the University of Nottingham Ningbo China.
The accelerated immersion and reliance on globally interconnected media, technology and information infrastructures and ecosystems poses imminent challenges to Canada's digital sovereignty and governance. Addressing the encroachments to Canada's digital and data sovereignty is critical, and those living in Canada are currently subject to challenges of surveillance, manipulation and censorship within our media and technology ecosystems. While artistic and creative communities persist online, there has been a renewed interest in analog and material modalities of shared media-making and creative practice (Galarreta, 2025; Shetty, 2025; Lamberink, 2024).
Given the complex entanglements of global technological and media ecologies, the project’s inquiry begins with looking to how artists, activists and community organizers can use creative community-building to resist authoritarianism, exploring Greater China as a case study.
The project focuses on the significance of materiality and the role of third-places – an umbrella term used to refer to places outside the home and workplace and characterized through their "sociability and nondiscursive symbolism" (Oldenburg & Brissett, 1982) – in alternative media making, as shown through the researchers’ orientation around the term “Do-It Together.” This term speaks to the relational and material ethos of shared making and theorizing that is necessary to navigate the interconnected polycrisis of the contemporary moment (Hayes, 2025).
The guiding question of the project is: How have third places used alternative media to foster creative communities, collective solidarities, and strategies for survival and liberation in the face of digital surveillance, censorship and authoritarian rule?
Alongside answering this question, this project hopes to (1) advance transnational connections and communities of artists, activists, scholars and community organizers to understand the possibilities of analogue media-making to address global issues of digital sovereignty; (2) conduct and produce a systematic literature review of the term “Do-It-Together” in English-language literature to understand and contextualize how the term has been conceptualized and used across disciplinary and geographical sites, including the disciplinary and epistemological; and (3) connect the systematic literature review with the findings from the researchers’ grey literature review from Greater China to understand how the values tied to a conceptualization of “Do-It-Together” have been explored outside of a Western context.