• Focused on team visioning, trust building, and defining the working culture and relationships of the Core Team members and consultants to support productive collaboration across areas of expertise and lived experiences.

• Refined the SHVILIM identity, articulating project values and approaches. LEARN MORE

• Established a web presence for SHVILIM, including recommended external resources for ongoing learning about Jewish arts and culture, the Jewish experience, and antisemitism.

Conducted a study of the Ontario arts sector in Spring 2024 that included:

• Providing a survey for organizations across the arts sector, from grassroots collectives to major institutions 

• Providing a separate questionnaire for Jewish artists, arts professionals, educators, and leaders in the arts (Intentionally labelled “questionnaire” to distinguish it from the survey.)

• Hosting seven in-depth follow-up conversations with leaders of Ontario arts organizations

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The goal of the Arts Sector Review was to build our own understanding of the broad range of knowledge, conditions, and experiences across the province about how organizations and individuals understand and address antisemitism as well as create and present work connected to Jewish themes. It also supported our understanding of what types of resources and supports organizations and individuals would find useful and impactful.

Through this process (and ongoing consultations described below), key themes and trending concerns were identified related to equity and inclusion, addressing antisemitism, and cultural programming. The insights gathered (along with follow up conversations) provided a picture of the landscape of the Ontario arts sector in relation to the Jewish experience and to understanding antisemitism to uncover where further support and resources are needed. This gave shape to a preliminary set of resources, Bridging Worlds.

The survey and questionnaire were designed as internal tools to guide the development of practical, community-informed resources by SHVILIM. The focus was on gathering insights to shape content rather than on producing detailed findings or publishable data. Therefore, SHVILIM is not creating a detailed report on the outcomes of our study.

We are available to meet your organization or group to share more about the arts sector review learnings and to explore together how to apply those insights to your context.

We held three consultative sessions with SHVILIM’s community advisory that represents diverse perspectives, backgrounds, and sectors. These sessions provided an opportunity to share preliminary learnings from the study, gather feedback on our approach, and shape recommendations for future initiatives. Advisors contributed valuable perspectives, grounded in both the outcomes of our study and in their own lived and professional experience within the arts and culture sector.

We built recommendations for the development of community engagements, educational resources, cultural programming, and outreach activities related to exploring the Jewish experience and addressing antisemitism through the arts, in partnership with Ontario’s arts, culture, and heritage entities.

(see below)

We presented high level learnings of the Arts Sector Review to the OAC, and worked with them to determine which topics were of critical importance to explore. It was determined that four concise, introductory resources on understanding antisemitism was the most useful output to lay the groundwork. We recognize that more work is needed in this area, but at this stage of the project, we all saw the opportunity to present foundational ideas through a lens that is specific to the Canadian milieu and to the arts sector. SHVILIM then gathered a team of educators and consultants to draft materials on understanding the Jewish people and anti-Jewish oppression, including developing a framework for speaking about antisemitism through an intersectional lens, specific to the arts sector. In August 2025, we released Bridging Worlds, a set of resources aimed at the Ontario arts sector, with broad-based applicability. 

Engaging the arts is one of the most impactful ways to build bridges between communities. The arts have the potential to bring people together to share the lived realities of culturally-specific communities. Any effective and meaningful approach to addressing antisemitism also emphasizes the diversity of Jewish life through arts and culture. This approach can also make space to explore complexity through creative expression. These recommended initiatives aim to reach wide and diverse audiences across Ontario:

• Intercultural Programs | Presenting diverse Jewish cultural expression alongside culturally-specific work of other communities in the context of performing arts events or exhibitions. This approach fosters mutual understanding, challenges stereotypes, and builds meaningful solidarity across differences through shared artistic experiences.

• Multidisciplinary Jewish art | Showcasing Ontario Jewish artists across disciplines for a wide general public (through one-off performances, multi-event series, festivals, podcasts, etc.)

• Multimedia Exhibition | Creating an exhibition that engages multidisciplinary contemporary art. The exhibition would share narratives about Jewish life in Canada, explore the dynamics of antisemitism, and highlight the eclectic diversity of global Jewish cultural expression.

• Touring Outside the GTA | Developing a programmatic series or individual events, presented collaboratively with arts venues in areas with modest or non-existent Jewish communities.

The path to healing from antisemitism requires both supports focused on Jews in the arts as well as initiatives that cultivate cross-cultural dialogue and bridge building. We recommend the following initiatives aimed at professionals in the arts sector:

General Arts Sector Initiatives

• Tools for Difficult Conversations | Developing tools and supports to meaningfully engage with complex issues. Allies are curious about how to work with charged issues without jeopardizing relationships or collaborations. There is a particular need for tools that support interfacing around the oppressions that impact Jews, Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians.

• Community Consultations | Sharing SHVILIM research findings and approaches in order to generate conversation and community engagement across the arts sector, equity sector, and the Jewish community. This will broaden the SHVILIM team’s understanding of the challenges and opportunities for organizations and groups.

• Fostering Dialogue & Network Building Spaces | Developing opportunities for intercultural dialogue among diverse Jewish voices together with other marginalized groups to support solidarity, bridge-building, and collective healing.

• Creating Contexts for Collaboration | Establishing interfaith/intercultural residencies or fellowships to connect artists and creatives from various groups. The goal is to reduce polarization, increase mutual understanding, and foster creative collaborations. 

• Creating and Articulating Clear Funding Priorities | Our project identified the opportunity to work alongside funders, donors, and foundations to better understand their policies, priorities, and how Jews (and other groups) fit into identity-based funding frameworks. 

• Advocating for Expanding Funding Streams | We see a critical opportunity for increased support from funders, foundations and donors towards:

  • The development and presentation of culturally-specific work highlighting the stories of all historical and contemporary minority communities in Ontario and Canada.

  • Equity-related capacity building: Through our work, we learned that some arts organizations often lack the resources and capacity to develop equity policies or provide equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) training for staff and boards. Funding opportunities for sector-specific EDI resources, training, and workshops are severely limited, despite clear demand. Government support for Holocaust and antisemitism education is often centred on schools, leaving a critical gap in supporting the general population.
    

Initiatives Aimed at Jews in the Arts

• Supports for Jews in the Arts | Offering for a cohort that joins in a multi-week experience together to explore topics on navigating antisemitism and ancestral trauma with wisdom and resilience, as well as cultivating coalition-building strategies in the arts.

• Incubator for Jewish Creatives | Creating a structure for sharing and developing new work, whether in an intensive retreat or a year-long program.

• Artistic “Matchmaking” | Developing a searchable database or consultative platform to connect Ontario arts organizations with Jewish artists, projects, and cultural advisors. This could be particularly helpful for programming related to Jewish experience or Jewish Heritage Month, supporting organizations to broaden the diversity and depth of their offerings.

Bridging Worlds is not a comprehensive resource. There are many aspects of Jewish life where additional information and learning would be beneficial. While resources about Jewish people exist, creating further materials specifically for the arts sector and for a Canadian context would be highly beneficial. Our recommendations include:

• Additional Resources on a Range of Topics | Expanding Bridging Worlds by highlighting multiple vantage points on topics such as: the diversity of Jewish experience, the complex relationship between Jews and whiteness, interconnections between antisemitism and other forms of oppression, and the dynamics of antisemitism as they play out in conversations about Israel/Palestine.

• Arts Sector Case Studies | Creating a guided exploration of composite scenarios, based on actual, anonymized events in the arts with antisemitism-related challenges. The case studies would map out various roles, consider the impacts, and explore alternative approaches for equitable outcomes. The intention is to support improved processes when groups face similar tensions in the future.

• Comprehensive Equity Training | Integrating an understanding of antisemitism into existing anti-oppression resources and / or developing a broad-based equity training for arts organizations. Nineteen percent of arts organizations indicated that they educate broadly on EDI rather than focusing on specific forms of oppression. This presents an opportunity for more comprehensive training to be developed that explores multiple forms of oppression alongside learning about antisemitism and Jewish experiences.