Vision / Mandate

Common Weal Community Arts is a provincial arts organization that links professional artists with communities to promote cultural identity and social justice through collaboration and creative expression. Common Weal links artists and communities to animate long-term positive and social change. 

We strive to inspire ideas for social change through art. By linking professional artists with communities to engage in collaborative art projects, we empower people - and their communities - to tell their stories in their own voices.

Common Weal Community Arts facilitates the production of participatory art projects, based on creating partnerships between communities and artists, through a philosophy of inclusion and cooperation, and in order to create opportunities and choices for individuals and communities.  This is achieved through our values and guiding principles:

-Empowerment and creating opportunities for empowerment

-Community Engagement

-Creativity and flexibility

-Integrity and ethics

-Social justice

-Revolutionary practices and making a difference

-Art of high artistic merit and socially-engaged aesthetics

-Accountability

Geography

Common Weal is a Saskatchewan based organization, with offices in both Regina (south) and Prince Albert (north).  It is our mandate to serve a variety of communities province-wide who are underserved or do not presently access mainstream arts programming or often community or public life in general due to both real and perceived (self recognized) barriers of geography, economics, social class and culture.  These communities identify themselves by request of programming and in response to active Common Weal outreach initiatives.  

Common Weal’s programming has spanned the north, rural communities, and urban centres.  Historically, projects have worked with families, people in poverty, reserve and remote communities, new immigrants, inner city youth, people with addictions, the elderly, women and children in transition, people with mental health issues, community health centres, inmates, the queer community, and many others. We are careful to protect and support their needs, voices and images of our community participants and the content of their work. As an emerging national leader in the practice of artist and community collaboration, we are now starting to respond to national and international interest in project development, dissemination and advisory services.

Outreach

Our mandate covers programming developed in communities across Saskatchewan, groups who are generally outside of the mainstream arts community for social, economic and cultural reasons, these groups are under-served and often isolated from public or community participation.  Common Weal is a “needs based” organization, therefore we develop programming in response to the community’s needs.  Because of this, our philosophy and values are of inclusion and flexibility.  We are fluid enough to respond to the changing needs and demographics of the variety of communities with which we work.  


The media and public have traditionally marginalized and misrepresented many of the communities in which we work.  We encourage commentators to speak to their own issues and life situations to help promote their own voices.  The content of our work/ productions is at times controversial and challenging for the mainstream public, however we offer access to the public through public forums (i.e. panels, forums, etc.) to promote understanding.

Our project-based activity reflects the needs and development of local communities and partner organizations. Future programming is based on developments coming out of the Artistic Team’s strategic outreach initiatives. Our current outreach initiatives are focused especially on developing programs in rural, First Nations and northern communities. Partnership development will also continue in urban centres.