Our Mission
We provide empathy-based education on consent and 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion.
Our Unique Model
Innovative
Our facilitation style is unique, interactive and arts-based, engaging with all learning styles.
Accessible
Our trainings are adapted to each community’s needs and understandings.
Empathetic
Our learning space is compassionate and judgement-free.
Visionary
Our holistic model works with individuals at key stages: youth, teachers, and employees.
About CANVAS
CANVAS Programs is an Ontario-based charity that provides empathy-based education on consent and 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion. CANVAS envisions a society in which all people are free to live authentically and have the tools to form safe, caring relationships. We believe that high-quality, proactive, arts-inspired education is key to combatting and ultimately ending homophobia, transphobia and sexual violence.
Through creative and compassionate workshop facilitation, participants critically examine harmful norms, learn about the struggles of marginalized groups, and recognize their capacity to affect positive change. Together, we can work towards a more empathetic, equitable and kinder world-view.
Our Team
Our team consists of artists, social entrepreneurs, social workers, teachers, youth workers, and those invested in seeing a world free of homophobia and sexual violence. Each member of our team brings a unique skill set and knowledge-base to our programs.
Why Art?
Art is a powerful tool for dialogue and social change: it encourages empathy through storytelling, engages a variety of learning styles, and recognizes diverse knowledge and lived experience. Arts-based education is captivating, entertaining, and fun!
Participant Spotlight
The Real Me
By Nicole, Participant & Poet in the back talk collective
You have seen the real me
The me that I don’t let people see
The hurt, the sad, the broken me
And because of you, that broken me
is becoming whole again.
Back Talk participants use poetry to build resilience and speak back against sexual violence. By empowering homeless and street-involved women and femmes to learn professional artistic skills, Back Talk proves that artistic expression is a powerful way to reclaim difficult narratives.
Back Talk is generously funded by the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.
CANVAS’ Anti-Racism Committee (ARC)
The Anti-Racism Committee is a group of BIPOC folks and allies who are inspired by the vision of a world without gender-based and sexual violence, homophobia, transphobia and know that an intersectional, anti-racist lens is key to realizing that dream.
CANVAS is committed to an overall anti-oppressive practice and allyship. As such, the organization has tasked the ARC to contribute to this goal in the following ways:
Developing and strengthening CANVAS’s programming and operations through an anti-racist lens
Reviewing organizational literature to ensure that policies and procedures are equitable for BIPOC team members
Strengthening partnerships with community organizations committed to anti-racist work
The ARC will:
Use an intersectional, anti-oppressive lens to analyze and assist with organizational decisions, initiatives, and literature
Coordinate opportunities and provide tools to foster individual and organizational accountability
Lead and create anti-racist Professional Development (PD) opportunities for staff
Land Acknowledgement
We want to honour and express gratitude to the First Nations, Inuit and Métis people of Turtle Island who’s sacred land we are on right now. Today, the land we are standing on is still the home to many of these people. It is our responsibility to remember our history, be aware of how it affects people today, and take care of this land we live and meet on.
CANVAS’ Commitment to Reconciliation
We currently:
Include Indigenous lived experience and voices in many programs.
Offer one staff training annually on Indigenous topics.
Give a Land Acknowledgement at every workshop, and discuss its significance.
Provide paid opportunities for Indigenous guest artists.
We seek to:
Include Indigenous lived experience and voices in all programs.
Ensure all program materials about Indigenous identity are produced by an Indigenous designer.
Partner with an Indigenous-led initiative.