Photo courtesy of Ryerson University.

Kenneth Moffatt is the 2018 Jack Layton Chair of Social Justice. That sounds fancy, and it is. Appointed across the Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Community Services, the Chair emphasizes the causes of the late NDP leader, and works “to effect progressive social change.” But to many Torontonians, especially those of us in the queer arts worlds, Moffatt is simply Kenny, the Ryerson University social work professor who curates and contributes to art exhibitions: shows (to list a few) about troublesome masculinities, punk rock graphics, the unreliability of institutions, fatherhood, and bears-and-moose Canadiana (deeply queered Canadiana). And by “curate,” I mean he actually hangs the work himself and brings a box of wine for the opening. When Moffatt finds himself in an ivory tower, he burns it down.

As the Layton Chair’s first artist-curator, Moffatt has given himself a challenging task. He plans to support artistic endeavours that highlight the lives and struggles of marginalized peoples. So far, so sociologically/Community Art standard. Except, Moffatt wants the works to be both about and—here’s the important part—driven by the subjects. As he told me recently, “I’m tired of going to social work art shows where the people actually in the photos or who made the work are invisible. Curators, people like me, we get plenty of air time.”

His first project was a sponsored screening of Hugh Gibson’s documentary The Stairs, a film about addiction harm-reduction strategies and how they are applied in marginalized communities. The talk after the screening was lead by the people portrayed, not outside experts. That’s Moffatt in a nutshell.

This Magazine spoke to Moffatt about his new role and his plans for it.

How did you become the Layton Chair, and what did you understand about it before you took the position? 

I am thrilled to be in this position! I highly respect the two previous chairs for their sharp social critique and interest in supporting others’ voices. I understood the position to be aspirational in nature—that is, to encourage students in social justice to re-imagine the interface between community and university. And of course, the Chair recognizes the legacy of Jack Layton, who taught politics at Ryerson and was a very dynamic, engaged educator.

Your focus so far has been to let people who are involved with/clients of social work to speak for themselves. Isn’t it weird that we’ve come to the point where having actual clients speak is considered unusual?

This is still very much a struggle. In the stranglehold of neoliberalism, the voice of service users is obscured. There is a move in social work to [become akin to] managerial duties, thus leading to “outcome measures” and data collection. There is a push to technologize measurements of a person’s worth, which leads to reductive measuring of the service user’s life. More than ever, we need to figure out how to free up and hear service-users voices.

You have been involved with projects that entwine art and social justice work/social work for years. What have you learned from these projects, and how will that learning inform what you do with the Layton Chair?

I’ve learned there is a lot of intelligent and interesting art made in community and in non-profit, and, at times, elusive spaces. You need to reach out, search for space that exists without a profit motive. Often people are not noticed or are silenced because of class, race, gender sexuality and ability. Avoid always looking for experts or “big names,” because, honestly, that can be stultifying.

Contemporary art is notorious for being disconnected from contemporary problems, issues, society, etc. But Community Art can sometimes feel condescending and simplistic. How can people interested in both the arts and helping others bridge this gap?

Academics and people tied to big institutions get caught up at times in ontological loops proving their worth to each other. Contemporary art is at its best when it ruptures disconnected abstract thought and politics. Rather than be preoccupied with innovation and entrepreneurship, guiding principles [in art] could be literacy, listening, humility, and confidence in the local. Mix it up. Rather than merely facilitate voice, let it queer your perceptions.

CORRECTION (03/21/2018): A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Moffatt was a professor of sociology, not social work. This regrets the error.

This article has also been updated to provide more detail into the role of Jack Layton Chair at Ryerson.

Illustration by Jacqueline Li

WHEN ILANA LABOW was getting her hands dirty planting baby greens and carrots in a friend’s backyard in 2009, she never envisioned that it would lead her to start a non-profit organization. “It was accidental. I’m not going to lie,” says Labow, the 32-year-old co-founder and director of Fresh Roots. “It was a lot of twists and turns and serendipity.” Based in Vancouver, Fresh Roots works with locals and schools on community gardens and educational programs to encourage healthy eating, ecological stewardship, and community building. Its mandate, “good food for all,” is telling of the work Labow does to fight for food accessibility and education.

Labow was raised in a suburb just outside Chicago in a “strong, Zionist Jewish household.” At 19, she travelled to Israel to gain further understanding of Judaism. One day while hitchhiking there, someone told her about Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, an Israeli multinational peace institute that focuses on environmental leadership and research in the Middle East. A year later, in 2002, she enrolled and learned how to use sustainable agriculture methods as a way of building both peace projects and community. It inspired her to think in new ways. “My mom was an immigrant and my parents were building a business,” she says. “We had access to food and it wasn’t a priority.”

Later, during her studies at University of British Columbia’s global resource systems program, Labow interned with Growing Power in the U.S., where she “learned to work with people who used farming as a tool around justice and community building, creating access to healthy, safe, and affordable food.” For Labow, good food is more than just for eating; it’s key to education. She believes it can create community and work opportunities, provide access to healthy food, and help a new generation grow up with food literacy skills.

That’s all why, when her friend and Fresh Roots co-founder Gray Oron wanted to create a backyard full of vegetables to sell in East Vancouver, he called Labow. What started with one backyard soon grew to eight in 2010. With business picking up and with the backing of UBC, Labow and Oron soon hired their first interns.

“Then things started happening all at once,” says Labow. One of their garden backyards shared a fence with a local elementary school, and one day the curious principal approached Labow and asked if she wanted to move the garden to the school’s abandoned, bigger one. An experimental project, it allowed Labow’s team to collaborate with other environmental and food non-profits in the area, as well as to train teachers to teach outside in the garden. With this training, teachers then started taking their students outside; science class became a firsthand lesson in how composting workst. In social studies class, teachers could use the garden to discuss society’s green revolution, or what it means to grow food on Coast Salish territories.

Soon, the school’s success inspired a biology teacher who invited Labow to farm with her high school. Labow was intrigued, but wondered if it could be done well. How would expansion work? How much would it cost? Back then, in 2010, there were no examples of similar projects in Canada. The growing popularity pushed Labow and her colleagues to officially become a non-profit organization and to sign a licensing agreement with the Vancouver School Board, allowing it to legally farm at the school. By 2013, Fresh Roots had struck up partnerships with two secondary schools, David Thompson and Vancouver Technical. “As a team, what we really believed in the most was good, healthy food for all,” says Labow. “We came to that place where we realized education was more important than the farming and that the farming would be the pathway for educational opportunities and social justice work for the good food movement in the West Coast.”

Dubbed the Schoolyard Market Gardens, the Fresh Roots gardens provide grounds for commercially productive educative farms that both teachers and the community can use. Labow is a strong believer of the “train the trainer” model and she spearheads workshops for teachers in collaboration with other local organizations. In turn, teachers learn how to physically plant crops and connect their curriculum to the garden so they can teach outside in fresh air. There are programs for community members, too. Fresh Roots assists youth workers, social workers, and neighbourhood house programmers with integrating garden spaces and growing food into their programs. Community members who want to hone their urban farming skills can attend workshops like Making Kimchi Together, Backyard and Schoolyard Garden Irrigation, Garden Planning and Design, among others.

Over the past five years, Labow says more than 400 teachers from Vancouver have attended Fresh Roots’s professional development days, where they learn how to connect material they’re teaching from the curriculum to the gardens. At David Thompson S.S, students in the culinary arts program prepare food from the garden to serve in the cafeteria—all part of an initiative to connect students to where their food comes from.
The gardens bring the community together. In addition to student volunteers, Labow says many neighbourhood locals and elderly folk also come out to the gardens. In the past year alone, 1,300 volunteer hours were logged. Those in the community who don’t physically lend a hand subscribe to the organization’s Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) salad boxes. “It’s another way people in the city have an opportunity to communicate with their neighbours,” she says, “and take part in something that is bigger than themselves.”

When Labow isn’t out in the garden—or winning a Vancouver Award of Excellence with Fresh Roots—she’s giving talks in schools surrounding the good food movement, and the importance of food literacy and security. “As urbanites, every consumer choice we make has a local and global impact,” says Labow. “What I’m learning is that the Schoolyard Market Gardens have become a place that reminds people of all their daily consumptive choices, and not just around food.”

Come help us celebrate the launch of our first ever Social Justice All-Stars issue!

With this issue, we turn our focus to 30 totally awesome Canadians who are working to make the world a better place. From fighting for feminism, LGBTQ rights, and better mental health services to fighting against racism, discrimination, and harmful stereotypes, these social justice warriors lift our spirits and give us sunshiney hope for the future.

To help kick-off the issue, we’re hosting “This is Not a Ted Talk”. You’ll hear from three of our social justice all-stars: Sheila Sampath, Farrah Khan, and Nayani Thiyagarajah. Each woman will tell you more about their social justice work and, we’re sure, inspire you just like they inspired us!

WHERE: The Supermarket, 268 Augusta Avenue, Toronto, Ont.
WHEN: January 28, 2015. Doors open at 7:30 p.m., “This is Not a Ted Talk” speakers take the stage at 8 p.m.
COST: $5 at the door, which includes a copy of our Jan/Feb 2015 Social Justice All-Stars Issue

Photo by Benoit Rochon

Do you know an all-star Canadian working for social justice action? Our upcoming issue will feature Canadians from across the country who are working to make Canada a better, more progressive place. We’re focusing on issues of: diversity and multiculturalism, disability and LGBTQ rights, mental health, women’s rights, youth, poverty and income disparities, housing—and so much more. If you know anyone doing amazing stuff, email Lauren McKeon at editor@thismagazine.ca, or send us a tweet!

Catalyst carries on a rich heritage in popular education—one that almost vanished when many great popular-education organizations disappeared (or were disappeared by funders).

I have a soft spot for popular education. Instead of relying on “experts” to tell us what to think, popular education draws on everyone’s expertise to create critical analysis and programs for action.

As far as I know, Catalyst is the only place in English-speaking Canada devoted to using popular education as a vehicle to take the smarts of social justice groups and weave their insight and know-how into vibrant political movements. When you go into a Catalyst Centre teaching event, you learn from others while others learn from you. Everyone’s preconceptions get shaken up. And that shaking up unleashes new possibilities for action.

Take the provincial anti-poverty project that Catalyst assisted with recently. I’ve been to a lot of dry meetings with talking heads discussing poverty. Sometimes a person actually living in poverty will even be invited to say a few words. But Catalyst’s approach is different. It creates a platform to encourage folks living in poverty to understand themselves as a political force. By tapping into our collective expertise, we are poised to build the movements that fight for change. Catalyst generates those glorious political moments when we actually experience the potential that solidarity has to move ourselves and the world.

Another thing I love about Catalyst is that it pays serious attention to activist burn-out. Too many seasoned activists exhaust themselves over divisive tensions amongst social justice movements. To be sustainable for the long haul, social justice activists need to develop better skills to help navigate the tough spots. Catalyst has some great tools that help us transcend difficult interpersonal dynamics and keep activists focused on what strengthens our movements.

Perhaps most importantly, everyone has a lot of fun when Catalyst does its magic. Social justice work should also be about having a good time. Catalyst keeps my eyes on the prize, but I always come out of a Catalyst event with a smile on my face.

You can contact Catalyst to build an event or a curriculum so that your group can go further to build movements around any social justice issue you care about. You can also attend its activist school, hang out with like-minded folks, and get a hand with your own approach to inclusive movement building. Catalyst also has a charitable organization that funnels donations into helping groups that don’t have the resources to commission their own popular education activities.