October 23-27, 2019
Mansfield, Ontario
Apply here!
Application deadline: August 5, 2019
If you’re a jam alum, apply here!
If you need more time to submit an application, let us know and we will try to accommodate you.
WHAT’S A JAM?
The Jam is not a conference, seminar, or a typical meeting — it is something unique. The Jam is dedicated time in nature, away from the city, to think and feel deeply about social change in our world, in our communities, and in ourselves. Through activities like facilitated dialogues, sharing circles, artistic expression, games, movement, participant-led workshops, outdoor adventure, community play, and lots of free time for spontaneous interactions amongst the participants, we will explore our own experiences, questions, and dynamics together. The Jam is a practice of beloved community for co-liberation.
WHY TORONTO? WHY NOW?
With all that is happening in Toronto, Ontario, and our world, we find it crucial to come together across difference to connect, heal, share our stories, and dream together. We want to celebrate our victories and share what it looks like for each of us to create safe, just, and sustainable lives and communities. Through collective truth-telling, deep listening, and support, we push back against the ‘divide-and-rule’ story often used to justify oppression. We need time to slow down together.
WHY IS IT CALLED A “JAM”?
In music, a jam is a creative, live gathering of musicians who together spontaneously create a new sound, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Similarly, Jams are places where people who care about the world bring together their passions, questions, and unique perspectives. The Jam asks that all the players are present and ready to listen deeply to each other.
WHO ATTENDS A JAM?
Jammers are people who are dedicated to creating change in our communities; people who know the beauty, power, and wisdom of each other, our diverse cultures, and varied communities; people who see the potential of our collective liberation in this vibrant and challenging part of the world. The Jam offers an opportunity for people who use different approaches to change and who have different areas of focus to connect and build stronger networks in our city.
YOU — organizers, artists, entrepreneurs, healers, strategists, public officials, business leaders, dreamers, thinkers, activists, builders, educators, poets, researchers, philanthropists, non-profit leaders, environmentalists, and anyone with a desire to impact social change — are invited to join us for the 5th Toronto Jam!
WHAT QUESTIONS DO WE EXPLORE AT THE JAM?
For the 2019 Toronto Jam, we anticipate exploring and deepening into these questions:
- How do I take care of myself while caring for and being taken care of by community?
- How do I find more balance across the many responsibilities in my life?
- What’s my purpose/calling and how do I live into it more?
- What tools and processes are useful to helping me pause, heal, or centre myself?
- How do we find connections and common ground across our different forms of social change work?
- How can we heal wounds that have been developed and inherited across our social identities?
- How can we create forms of dialogue and conversation that centre learning, love, truth, and transformation together?
- How can we build and sustain our movement infrastructure?
Yours, these, and many more questions are the basis of the Jam. And, by exploring them together through a variety of modalities — circles, small group work, movement, meditation, visioning, the arts, play, time in nature, ceremony, and more — we hope to build a foundation for lasting, transformative change.
WORKING AT THE INTERSECTION OF THE PERSONAL, INTERPERSONAL, AND SYSTEMIC
In the Jam we will address three interconnected levels of transformation. Our aim for gathering is to:
- Rejuvenate (internal/personal) – We aspire to give ourselves space to reflect on our personal stories, learn and unlearn, take off our masks, seek our next growing edge, recharge, and renew. We want to nurture our own spiritual and emotional health in order to fire our activation and work in the world.
- Build solidarity (interpersonal) – We want to make and take time for authentic conversations to emerge, to discover common ground, and to celebrate differences. By taking an honest, loving and transformative look at our conflicts, we seek to move beyond collaboration and allyship towards deep friendships that will sustain us over the long-term.
- Foster collective liberation (systemic) – We aim to connect the dots of what we are each doing and link issues that are not commonly linked, to find new intersection points, and to gain a clearer vision of the whole.
After four solid days, we hope to emerge renewed: bringing back grounded passion, spiritual fortitude, new relationships, and re-imagined solutions for our home communities and projects.
LOCATION AND FOOD
The 5th Toronto Jam will take place at the Mansfield Outdoor Centre, which is 90 minutes northwest of Toronto. Participants will generally sleep in cabins of two people. The accommodations are rustic and cozy. For pictures, you can check out the “Main Lodge & Cabins” on the Mansfield website under “facility rentals”. There will be delicious and nutritious, primarily vegetarian, food. We’ve been told that the site is wheelchair accessible, but please contact us if this is a need of yours.
COST OF THE JAM
The cost of the Jam is a sliding scale of $250 to $750. The approximate cost of four nights of lodging and food is $450 per person, therefore we ask participants who are able to do so to consider this as a minimum contribution in order to ensure we cover our hard costs. Contributions up to $750 help pay for materials, childcare, stipends for organizers and facilitators, and subsidies for other participants.
We never want money to be a barrier, so we will do everything we can to make it work for you to attend. Some partial scholarships and work trades are available. We can also create a monthly payment plan that works for you.
Additional donations above $750 are welcome and help us provide scholarships to support the broad spectrum of participation on which this event thrives. Donations over $750 are tax-deductible.
TRAVEL
Travel costs are the responsibility of the participants, though we will help in arranging carpools from around the city, to the best of our ability.
CHILDREN
We love having children and families at the Jam, and will provide childcare. Please let us know if you want to bring your children and we will work out childcare arrangements with you.
HOW DO I APPLY?
Apply here!
Application Deadline: August 5, 2019
if you need more time to submit an application, let us know and we will try to accommodate.
We aim to let applicants know by the end of August.
If I’m a Jam alumni, can I still apply?
If you are an alumni of a previous Toronto Jam and want to apply to come again, please do!
Use this application form instead.
Please keep in mind that as much as we’d love to have everyone back, we want to make this experience available to as many interested people as possible, which may mean we are unable to accommodate some alums.
QUESTIONS?
We look forward to welcoming you to the JAM. If you have any questions, please write to yestorontojam[at]gmail.com.
WHO’S BEHIND THE TORONTO JAM 2019?
The Toronto Jam is organized and facilitated by a team:
Brigid Tierney
Brigid is a fiery Montrealer turned west coast dreamer turned Toronto transplant. She came to the Jam through her creative facilitation community and found a profound connection and hard to name feeling in the air that has grown louder and more beautiful ever since. She has a Masters in cultural studies and communication, likes to fight the good fight and works on the daily at the intersection of film, community and youth engagement.
Rehana Tejpar
Rehana is a facilitator who loves to co-create the conditions for creativity and collaboration to be harnessed. She is passionate about organizational alignment, participatory leadership and incorporating embodied, arts-based process into her work. She is the founding co-director of bloom consulting, a team of creative facilitators, working to strengthen the creative and collaborative capacity of organizations and communities. She currently facilitates Righting Relations: Adult Education for Social Change, a national network rooted in building bridges of solidarity between Indigenous, immigrant and settler communities on Turtle Island.
Berkha Gupta
Berkha is a transmasculine queer south asian that continues to spend most of their time figuring out what their role is in ‘the movement’ and their ‘communities’. For years they have strived to create safer spaces for racialized queer and trans people – this has included ongoing projects like ‘a colour deep’ – (online) space for queer, trans south asians in the GTA and ‘QTIBIPOC sauga’ – a monthly meetup in Peel. Berkha is also the Executive Director of LGBT YouthLine. In the last year, Berkha’s interest has moved away from just building and organizing (i.e. doing things) to being able to focus on healing, joy, and community (i.e. being present); the Jam has been a formative space for Berkha, something they didn’t even know they were looking for and they are excited to continue to be part of the Jamily.
Dawit Demoz
Dawit is an Eritrean refugee advocate. He has just completed his undergraduate degree in psychology and he is an MA candidate for Development Studies at York University. Dawit has a strong community organizing background and he spent the last six years advocating for the rights of refugees and asylum seekers here in Canada as well as in Israel. He has worked in a number of non-governmental organizations including Amnesty International Israel. He is passionate about human rights and social justice and enjoys working with individuals and organizations that have the same interest.
Jeff Carolin
Jeff is a criminal defense lawyer living in Toronto who focuses on providing top-notch legal representation to people who can’t pay out of pocket. And, when he gets the chance, he loves to sit in circles. Hence the jam. But it’s more than just the circles. For Jeff, exploring theatre of the oppressed and other participatory community organizing traditions and attending jams has been a key part of discovering how he can–in this life, with this body, and with his experiences–engage around complex issues of racism, colonialism, inequality, and other forms of systemic oppression, without this work leading to further division, burnout, and in-fighting among people who are trying to build something new together. Seeking common ground while always acknowledging the importance of difference, starting from a place of openness and caring, and tuning in to the body’s knowledge a little more and the analytical mind a little less, have all been practices that he has continued to hone through jam circles–and are practices that he tries to introduce in all facets of his life. For a more facts and figures perspective: you can check out jeffcarolinlaw.ca.
Karen B. K. Chan
BK is a sex and emotional literacy educator in Toronto. She is dedicated to having conversations that are real, transformative, and kind. In the last few years, she shifted personal priorities from being “good” to being warm, from being right to being more forgiving, and the Jam has played a big part in both. BK works full-time speaking, training, and consulting, and all the time on taking better care of herself.
Francesca Allodi-Ross
Francesca spends her weekdays providing free legal services to low-wage workers in Etobicoke and west Toronto. She loves dancing and yoga and spending time with beloved people. Other times she’s organizing for social change around income inequality and cycling. She is passionate about creating joyful, effective, and sustainable social movements.
Shilpa Jain
Shilpa is currently rooting herself in Oakland/Berkeley, CA, where she serves as the Executive Director of YES!. Prior to taking on this role, Shilpa spent two years as the Education and Outreach Coordinator of Other Worlds and ten years as a learning activist with Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development, based in Udaipur, India, where she served as coordinator of the Swapathgami (Walkouts-Walkons) Network. All of her work seeks to uncover ways for people to free themselves from dominating, soul-crushing institutions and to live in greater alignment with their hearts and deepest values, their local communities, and with nature.
HOW DID THESE JAMS START?
YES! is celebrating its 29th year of service this year. The first Jam was a World Youth Leadership Jam, co-created in 1999, bringing together 30 people from 20 countries. It came out of YES!’s work on youth leadership for nearly a decade, a growing understanding of ‘yes-and’ improv, human potential, Open Space Technology, and the power of co-learning. After several more World Youth Leadership Jams, facilitators began to organize local and regional Jams in their countries. Now teams of Jam alumni organize place-based, sector-based, and identity-based Jams all over the world. In the past four years, Jams have taken place in India, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Morocco, Nova Scotia, Toronto, New York City, California, Colorado, North Carolina, Alabama, Vermont, New Mexico, and more, on themes such as Evolving + Emerging Economies, Arts for Social Change, Healing Our Movement Ecosystem, Law and Social Change, and Transforming Education, and with specific communities like the LGBTQ*/Queer Jam, Nova Scotia Gaels Jam, and Black Diaspora Jam.
YES! is based in California, USA, and each Jam is co-organized by a unique and diverse team of partners. The Toronto Jam grew out a short program in 2012, which then to 3-4 day Jams in 2013, 2014, 2016, and 2018. This is Toronto’s fifth Jam, organized by alumni from previous Jams.
Read more about YES!’s mission, values and approach: http://www.oldsite.yesworld.org/who-we-are/values/
