Critical Distance PROGRAMMING Curating the Village: Open Sessions

Curating the Village: Open Sessions is a two-day gathering of artists, curators, and cultural workers exploring caregiving as both a lived experience and a working condition. Spanning rest, performance, workshops, and conversation, the program brings together perspectives on caring for children, parents, elders, neighbours, the dying, and broader communities.

Developed through an ongoing research-creation initiative, Curating the Village approaches care not only as a subject, but as a force that reshapes how artistic and curatorial work is organized, timed, and sustained. Marked by interruption, exhaustion, and relational obligation, caregiving challenges dominant expectations of productivity, availability, and coherence in cultural labour.

While “care” circulates widely in contemporary arts discourse, it is still rarely accommodated structurally within programming or institutional time. Through short offerings, shared food, and collective discussion, Open Sessions considers what shifts when care is approached not simply as a trending theme, but as a method—one that foregrounds interdependence, negotiation, and the conditions that make work possible.

Curated by
Shalon T. Webber-Heffernan

Program Dates
Friday, June 26, 2026: Evening sessions from 6:15 — 9:00 pm
Saturday, June 27, 2026: Full day from 10:00 am — 6:00 pm

Program Schedule
View full program schedule BELOW, or
Download a pdf HERE

Program Contributors
Indu Vashist / Mark Reinhart
Michelle Wilson
44.4 Mother/Artist Collective
Shira Leuchter
Maryna Salagub
Janet Hinkle
Ebru Winegard
Rafah’s Kitchen
Jeneen Frei Njootli
Una Janicijevic
Ragamalika Mohanraj
Tender Again
Zoë Heyn-Jones & Amanda White
Margaret Evans  (Balancing Act)
Heather Frise
Renée Anne Bouffard-Mcmanus
Yanaminah Thullah
Regatu Asefa
Sandra Dusabe
Delilah Edouard Williams
Sasha Singer-Wilson