who we are

 

Art Not Shame is a community-engaged, multidisciplinary arts organization serving youth and adults in Guelph and across Ontario. Founded in 2017, we strive toward a world where belonging is unconditional and creative practice is accessible, and both are recognized as fundamental to well-being, community-building, and possibilities for a just future.

Our work bears witness to the power of community-making through the arts, and art-making through community, to not only envision but to enact the more just futures to which we are striving. With a focus on speaking back to systemic forces that perpetuate cycles of shame and the undermining of self-worth (including racism, white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism, and other intersecting forms of oppression), we seek to shape community by intentionally building supportive and transformative social spaces.

We are committed to:

  • equity-seeking spaces and practices

  • honouring complex histories and relationships to trauma, loss, privilege, and oppression

  • the necessity of creative, supportive communities to our individual and collective well-being

  • offering welcome, without the need for apology, fixing, or saving

 
“... art-based community making [is] a form of democratic interaction that enacts the just social relations that social movements often only envision.”
— George Lipsitz

our roots

JAMES PEEK MEMORIAL GOLF CLASSIC

Art Not Shame originated from a single-story of sibling suicide loss, when at the age of 15, Co-Founder and Executive Director Michelle Peek lost her brother James to suicide, initiating profound questions about what it means to belong, and what we need to be well.That same year, The James Peek Memorial Golf Classic launched and ran for 17 years in memory of Michelle's brother, run by her family and dear friends, and raising over $500,000 for local mental health initiatives in York Region.

When the annual tournament came to a close, Art Not Shame was born. As a concept, "art not shame" sprouted from the idea that creativity (the birthright we all possess to create from our unique differences), might be an antidote to shame (the messages of not-enoughness that are internalized at the individual level and reinforced at the cultural and systemic levels). This, in combination with many years experiencing the formal mental health system and observing the need for non-clinical, creative, and equity-minded approaches to well-being, grief, and loss, and a deepening belief in the power of community and/through the arts, led Michelle to the founding of Art Not Shame in 2017 in conversation with Board members Liz Jackson and Jamie Ashforth.

In wanting to create a space of belonging where everyone could thrive, as well as a space that unequivocally celebrates and removes barriers to accessing our creativity, Art Not Shame was created, and has necessarily grown to be deeply rooted in principles of equity and the celebration of diverse human experience.

To learn more about the James Peek Memorial Golf Classic, check out the TSN produced documentary "Talk To Me: The Story of James Patrick Peek:"