OPEN HEARING HOTLINE
12 July–20 September 2025
as part of “groundwork” at Mercer Union
1286 Bloor Street West
Organized under the groundwork program, Mercer Union has invited the working group EMILIA-AMALIA to develop Open Hearing Hotline, a project that extends the legacies of grassroots arts organizing from the 1960s and ’70s with the aim to strengthen collaboration and solidarity across existing coalitions, collectives, and art workers’ unions.
On 2 March 2025, EMILIA-AMALIA organized “Open Hearing: Dreaming in Dark Times,” an open discussion around the future of the Toronto art ecosystem. Based on the structure of a town hall and inspired by the Art Workers Coalition’s “Open Hearing” held in New York in 1969, the event was intended to generate conversation, ideas and solutions for the wide range of problems facing our community right now. Organizing against the genocide in Gaza and recent waves of anti-Palestinian racism have had a chilling effect in the cultural world, including unjust firings, artistic and political censorship, and politically-motivated funding cuts. These ruptures have also laid bare many pre-existing and longstanding problems at the heart of our cultural structures. “Open Hearing: Dreaming in Dark Times” was a forum to discuss the future of our arts sector and what our vision of a viable, just, livable art world looks like. Nearly 40 artists and arts workers spoke at the event, and more than 200 community members were in attendance.
For groundwork, EMILIA-AMALIA will extend the conversations that were initiated at “Open Hearing: Dreaming in Dark Times” through a combination of follow-up community programming, new research into the arts sector in Toronto, and the presentation of the diverse and incisive statements made by participants at the March 2025 event. With the goal of developing a set of concrete calls to action, aligned with the structure of the 1969 event, Open Hearing Hotline evokes the spirit of a community-driven information network, inviting visitors to listen in on a recording of the event, make and distribute pamphlets to increase the reach of the proposals that were shared, and to come together to share tactics for dreaming up more sustainable futures.
— EMILIA-AMALIA