In Episode 1, Mentorship in Motion show creators, and two of the Grounded Futures co-founders, Jamie-Leigh Gonzales and Melissa Sharp invite their own technical mentors — Ki Wight and Helena Krobath — into a conversation about how they have been transforming the media arts industry. Together, they all trace their own roots in the industry, and bring together dreams of what the future of a more accessible media arts industry could look like. Each episode of Season 1 will include an introduction with the Mentorship in Motion production team to allow a little insight to the mentorship relationships happening behind the scenes on the production of this show.

Show Website | Full Transcript

[Short clip of ukulele notes from theme music: “Foot Through the Door'' by Nadya Geta. Gentle acoustic ukulele]

Jamie-Leigh 0:07

Mentorship in Motion is a Grounded Futures podcast series that delves into the relationships between mentors and mentees.

[ukulele notes from theme music]

Jamie-Leigh 0:21

Through storytelling and conversation, co hosts Melissa Sharp and Jamie-Leigh Gonzales and their guests will explore the dynamics of mentorship.

[Theme music with lyrics: “I’ve got my foot through the door'' x3]

Melissa 0:56

This show is created on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples and across the Salish Sea on Lekwungen territory. Mentorship in Motion is made with production support and guest curation from Grounded Futures peer mentees Rebecca Peng and Nadya Geta.

Jamie-Leigh 1:12

I'm Jamie-Leigh Gonzales.

Melissa 1:14

And I'm Melissa Sharp. In this series, we're exploring how folks of colour, women, and gender nonconforming folks use mentorship relationships to break into their fields.

Jamie-Leigh 1:24

As an alternative to traditional training, mentorship has the potential to break open fields that have historically been dominated by white cis men.

Melissa 1:32

In industries that demand the voices from below carve out their own spaces in order to create, compete, or even just to be heard. We're looking at how relationships, mentorships, or friendtorships dismantle barriers to these industries.

Jamie-Leigh 1:46

For our first episode, we’re taking up a conversation that is really close to home for our whole Grounded Futures crew, and it’s also what brought us all together to work on this show. Today, we’re talking about mentorship and technical skills, particularly in filmmaking and sound art.

Melissa 2:00

We have two special interviews to share with you, with folks who we hold to be important mentors in our own technical journeys, Ki Wight and Helena Krobath. But first, we want to introduce you to our Mentorship in Motion production team, as we talk through our own relationships to mentorship, hard skills, and making audio works together.

Jamie-Leigh 2:18

Thank you so much for tuning into our show. We’re excited to share these stories with you as we delve into how mentorship lifts us up in different aspects of work and life.

[ukulele notes from theme music]

Melissa 2:27

All right, so now we're going to give you an introduction to our Mentorship in Motion production team, which consists of myself, Melissa, my co-host, Jamie-Leigh, and our very wonderful team members, Rebecca and Nadya.

Nadya 2:50

Hi, I'm Nadya and I'm a Gemini.

Rebecca 2:55

Hi, I'm Rebecca and I'm an Aries. First sign, best sign.

[laughter]

Jamie-Leigh 3:03

Nailed it. Okay.

Melissa 3:05

So what is the relationship between skill-sharing, mentorship, and formal training?

Jamie-Leigh 3:12

I feel like at some point, when we're talking about getting information and skills to folks who maybe can't easily access them, there has to kind of start with somebody who gets formal training. And then they have to want to bring it to community. I guess I'm thinking in like technical terms, I guess you could technically like buy a bunch of equipment and just fuck around till you figure it out. But it helps to have somebody who has an understanding of the industry, and then realize that the industry is kind of fucked up. And there are like barriers to it. And then they want to take those skills and skill- share. And then I find that mentorship is when it's really relationship-based. And it can be done in those industry spaces or institutional spaces as well. So like mentorship is kind of the thread that carries it through, maybe.

Melissa 4:03

Yeah, I feel like you just described yourself, Jamie.

[laughter]

Nadya 4:09

You in a nutshell.

Jamie-Leigh 4:12

I mean, maybe in a technical space, but that's not me in all learning spaces.

Nadya 4:18

I feel like mentorship also encompasses the differences in how people actually learn. Whereas when you're getting those hard skills, they kind of just present it in one way. And with it being a relationship-based learning space, there's a lot more flexibility and freedom to be diverse in how you function and how your brain works and how you learn.

Jamie-Leigh 4:43

And I think it's really important too to have some people who have the ability to learn within like, you know, more institutional industry spaces, who can take the information and absorb it and then relay it in a new way. For people who don't thrive in that space

Nadya 5:01

Create that access, you know?

Melissa 5:03

Yeah, 'cause, I mean, there's also, who has the privilege to be in those spaces? Not just those people who will thrive there. But who has the time and the money and the support, and the housing and the child care, and everything that allows them to pursue the formal training. And then when you then have the capacity to take what you know, and share it around in relationship with people, that's a really beautiful gift. And I think it's being in reciprocity with your community, and not skill-hoarding for yourself, because you're in a competitive or like scarcity mindset, where you're like, I'm the one who has these skills. I want to get the jobs. If I share them, it's actually going to hurt me. Like, I think that's a really toxic thing that can get embedded into how you feel and how you look for work.

Nadya 5:53

Yeah, because even two people with the same skills are going to have completely different ways of implementing those skills and understanding how they work within the work that they're doing itself, right?

Melissa 6:04

Yeah, totally, if you do take more technical training, workshops, or go through programs, they're going to show you one way of doing something, when like you're using software, that's really powerful. And there's 10 ways to accomplish it, right? So yeah, having a bunch of different sources and different people in your life, showing you those things allows you to find ways that work for you and shows you there's not just one way. Helena actually talks about this really eloquently, about having room to play and use the tools in ways that feel intuitive and creative to you.

Jamie-Leigh 6:39

Anything you want to add, Rebecca, about the relationship of mentorship through…

Rebecca 6:44

Through the void? The abyss? [laughs] No, when I think of mentorship, skill-sharing, and then in relation to formal training and reading formal training in sort of the most generous way possible, I think that's often done sort of in bulk, in a way. And in a way that's like, I'm trying to establish a really basic common language so we all know how to talk about this thing. But it ends up being very broad. And the mentorship and more personalized skill-sharing is where you get to decide what you want to do with the language. And someone asking you what you want to do with this sort of vocabulary you're building and whether you want to continue this rapidly unwieldy metaphor, but whether you want to use these skills to make a play, or a novel or whatever. I think that's the part where sort of both specialization but also, I think a lot of creativity is, even if it's not necessarily a creative project. Mentorship can help tease that out and give that space to use whatever tools you have in new ways. And I think it's a really valuable way to shape formal training, if you have that or to, like, skip that step and just dive into the vision you have and want to execute.

Jamie-Leigh 7:58

Yeah.

Nadya 7:59

It's like, the formal skills are the body, but the mentorship is like the heart of the work, you know?

Jamie-Leigh 8:06

Yeah.

Melissa 8:06

I think this comes up in some of our interviews. But when you look at the relationship you have to people who are, say, your mentors or people skill-sharing with you and people who are like formal instructors, one of the main things that I find to be different is the level of care and personalization. And whether the person sharing skills with you and teaching you things has the capacity and is willing to like, hold your emotions, which I think is quite unique to like more more mentorship dynamics, whereas there's a person, you know, in front of a classroom, trying to present something to 20 different people. And making space on that level for so many people is really difficult.

Jamie-Leigh 8:49

And, I mean, and can still be done, though. I've been pretty impressed in spaces like that, that I have found mentorship, and it might not actually even be from that person at the front of the room. Instead, kind of flipping it and being like, who are my peers in this space together? Going through things together and fucking up together is like a form of mentorship to me that I still got out of the formal training.

Melissa 9:15

Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I think what I really want to talk about is mentorship as care work. And I mean, informal things don't have the same economics around them, obviously. But why that level of relationship work in workplaces or things like that is often done by women, by gender nonconforming folks, by trans folks, and people who are in solidarity with people around them.

Nadya 9:44

Well, I mean, those are the people that have their differences in society thrown in their face over and over again. So they have to be, right? They have to understand the level of care that goes into each individual and each individual's experience and how they can thrive and succeed in any industry when it comes to mentorship.

Yeah, yeah, I think that I mean, if we're talking specifically media spaces, audio film spaces, there's also, back to scarcity and taking up space, there's the notion of, there's only so much room for this amount of women, or similar ideas to that. We are kind of de-incentivized from lifting other people up.

Not to like, be a broken record here, but I think mentorship is really the thread. It is the thread that actually brings us all forwards collectively, but it can reshape how we come forwards in like how we shape an industry, I guess, that actually includes us. Mentorship can, to use like a lot of our granting, grant-writing language, like it can carve out the space that we need to actually be in that industry, because we don't see ourselves reflected there already, or yet. And so like mentorship is a way of being like, ‘Hey, I've made it this far. And I'd actually like to bring you forward with me, because we will take up more space in this industry, and that's what we want.’

[lilting ukulele music plays in the background, a theme for our guest, Ki]

So, I first met Ki 10 years ago, when I was in my first year of film school. She was my producing professor, but she quickly became a mentor for me as I tried to navigate the problematic culture of the film industry, coupled with being in an educational institution. Ki is currently, and like was at that time as well, doing transformational work resisting the exclusionary politics of academic and technical spaces.

Here’s a little bit about Ki. Ki Wight is a critical media studies educator and researcher with a focus on better understanding and transforming the relationships between media education practices, media cultures and social justice movements. She is a PhD candidate in equity studies at Simon Fraser University and teaches communication, media, queer, and gender studies at Capilano University. [end of official bio]

Ki has had a winding path through creative and artistic fields, leaving the film industry to become an educator. We asked Ki what it was that called her to engage in training and mentorship.

[Ki’s theme slowly fades]

I think that most of us don't, you know, find ourselves in grade 10, in that career prep class, or whatever year you get that in high school, with this really clear sense of what our calling is. But what we probably have a sense of from really early on is what our values are. And I think that the values that guided me through getting to where I'm at now are: I think I have to learn in community, I think I actually really care about who I work with, and how I work with them and engage. And I think I care about understanding why we do things. So I guess those would be like three things that have guided me. So I think that I transitioned from being a full time producer and media executive to teaching because I thought, ‘Gosh, I think we can do things better in the industry, in the media industries.’ And I want to see if education is a space where I can make that happen and help inform some change. And when I got to my job, I realized, no, actually, this isn't necessarily a space where I transform, both kind of institutional patterns of behaviour in this this colonial place where we're living, and then also like kind of industry attitudes that were really cemented in some of the courses or some of the mindsets in the program didn't necessarily mean that what we were teaching was teaching to a better vision of a media future. And as I was starting to be able to articulate my frustrations around that, that's when I was like, I'm gonna do a PhD. And I'm gonna study this, and there's an equity studies and education program at SFU. And I found my footing there and I'm really close to finishing and you know, now I feel really quite happy that I can integrate some research with some industry awareness and hopefully kind of keep growing the research projects in community-based ways to make a difference. So that's, I guess that's where I'm at. That's a bit of a winding path, but I stay with those core values of: I really care about who I work with and how I work with them, and doesn't really matter if I'm working on something that's big or small, or really personal, right, you know, like working with, say, a student on a goal that they have, whether it's like, I just really don't know how to write a cover letter for this position, because I don't know, I don't see myself being accepted by this community, right? It's like, okay, let's look at this challenge and break it down. So I don't know, I feel like it's such a gift actually being in an educational space where you have a little bit of autonomy to use a little bit of how you engage with people.

Switching over a little bit, we wanted to ask you about how you learned your skills, maybe more particularly your hard skills, too.

Like work skills.

Because I was just thinking about you were telling Ki how you use skills you learned from her.

Yeah.

I'm using skills today that I learned ffrom you and from, you know, other mentors that I have from that time in my life. And that's part of the beauty of this podcast, in general. We talk about it. It's in our like, little write-up, like, you know, I now have a communications job. I did no actual training on any of that stuff, where I do like InDesign and whatever. And I just learned it by sitting next to Melissa like working at SFU. Like, and she just would teach me off the side of her desk.

And I have a podcasting job that I learned entirely from sitting next to Jamie-Leigh. So, those skills that you taught Jamie, she's shared with me. And there's like, just like this beautiful lineage of skill sharing.

Yeah.

Well, I guess you just amass things as you go along, right? And I think the thing about things like hard skills is you never know when those things that you're learning that are those, like, really specific techniques are going to come back. So it's like, for example, I did three years of design school. In the last year, in my third year, was the first year that Photoshop came out, Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, I think. And previous to that, we were designing by hand, right? And doing layouts the way like with typeset, since like, the little metal pieces and stuff, right?

Which is really, really fucking cool.

It was actually really cool. Yeah, and then doing our own photography for the layout. And doing a lot of our own processing and stuff like that. I ended up with like this horrible bronchial infection, I think in my second or third year, because I was just like in, you know, putting my face over the trays of chemicals. We didn't wear like ventilators. I'm sure that they're wearing ventilators no if they're still doing that. So, I think though the design skills, it's kind of amazing how many times those come back in my favour. As a professor, you're like, ‘Oh, there's a guest speaker. Who can put a poster together really quickly?’ And I'm like, ‘Well, I can.’ Or a student does a poster for you when you're working on a project with them. And you need this one little change. And the student's totally busy. And I'm like, ‘Well, I can do it. I can do that.’ There are other times. So there's a lot of times where people, one-on-one, have mentored me through learning certain things. Like, there's pieces of, like, production accounting, and the math that I had forgotten that somebody was like, ‘I'm just gonna spend two hours and I'm gonna reteach you this really productive math.’ And now actually, I still use and like when I do my taxes and stuff, like like I didn't know and I appreciate that. And then there's some times… I still do this now, but I do take workshops on an ongoing basis, right — when I really identify something that I'm struggling with, that I'm curious about. I'm really curious about podcasting. So if you ever offer a workshop, I would love to take it with you. [laughs] But anyways, I was having a lot of trouble at some point, particularly as a younger woman in the program that I was teaching. And I was having a hard time asserting myself. I thought a lot of people, when I would speak up about something or questioned something, they would kind of pat me on the head paternalistically and then dismiss everything I'd say, or take credit for it. And I didn't know what to do. And I went to the Justice Institute and took a four-day course called ‘Asserting Yourself in Conflict Situations.’ And the skills I learned in that course around how do I present information to somebody? How do I assert myself with that information? How do I reiterate it clearly in a way that doesn't muddy the water or make, you know, increase conflict in the situation, really, really helped me and gave me a lot of confidence to keep moving forward. So I think it's kind of important to know that when you have time or energy or money, because these things usually cost money, to take advantage of those times to do a little bit of learning on stuff like that. Yeah.

[low-key ukulele playing broken chords in the background, a theme for our other guest, Helena]

So, our other wonderful guest for this episode has played a really key part in both mine and Jamie-Leigh's training in sound editing, field recording, and crafting audio stories in a collaborative environment. We met Helena Krobath at VIVO Media Arts Centre, where she was facilitating a community podcasting workshop with the Vancouver Tenants Union, creating pieces for an audio series titled ‘Vancouver Housing Stories.’ Jamie-Leigh and I enrolled in the workshop with a mind to up our technical skills and came out of it with so many new tools in our tool belt and a new mentor and friend.

A little more about Helena. Helena Krobath is an artist, editor, and educator drawing on sensory experience and recomposition to consider presences, environments and narratives. Helena is the sound designer and audio post producer for Invisible Institutions podcast. Her electroacoustic fictions and radio art have been recently presented by Arts Assembly, Publik Secrets, and NAISA (New Adventures in Sound Art), among others, and her audio essay on hearing political economic realities during COVID-19 was published in the Journal of Design and Culture’s special issue on Covid Materialities. Helena has led soundwalks with Vancouver Soundwalk Collective and Vancouver New Music since 2015 and developed workshops on audio storytelling, including for Nuxalk Radio in Bella Coola, Megaphone Magazine in Vancouver and VIVO Media Arts Centre.

[Helena’s theme, ukulele strumming and then a slow fade]

So, we wanted to start with how you arrived where you did and what got you interested in sound art and media production. And also, one thing that we've always appreciated is how you bring your practice into your activism and organizing. That's been really amazing to see how you model that. So ,we want to know, how did you get to where you are?

It's hard to answer with a line, because it feels like a lot of threads kind of stream together to be where I am. And it relates to the question about activism as well, which is a following my curiosity or my interest, or my conviction, seems to lead me in directions that dovetail with my interests. So, I wouldn't say that I ever thought, ‘I want to be at this point, so what are the steps I'll take to get there,’ but more, and this could relate to also, I operate in a ADHD framework a lot of the time and my paradigm is that. And so I think it could relate to that where, in the moment or in my shifting understanding of what's important, what's important or intriguing right now. And then what skills I already am working with, and then what skills I need to pursue that if it's art, or any topic, but specifically to sound I was at Simon Fraser in the School of Communication, and I was a mature student back to study comms and learn about, you know, critical theory and cultural studies and all the stuff that's exciting about that field. And I was really interested in hyperlocal journalism at the time and access to information. And I think there was a production quota, at the time, I forget if it needed to take one production course. But I did. And during the course, I just absolutely fell in love with the process of listening and working through the senses, and the perceptions and the awarenesses that get activated when you listen in certain ways. And then that interest extended to recording because when you listen through recording, especially field recording, the whole world sounds different. And it alters, you know, the range of some frequencies. And so you hear certain sounds closer or further or there's, you know, effects that are created by using a microphone that will distort if things get too loud. And so there's all of these dimensions that become fascinating. And then taking it a step further and realizing you can make art with that. And you can, you know, tell stories with it. Or you can show perspectives to others that only come through that kind of listening by composing something or, you know, or just using it as an abstract substance like a sculpture. And I would also say that at the time that I got into this field, which does have a strong technical component to it, there were incredibly generous people at SFU that helped cultivate that interest. So it didn't just happen that “Oh, this is the coolest thing,’ and then there was just a sort of unresponsive environment. It was like ‘Oh, great, you're into that. Let's let's assure you into more cool things about that field.’ So that played a part for sure.

That's so cool.

Yeah, I love the part about the deep listening being, like what actually drew you to it, because it can be so technical, but it sounds like it's really from the heart for you. Which is so cool. And so beautiful. And I think that's what I love about this field in general, is that these technical skills are cool scientifically in my brain, and I love the logistical side. But, it's my heart that comes through when I know how to use these tools.

Absolutely. And sound is so physical and evocative, and maybe under-scrutinized, so it can sort of surprise us, and yeah.

You kind of explained a little bit but like, how did you in terms of learning your hard skills, learn them?

Yeah, the hard skills, oh, man. So my relationship to the hard skills is that I had spent a lot of my adult life feeling very intimidated by technology. And I would have described myself as a technophobe and somebody who, not only with technology, but I have a struggle with spatial reasoning and numbers and things like that. And so to look at a mixing board, or to look at a piece of really complicated software, those things would put me in a panic, and I would really, yeah, almost shut down or not be able to process the information. So it didn't, it wasn't on my radar at all. So when I was in class, and we did have to use these tools. First of all, I really appreciate the people at SFU that were teaching and doing the labs at the time, because they made it more about what we were talking about before and the sort of power of listening and the potential of working with sound and being very conscious of that level. So it wasn't, the emphasis wasn't on the tools. And then just the patience of the people involved to help figure out how to do what it is that you want to do and the de-emphasis on there being one right way and more like, ‘what are the ways we could do that?’ And yeah, really getting into this framework of not being afraid of it and seeing it more as something like a toy, like creative playtime. That was really huge. But it's kind of fun, like getting thrown in the deep end to make something and then using whatever tools you can manage to learn in the time. I think for me, it works better than having a list of tools and saying ‘okay, now go learn each one of these in order’ or whatever, so.

[show theme ukulele notes]

Top of mind for us in putting this episode together was to shine a light on the barriers to entry. What are the systemic and social mechanisms at play in media production that hold us back or stand in our way?

So we asked Helena and Ki to share some experiences of the challenges they've come up against in acquiring skills, finding their footing as creators and educators and clashing with systems. Together, we explored how these issues present themselves at different intersections.

[Helena’s theme, short staccato notes]

I took a tour of a sound engineering program at a college in Vancouver and I swear to god that every single room that we toured that had people in it, were all men.

20 year old white guys?

Well, yeah, I wouldn't say they were all white guys. I definitely know that they were all guys. There was one like, I don't know if this is too stereotyping but there was one room we opened the door and I swear to god, like it was a little room they were having a huddle around like some piece of gear, doing some talking with something. And there was everything, lights flashing, everything. And like 12 heads turned in like fedoras.

[laughter]

And I just thought ‘yeah, this would feel so rotten.’ And you know, having interactions… I've had to develop some scripts for interacting with men in my field, especially when it comes around to like, and with my own particular brand of learning difficulties, when it comes to dropping the names and numbers of gear, as if that's establishing something about our knowledges.

Those spaces are often also led by, typically I think because of the generation, white men. So, these spaces that we're starting to create where we're diversifying, that is how we learn but who is teaching that is super important because when I was in film school, I was clinging to my professors who, you know, reflected any sort of experience that was similar to mine. Because I was like, these other people just don't get it. And the fact that we have to have the women in the class saying why certain content is inappropriate, and actually really harmful to women. And, you know, certain scripts written by students aren't being scrutinized more when they're actually very oppressive and very harmful, like, stuff like that. Who is leading the spaces is really fucking important because of the voices that get amplified by the people with new skills. It's really critical. Like, it's really critical that we're learning in a heartfelt care centred way.

No, it's the case, like, I don't know as much about film, but in sound, it's definitely the case. I don't know that they're like waking up and saying, you know, ‘I want to perpetuate my power.’ But there's lots of gatekeeping. And there's lots of, ‘This is sound art, this isn't sound art. This is good gear, this is bad gear.’ You know, there's lots of that sort of setting, establishing the standard, as if that they have the right to establish the standard, and then decide who's deviating from it. But in the arts, and even the academic side, like class barriers have been a real thing. And you need a lot, especially in Vancouver, like, you need some security, you need the safety. You might need to be able to afford time to do really underpaid work or free work to develop relationships and opportunities, or to take on mentorship, which is really valuable, but not really subsidized well enough in our society. So then, you know, to make ends meet, you can't take all those opportunities. Or even when I was younger, especially not really knowing how people in that world interact, just like if someone went from like, you know, a music culture into the theatre world or into any other world, you might not know how to conduct yourself. And then on a really basic level, if you're like a working class background, and you enter a professional world, or an arts world, you might not know how people conduct themselves in terms of just pleasantries or in terms of, you know, all that stuff. So I think there's times where I struggled with feeling like I belong, or feeling like I could make it work. So those times, those have been the daunting times. But the work itself, I've never felt trapped by anything. I've always felt like I could pivot. So the sound side of things has been one of my most abiding interests, besides literature and creative writing, I think it's maybe becoming one of the longer threads that's very compelling to me.

[Ki’s theme]

When I was working in the same space as you, it was hard. It was really, really a hard time. I think we transitioned away from the department around the same time for the same reasons. And I was just wondering how, working within that institutional space like you have, you told us a bit already, but like you've resisted the kind of the system and how you've held on to hope when it was really hard.

How I've held onto hope… [laughs] You know, I want to start by saying that I want to acknowledge that we don't try to transform the systems that we work in alone. So it's like, I look at my students or my colleagues as collaborators. So it's like, as I've seen you, Jamie-Leigh, go through the classes and ask questions that, and then ask questions from your professional standpoint. It helps me grow, right, in our community. So here we are today talking now. And I think, as we probably all recognize that like, well, a) we're going to be on this planet, hopefully for a little bit longer together. So if we want to achieve some of these things, we have to do them together. So thank you for your leadership with this podcast. And yeah, just, I think, always taking a stand at work too, so. Recently on campus at my institution, there have been a couple of Indigenous faculty members that have been targeted by the administration unfairly. And a bunch of us in the union, it's been a fairly wide conversation, have been saying, ‘Well, what should we do?’ We have to act fairly quickly in support. And I was really conscious in the departments that I'm working in to say, ‘Okay, everyone, I've drafted this, this email, this is what we witnessed in these circumstances. So we can definitely speak to these. This is what the motion is coming from, say, the union agenda. But who wants to put their name on it and who doesn't?’ And I actually recommend that if you are not a full-time contract person, and if you don't have that type of assurance of employment, that maybe let's blind CC you in this message that's going to go to admin, because I think that we have to be very realistic that when you speak up, you become a problem. It's like, when you question something, you pose a problem is what Sara Ahmed says. I think there's a more clever way that she words that but, so I think that you have to be really careful that your contract and your body and everything can withstand whatever comes back to you. And I think so, I guess I feel hopeful partially because I have this position from which I can speak and act that is somewhat protected. And so I am very conscious that just to use that carefully and yeah, do use it carefully, but to use it, like not to squander that privilege. So, yeah, I don't know, what else gives me hope? I don't know, there's a lot of like, revitalization resurgence movements coming from Indigenous art and activism and scholarship from Black creative communities right now. Like, I feel like people are making work that is refusing and defying stereotypes and oppression. And I love this idea of refusing the university, this isn't a new concept, right? It's like, ‘No, I get to define the boundaries around which I work. And there are certain things that are just not acceptable.’ So I won't perform, I won't perform in a certain way that you want me to necessarily. I'll still do my job. I'll teach my classes. But there's other things that probably I can say no to. So, there's a lot of people doing some amazing work right now.

Yeah, seeing the work being done around you, and I think also for me when I find that solidarity, that gives me hope. But also I've been thinking a lot about precarious work in institutions that have so much money to pay people, and how it disempowers you when you don't have a sure job.

[Show theme music]

A common thread that came out of our conversations with both Ki and Helena is that relationships and community care are deep walls of hope and energy to draw from, and that solidarity and resource-sharing can come from anywhere, from your peers, your teachers, and even your students.

We like to think of this as mentorship flowing in all directions — and idea and phrase we have embraced from working with carla bergman, our Grounded Futures co-founder, and one thing we want to do with Mentorship in Motion is to break down the binary of mentors and mentees — instead understanding that we all have value to bring to each other and can play a part in lifting each other up and breaking through barriers.

So this is the part of the show where we ask our guests to name some of the people and spaces that have been important to their creative practice to their teaching and how they navigate their respective fields.

[Helena’s theme]

What do you feel your relationship is to that skills training, media production in collaborative spaces?

First of all, I think those spaces are so important where people can learn as an alternative to institutional learning. And I again, feel really fortunate to have found them because there was a large period of my life where I didn't know any of this was happening or available or possible. And another thing about me relating to those spaces, that I think is worth mentioning is they're really neat, and very different from academic institutions, or typical spaces in academia, in that we are often learning together and learning from each other. And I am equally present in that space as a participant in other people's workshops, and then like to host my own. And when I host workshops, like for example, at VIVO, if I facilitate something, I'm excited, because I know there's gonna be people who've never done this and are gonna get really excited. But I also am excited because there's gonna be people who know way more about aspects of it than I do, who are going to join the group. And then I'll learn from them too, and get to see, like how they use these tools. So there's a little bit more, I don't know, it's less hierarchical, I guess.

Also, if you want to name names, we want to ask you, like, who are the people who you consider your mentors and who you felt like have lifted you up and provided that kind of a space for you?

Yes, I am so full of gratitude for people who have been supportive, but more than supportive, like you say, lifting me up or connected me with the next step in my journey. One of them you know, Pietro, from VIVO, has been so generous. I think he would be a great person for you guys to interview because I think he's had that impact on a lot of people but he's an incredible supporter of folks when they are keen about something and have excitement and he makes those connections. And so I would say that, and he was also the TA in question in the SFU.

Oh, cool!

That's a cool connection.

Yeah, so that was like, that was a level of generosity that I probably needed to get through my technophobia. Like a general level of, ‘Yes, I will explain this to you.’ You know, because TAs don't have a lot of time and a lot of resources either. So, and then the prof of that class, who is one of my best friends now, Vincent Andrisani. And he's a sound studies scholar at Carleton now. Again, so Brady Marks, who I don't know if you know her, but she did another mentorship at VIVO the year before the one I did. And she also invited me to join the Soundscapes show on Co-op Radio. And we co-hosted a lot of episodes together and collaborated on a few other things. She's incredibly generous as well, both with helping like, you know, helping me get, again, get over the sort of. So my technophobia had been quite improved. But then knowing that I was going to be broadcasting live with a big huge board of sliders and I could be mute for an hour and not know it, like I got really in my head. And I used to get so worked up that like every time it was time to go home, I would walk in the wrong direction to my bus stop. And Brady would always be like, ‘Oh, your bus stop’s that way.’ Because I'd get so scrambled. But she was incredibly, and still is, incredibly generous with that, because she's got knowledge and really good, really technical knowledge. You know, people that I really admire, who can figure out, who can do troubleshooting and who make things happen digitally in a way that I can't. Like, I'm still, I do a lot of stuff with digital software, and it's involving, like listening. It's not… I'm not writing a code, and then something's happening. Like it's in real time. I can play with what I'm working with. So people who bridge that or help demystify that, or invite me into their activities, like those kinds of folks. I mean, in a way it feels like I am naming my friends. But I think it's also because I work all the time. Like I think my friendships do centre around, this is kind of my life, like to make and to relate to the world in a self-aware, observant mode, observer mode, creative observer mode. I feel like those are people that I'm drawn to, and they tend to also be working. So we mentor each other and support each other, I think.

Yeah, we like the word friendtors.

Oh, I love that.

Yeah.

I really love that.

I mean, and that's like, I mean, that's what this show is about too. It's actually the people who are probably going to be your best teachers. And this isn’t across the board. This is a bit of a generalization, but they're the people that you can build a relationship with, right? Like, it feels like you're naming your friends, because those are the people who you connect to who can actually also teach you because they're listening to you and making you feel supported.

Yes, I think for really, really effective mentorship, care has to be a part of it.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

[Ki’s theme]

For me, I have learned a lot of self confidence through this system, and a lot of communication skills. So for example, like I just had a love, I just want to say, I'm gonna shout out my supervisor. I love my supervisor so much. Dr. Özlem Sensoy. She writes on social justice education and on media culture, on a lot of teacher education and media studies kind of stuff that. She's just very inspiring, but the thing I love about her is she's pragmatic, and her communication is super direct. So she's really helped me understand how to frame a question and find a way of answering it that is accessible, that is researchable. And to me, that gives me a lot of clarity to call things out in the world, right? When I see something happening now. I can translate the skill that I've learned in travelling through this path of a PhD and doing all the school stuff I love, but it actually is really useful for me to be an activist within my institutional community, because I can kind of, I can find the words to ask the question.

[Theme music with lyrics: “I’ve got my foot through the door'' x3]

As we are resisting the harmful systems and toxic cultures that have become embedded in the way we make media, we are also working to collectively imagine new worlds where we no longer have to struggle for the opportunities to make art, or struggle to make our voices heard.

So, our final questions to Ki and Helena were about seeding futures. We wanted to know: What are the ingredients we need to help more people break into and actually thrive in media-making spaces. What are Ki and Helena’s dreams for the spaces they are working in?

[Ki’s theme]

Okay, what do we need to do? Well, I think that peer network kind of approaches are really, really important. So it's like, I don't think that we necessarily need committees to do, say, anti racism work on campus. I mean, I think we need those things. But those are different things than a peer support network that is just about a place to kvetch, a place to understand that other people know what you're facing. And then to get those moments, you know, to get those words of encouragement and hope. Just feelings of collegiality, feelings of community, within our workplaces, I think that's really, really important. So I don't know, I think that if we can support people to build community, that's really important. And I did this thing in my social justice class, where I said, ‘Okay, we're not going to do like a PowerPoint of what did you learn on your on your research about this social justice movement, but what we're going to do is we're going to have like coffee-like conversations in class time, where we try to share what we've learned, towards some sort of sense of a common purpose or a common sensibility, so that we might see each other with affinity out in the world and support each other because that's what we need.’ We need that sense of affinity, right? We need to know that there's other people out there in our community we can just build alliances with. Maybe we can call upon them, ‘I remember, so-and-so said this thing in that class.’ Maybe I can ask them what their thoughts are on this action that I want to take. Or maybe I don't have to do this alone. I am really committed to informal learning opportunities that make a difference in communities. So like in peer mentorship programs that don't involve credentialing and then also, within credential, recognizing non-traditional forms of knowledge production. Like I'm a big fan of, ‘you don't feel like writing an essay because you just lost a family member? Do you want to have a conversation and do it as an oral dialogue? Oh, okay.’ And then the richness of what's communicated is just as rich as what they could have written in a paper. It's just that for right now, for whatever reason, that's not how is best to communicate. So we can rethink what we do within credentials too, right? I think that probably we need to think more about who gets into certain jobs based on credentials, that is differentiated from what skills do you have, based on the experience, on community-based activism, wherever you've gotten that experience. I don't necessarily care if somebody has a credential, if they can do X, Y and Z.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And last question, what are your dreams for your industry and the people emerging within it?

In terms of the media industries? I don't know. I mean, I think there's so many people doing amazing work right now. I think that I am really hopeful that we can stop doing 16 hour days and people dying because they fall asleep at the wheel on their way home from another Hallmark Christmas movie shot in Abbotsford. You know, I'm really hopeful that some of the attention, especially IATSE, that union, has been doing on dangerous work conditions such as that is going to yield a different kind of cultural attitude around the work and the value of the lives that do that work. I certainly think that there are changes afoot at a government level, at the funding level, to require us to collect data on who we hire, to require us to make sure that that racialized folks have as many opportunities, right, as everybody else that's in the industry that's working. So I think that as we work to address issues of racism, misinformation within the industry, from different kind of like points. Like you can do it from like, ‘Who are you casting?’ You can do it from ‘Who are you hiring?’ to ‘Who's in your training programs?’ to, you know, like there's all these things that the broadcaster's are required to report on by law, right? Like, broadcasters have to now track gender statistics on who are in their crews, so it's like if you want to run a broadcast channel on Canadian television, you have to track certain statistics and then take action. There's some policy changes happening that could have a large impact. So, I don't know, I think just continuing with that work. And really, I think that if we can change some of the toxicity around the work culture, I think it's going to help dismantle some of the other stuff, right? Because then it's not all about this kind of like, macho ‘just buck up, you can work a 16 hour day, it's so hard, but…’ you know, if we can get rid of some of that kind of attitude, it's also going to help address other problems.

What are your dreams specifically for audio production, sound art, media production for that industry? And it could be localized to the city, to these lands if you'd like.

Well, my dream would be to have a strong alternative to mainstream that is also accessible digitally. So I think my dream is that we would have a resurgence of radio culture and the hyperlocal. I would love to see some audio equivalent of zine culture become ubiquitous and easy for people to get their hands on. So I think having more space, like the Vancouver Public Library's makerspace is amazing. There's the… you know, it comes to class, again, for me, because I think even the level of awareness, maybe of what options are out there is not as present. Because there is a sense, like, let's face it, we've lived in this society, this colonial society for a long time. And there's a sense that you're training kids for the life that they're destined for. And so I don't think…my school didn't care about me knowing about those kinds of options. And then absolutely, like, so, this person who does have a kid to feed, or me, because I don't want to live in a moldy house forever. I think we have to have more support for things that aren't lucrative in capitalism, because they're clearly valued. People clearly want that, and they want to have access to those events and spaces and materials and the diversity of the, you know, I'm pretty sure most people don't want just what's offered by mainstream mass media. You know, we have to think where else could the support for it come from. Yeah.

Can I also ask, like a follow-up question, what would your dreams be for the skill-sharing side of your work?

I mean, there are tool co-labs and other kinds of makerspaces around. I think that if there was a space like that geared towards audio, not just to learn and then go home, but a space you could hang out and work with others and things like that. There are… they do exist, but I think a space, a shared space would be it, you know. Like the Women's Centre, but it's the Women's Sound Centre. I am working and meeting occasionally, we kind of put a pin in it for busyness but with Alex de Boer, who you also met through the mentorship, to develop some resources for women in audio production and for indie audio producers in general around like things like getting your rates, because it's a really, and I will say as things like podcasts, as they become feminized, you can see the rates and other stuff going down. So we really both were talking about how there's a lack of understanding about what goes into this kind of work how a lot of podcasts might feature women but then in the production room in the back there often the team is often still all men. And one of my dreams personally for me is to have a women-run production house for sound design, to do, like, audio documentary and stuff like that, which is what I'm working on these days and I love doing it but I think having a collective and being able to generate work and to workshop together and to yeah to have that strength in numbers would be great, so.

[Theme music, short ukulele notes]

Thank you for listening to Mentorship in Motion, a Grounded Futures original podcast. Grounded Futures is an arts and mentorship collaborative that provides a platform for youth, women and gender nonconforming folks' voices to talk about everyday thriving amid the ongoing disasters we're collectively facing.

Mentorship in Motion is produced by Jamie-Leigh Gonzales, Melissa Sharp, Rebecca Peng, and Nadya Geta. Our theme music is by Nadya Geta, and our show art is by Maia Anstey. Thank you to our other Grounded Futures collaborators, Uilliam Joy and carla bergman, for their support and mentorship. You can find episodes of Mentorship in Motion on GroundedFutures.com or on your podcasting app of choice. Head to the show notes to find additional resources and the full episode transcript.

Thank you!

Thank you!

[Theme music: “Foot Through the Door'' by Nadya Geta. Gentle acoustic guitar and vocals]

Theme music lyrics:

I’ve got my foot through the door

Don’t need to push anymore ‘cause I’m in

And you can jump through those hoops

No matter what you do the truth is

We'd all be nowhere, oh, nowhere without friends

I'll never be qualified in my whole life

Or have enough education

You saw the light in me, and so invited me

To open up the door and let me in

I’ve got my foot through the door (x6)