If it is true, as Che Guevara, said, that “at the risk of seeming ridiculous, the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love,” then let me be bold enough to suggest another ridiculous notion: every act of resistance is a work of art.

This is the premise behind Toronto’s Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts, that in a world where the media turns us all into passive spectators, art and creativity are essential to the working class condition.

Mayworks is a multidisciplinary art festival that celebrates working-class culture. Founded in 1986 by the Labour Arts Media Committee of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council, Mayworks is Canada’s largest and oldest labour arts festival.

Mayworks’ philosophy is that the struggle to survive and grow happens everywhere, whether or not that narrative is a CNN-news-worthy protest or a bonding experience between neighbours. “Things happen all the time in the community, daily lived resistance and organized resistance. Mayworks celebrates stories from both by bringing together different communities for a common interest,” explains Matt Adams, the festival’s publicity co-ordinator.

Permanent Markers

Marches and other common stock of the activist community are temporary manifestations of resistance, like someone flicking on a lighter in a darkened room. A march marches down a street and then is gone; a demonstration demonstrates a moment of anger and, as often as not, is often forgotten.

Sometimes I get so frustrated, I feel like retracing the route of a demo with a staple gun and an armful of photographs from the day, affixing them to every telephone pole I find — anything to mark that we were there, to help the event last.

It is equally as important to capture the individual struggles for change that happen every day. These are important stories that we would never know about if someone hadn’t paid attention and documented it somehow.

Art opens up at least the possibility of permanence — proof that resistance to the current system is occurring in many different forms — and a chance to secure that knowledge in our personal memories and our collective history.

There is a whole history of living struggle, and, complex as it is, it’s not so much captured as integrated. “Plays, theatre and photography are major ways of influencing collective memory. But the meaning of a picture can change over time, it doesn’t just sit there quietly, it continues to live,” Adams said.

Anna Camilleri, Mayworks co-ordinator and an artist in her own right, also cautions that permanence doesn’t mean static. “At Mayworks, art can be a living documentation of struggle and become a permanent part of our cultural fabric. In some ways, you keep part of the art with you beyond the CD or piece of theatre or book, the thing that is the most permanent is the emotional experience,” she said.

Mayworks seeks to provide that experience to its audience through its diverse, and often personal and intimate programming, like the Injured Workers: Portraits of Life and Loss display.

Propaganda of the Deed

Far removed from the experience of “embedded” opinions and the presto-ization of culture in Toronto, Mayworks strives to present an alternative form of art for the masses.

“Art is a reflection of our desires, our ability to imagine that a better world is possible. The festival engages people to experience what it means to live in a world where there is equality, a community that is pluralistic and dynamic,” Camilleri says.

This is what makes art anything but ridiculous or redundant in regards to the state of the world today. After all, that the desire for alternatives can only begin with our ability to imagine them.

Working-Class Culture

Mayworks helps make art accessible to the masses by providing mostly free or pay-what-you-can events. With venues spread throughout Toronto, it highlight a diverse range of different geographical and identity-based communities.

According to Camilleri, “Our audience includes everyone from twenty-something gay couples to hetro couples in their 70s; the performances range from contemporary art to the more traditional.”

Outreach goes far beyond the progressive, usual suspects, often to the non-activist, non-union audience. “The people who are going to come to Mayworks might have no connection to activism or the labour movement. We want to reach out to people immersed in pop culture to experience labour and art,” she said.

Artists Working, Working Artists

Mayworks was established to help highlight the link between workers and artists in their “common struggle for decent wages, healthy working conditions and a living culture.” The 2003 call out of “May Day! May Day!” (a festival theme this year) is a rallying cry to raise an alarm “concerning the deterioration of our public infrastructures both locally and on a global political level.”

Far from being a temporary display of art and resistance, Mayworks hopes the festival will help unite artists (and potential activists) from around Toronto in a common struggle. It provides an artist directory and resources to help create a permanent community of creative resistance as well as uniting the inspired and curious to form networks within their own mediums and communities.

Celebrating Resistance

In a world consumed with the possibility of its own destruction, our ability to think creatively and express ourselves through art may be one of the best ways we’ve got to make a better world for ourselves. Art, as something to hold in our hands or hearts to keep us from going crazy and to celebrate the common history we share.

“Mayworks is essentially a celebration of art and resistance and basic survival,” said Adams, “And celebration has to be part of all forms of resistance or we have lost.”

Celebration? Now that’s ridiculous!

Krystalline Kraus

krystalline kraus is an intrepid explorer and reporter from Toronto, Canada. A veteran activist and journalist for rabble.ca, she needs no aviator goggles, gas mask or red cape but proceeds fearlessly...