Take Space, Make Space

by Tanvi Bhatia and Miley Leong

Towards the end of 2019, we started to have conversations about the lack of representation of Black, Indigenous, Women of Colour (BIWOC) in the arts community in Vancouver. We came up with a never-ending list of BIWOC making incredible art, but when we thought about those who had “made it,” or were able to make a career out of their art-making in a way that was sustainable, only a few came to mind. 

Why so few? Well, systemic barriers, for one. Institutionalized misogyny and racism make it difficult for BIWOC to end up in positions of power. Another is the embedded scarcity mindset within these spaces: the idea that There Can Only Be One. A branch of tokenism, There Can Only Be One dictates that one [insert marginalized identity here] is enough to represent every other marginalized identity and fill the “quota”; once there’s one of us in the room, we don’t need any more. This is harmful when it comes from external sources, and just as harmful when we internalize it ourselves. 

Because of course we want to be The One. We’re all struggling to sustain ourselves in industries that aren’t built for us, and so we take opportunities when they come. But what’s missing is the conversation about how we use those opportunities to bring others in. How do we use our positions of power and privilege to create space for other BIWOC? How do we jam the door open so they, in turn, can bring even more people in? How do we get rid of the scarcity mentality that states There Can Only Be One and work towards sharing power and building community?

This is how we came up with the idea for the panel we called “Take Space, Make Space,” which would have taken place at The Future Forum on March 28, 2020. Since the event was cancelled due to COVID-19, we reached out to our panelists to give them a chance to answer some of the questions we were planning to ask. 

Our original panel was supposed to feature Ayaan Ismail, Ella Droko, Abeer Yusuf, and Jackie Wong, all incredible leaders in their communities. We were able to speak with Abeer and Jackie about taking space, making space, and staying accountable, and share our conversations with you here:   

What does it mean to take space? 

Jackie: I think about taking space as a visual or physical action that has emotional impacts, which can sometimes be unseen or unintended by the person who is taking up space. Taking space is allowing ourselves to be big. This happens in big and small contexts. It includes being fully ourselves, making our needs known, stepping up to the literal and figurative microphone, sharing our inner selves through performing/publishing/posting our creative work into wider society, or simply existing in public spaces in ways that makes space for us but potentially removes space from others, such as the way we take space on a bus or in a park.

Abeer: This is a very uncomfortable question for me to answer, because I always feel like I’m taking up too much space. As a lifelong talkative person, my parents raised me encouraging me to talk less and be less sociable, because that’s who I am as a person—and how not nice it is for a young brown girl to be so chatty, exuberant and almost…wild. I’ve always resisted that, always resisted being put into boxes and being labelled one way or another, and made to conform into a demure, quiet person. That’s just not me.

It was only after coming here and really being made aware for the first time of my own social location (both the privileged parts and those less so), that I realized what little space I take up. It was because of the constant social conditioning I received growing up, and now in the West, where I had to sound smart and make sure every word I said made sense in front of white people, that I realized how uncomfortable it was for me to take space. It takes a lot of unlearning to know that you don’t have to wait to say the perfect thing, that you can have an imperfect sentence, and not everything needs to be spectacular prose or have productivity as the end goal.

I think about taking space most critically when it comes to myself. Since migrating to Canada, I’ve been incredibly uncomfortable seeing how in order to succeed, one needs to sell, sell, sell themselves to stand out or make an impact. This sits so terribly with me, because I don’t come from a place where we are taught to talk about ourselves that way. In my culture, this is called arrogance, and I certainly wouldn’t want to betray that for getting a job, or networking, or just to gain social capital. It's why my LinkedIn profile only reads, "Deathly afraid of writing bios." It’s a difficult dance—so I mostly just live in a really tense headspace of how much of me is too much? Where do I need to push more? Where do I need to resist? It’s why I have so many grey hairs.

What does it mean to make space? 

Jackie: Making space happens in direct relation and response to taking space. It's what happens when we allow and empower each other to be big, especially those of us who have had our realities denied, who have been made to feel small, who have been told we don't matter, and who have been instructed to take up as little space as possible. Making space is about creating equity in all the forms it comes. It requires significant and collective healing on all of our parts so that our own needs are not sitting as core wounds at the surface of every interaction. It requires self-awareness and generosity. Making space allows us to act in a way that allows each other to be affirmed and to be seen. Taking space is being affirmed, seen, and held with care. It's important for everyone to consider carefully how privilege, power, gender, race, and sexuality play a role in all of this. Making space is about shifting balances of power so that the people who are taking up less space, and who have historically taken up less space, are invited to step into being affirmed, seen, and held with care.

Abeer: In a different lifetime, I was working with an older woman of colour (WOC) who sat me down one day and told me, “You need to work three times as hard as white people here in order to be seen the same way.” To this day, I think about how damaging those words were to me as a younger WOC. 

It basically said to me, “I see that you’re not white, and I know the system is rigged against you, but I, an older WOC who has presumably also borne the brunt of this kind of thinking, will still be adamant that you need to do three times the work to prove to me that you have the same impact.” 

That’s where I think we need to make space—in our thinking and conceptualizing of this mindset. Now that I’m coming more into situations where I have positional and perceived power, I try to keep that experience at the back of my mind to remind myself that we are honed and schooled to have certain expectations—and because some of us can easily fit into that mold, we shouldn’t forget our first and foremost duty to resist that. I also find that there are many people from similar marginalized identities to mine who fight tooth and nail to get where they are, to build social and subsequently financial capital, only to then look back, feel threatened and kick the door to close behind them. I just cannot fathom that. How could you possibly feel threatened by someone who shares so many of your struggles, and would only make your own voice demanding change, louder? I don’t get that, and I hope never to be able to understand that, empathize with that, or God forbid, emulate that. 

My own personal way of practicing this is—especially as I get approached to speak more on certain topics, or share my opinions or thoughts—I ask myself, what voices don’t get to be heard because mine is being given precedence? I always make it a personal point to double check with organizers to ask them if they really definitely want me, and I also always try to offer other suggestions of people I know who might be a good fit for the role. I think it’s critical for those of us with high visibility to do that, and also to just say no to things sometimes. 

Of course, the more exhausting part of making space is getting others to do it—especially men of colour and white people. Having to constantly ask them to reflect inward, take stock, really question in the same way I describe above, it’s exhausting. I don’t know that I have a solution—but I try to tackle it when I have the energy and capacity and don’t feel like I’m screaming down a dark tunnel where no one can hear me.

How do you hold yourself accountable to your communities? What do you do when your community calls you out/in? 

Jackie: Working in a way that prioritizes relationships over transactions and productivity, and in that process, continuing to self-reflect on how people are reacting to my contributions and my presence in my communities. I'm particularly interested in constantly re-evaluating how I take up space in all arenas of my life, and how I can work to make space for people, realities, conversations, and ways of being that are existing on the margins. When people in my life—people I work with, people on the Internet, friends, family members—call me out or in, I listen. I take their words to heart. I consider how my own actions have shaped their responses. Wherever possible, I engage directly with them. Hopefully and usually in a way that doesn't require extra work on their part, but creates space for me to do the work to hear clearly what they are asking for, and what I might do now and in the future in response. 

How do you practice solidarity in actionable ways? 

Jackie: 1. Listen. Do the work to understand where precisely I need to grow and learn, what I don't know, and where I can improve. This includes reading and drawing from as wide a range of thinkers and influences as possible so that I'm existing outside of a bubble as much as I'm able, while acknowledging that my own bubble and people close to me are also important for my own sense of self and identity. 

2. Give money, when I'm able, to initiatives that are providing direct supports to people in a way that they want to be supported. This is really important to me: the kind of support, and the way it is designed with recipients in mind, is crucial. Not everyone wants a care package or a free meal. A lot of people need cash with which they can do what they like to live their life, or other support that empowers and centres their autonomy.

3. Get the fuck out of the way. Part of meaningfully making space is knowing when to step back, knowing when not to centre oneself, and knowing the limits of the kind of performative allyship we see a lot of these days. Getting out of the way—out of the way of others with whom I stand in solidarity and out of my own way—includes, for me, acknowledging my privileges. I have the privilege of feeling at home in myself; I'm privileged to have arrived at a moment of considerable healing. I have had the privilege of opportunity to work as a journalist and a writer and alongside creative communities throughout my twenties and early thirties. Now, I have the privilege of employment, of the relative stability in my work that comes with being 37 years old, the privilege of living in a secure home environment among people who love each other. I have no business inserting my own needs or struggles into spaces where there are more pressing matters on the table. I am in a place where I need to step back to create space for marginalized, emerging, or younger folks to step into a context in which they can take space. It is important for me to actively shift the balance of power wherever possible, in my work and in my life. 

What does the intersection of art and activism look like? 

Jackie: Art is an important way of speaking through and elevating activism beyond its mainstream or conventional representation. Not all artists are activists, and not all activists are artists. This is where activist-artists (if this is a term that folks are comfortable using) live in a lot of exciting possibility: they can work at pushing the boundaries of their respective disciplines (writ large but not always contained by activism and art) in a way that does cool stuff in both. 

It's been important for me to do creative work that speaks to political issues, and in saying this I think it's important to complicate and broaden our understanding of political issues beyond current affairs. Political issues are about issues of power in all the forms they show up. I likewise really respond to creative work that deals with power, particularly in what are sometimes thought of as the smaller or unremarkable spaces in our lives. I think that art and activism are often siloed, or there are sometimes unproductive binaries that exist between the two, and wherever possible, it's been important to bring the two together. I don't self-identify as an activist and I don't self-identify as an artist. I have been introduced as both in different contexts. This doesn't bother but it often surprises me. I'm glad, maybe, that some of my work has been received this way? I have trouble with putting too fine a point on things. Doing so leaves insufficient space for speaking to the complexity of how we are working and living.

Abeer: For me, it’s joy. I live and breathe by the values of joy. I come across as a silly, goofy person, because that’s what I want my work and life to look like. I’m a fleeting person only made up of my soul—and when my time comes to depart from this world, no one will remember anything apart from my soul. Therefore, it is always my resolute intention in every interaction I have, that I impart or give joy. Seeing the darkness in the world, and how many things we need to push for collectively and individually, I see the need and importance of joy—because that’s the ultimate thread that holds us together. For me, my activism is just being able to make a friend laugh, or to leave a stranger feeling warm-spirited, and most importantly, for them to be seen in the entirety of their complexity. Why not do it with joy for the little borrowed time we have here? 

When entering spaces where we hold power, how can we avoid replicating colonial power structures? What does sharing power look like? 

Jackie: Identify, reflect on, and then actively divest from colonial and capitalist norms that have shaped the ways we do work. To me this lives in the words we use and the actions we take. Sharing power, to me, is about shifting power. It's not about adding more responsibility to an already-overworked person's plate, or asking someone to take on something they are not able to. It's about finding different ways to work in which all parties feel autonomous and empowered in the work, and work in such a way that lifts everyone up, instead of just one person or cause. 

Abeer: This can go so many ways. I think the answer for me lies in making more critical, better followers, not developing more leaders. The world has enough leaders—nothing’s getting solved that way, necessarily. I see (and have previously participated in) many leadership programs as the only avenue to develop yourself and think about the world differently. I don’t agree with that anymore—we should develop more critique and education that is critical of systems and demands ethics and accountability. That’s the only way forward. This education needs to be available to all, and accessible to all. Once we have those tools, we can use them to build a very different world. Then, I don’t imagine we would have to sit and talk about sharing power. We would be dismantling it and placing it back where it belongs—with the people.