Olivia C. Davies and artists during a creative residency with her two children present. Photo by Louise Pōtiki Bryant.
As a metaphor for the experience of having a career as a dance artist and starting a family, as well as navigating the tricky territory of finding a balance between being responsible for the work of creativity and responsive to the family’s needs, The Red Shoes encompasses the choices we make as artists-mothers as we move through life.
O.Dela Arts
O.Dela Arts
The Red Shoes: Finding Childcare Solutions That Fit Organizations
Level UP! Strategy Area: Care Solutions
Pilot Project: Creating a structure of childcare that is embedded in projects
Project Duration: 2023 – 2024
Continuing to Implement: Yes, continuing to embed costs associated with children in future project budgets, and planning to create a national caregiver database for specific major cities across Canada by 2026.
Resources Shared: Project Field Notes
About O.Dela Arts
Location: British Columbia
Artistic Discipline: Dance
Operating Budget: $100,000 to $1,000,000
O.Dela Arts is a non-profit arts organization currently based in Vancouver, BC, on unceded Coast Salish Territory. O.Dela Arts supports the research, creation, production, and touring of Olivia C. Davies’ creative activities, choreography, and installations including platforms for educational and community-engaged projects offered by Indigenous artist, Olivia Davies.
The mandate of O.Dela Arts Society is to support the creation and production of contemporary Indigenous choreography by women through community-engaged projects, creative collaboration across disciplines and generations, new project commissions, and the annual Matriarchs Uprising Festival.
O.Dela Arts’s Level UP! Project
The project, titled The Red Shoes: Finding Childcare Solutions That Fit Organizations, aimed to create a structure of childcare that would be embedded in the organization’s projects. This initiative involved exploring caregiver support on tour for the project artistic lead, Olivia Davies, and her two children. It also involved the start of a database of vetted childcare providers for major performing arts hubs across Canada which will be completed over the coming years.
Project Highlights:
- Accounting for the ever-changing needs of caregiver artists and their families (e.g. caring for an 8-month-old is different than caring for an 11-month-old 3 months later!).
- Researching creating a childminding roster for artist-caregivers.
Resources
O.Dela Arts | Project Field Notes
About This Resource O.Dela Arts shared these Project Field Notes in 2024 as part of their Balancing Act Level UP! Pilot Project. Their project focused on creating a structure of childcare that is embedded within projects.
More Information
For more information about the O.Dela Arts visit oliviacdavies.ca.
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