By Meghan Power
Born in Calgary (her mother originally from Trinidad and Tobago — her father Canadian), Priscilla has seen many shifts in the arts and culture scene, since her first job in broadcast media at the age of 22. “It was frustrating to navigate the broadcast sector advocating for hosting as an art form. The tireless pursuit caused me to feel lost, hopeless, purposeless, and disconnected from myself and from a community that I truly felt I belonged to. After a trip to emergency care in 2016, I took a break from the arts sector and learned about trauma-informed care. I learned how to use my own lived experience of navigating mental health concerns to be a peer support to others. Ever since, I’ve been doing my best to amalgamate the message of inner work health, with the meaning of community liberation through the transformative power of the arts and storytelling.”
Priscilla often describes herself as being a social artist: “When I was introduced to the framework of social artistry, it was language that I felt at home with. Social Artists are facilitators, innovators, cultural workers, public artists and hosts. Community and people to social artists are what a canvas is to a painter, a stage is to a dancer, or what a lens is to a filmmaker.”
Priscilla names pleasure activist and author of Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown, as a guiding influence on her vision for The Oratory: “This project isn’t a hobby, it’s my livelihood. The Oratory is a philosophy. Our mission is to build a community grounded in the wisdom of Ubuntu — ‘I am because you are’ — as we recognize the profound interconnectedness of humanity and pledge to address the fractures in our world with unwavering compassion.”
“I am disappointed in the power-hoarding institutions and organizations, such as for-profit corporations and the federal government, in how these entities often fail to be accountable for how they interact with, take from and use art themselves on a daily basis, because art is all around us, yet don’t honour the need to fund or support it. It’s time for those who hold the power to do so, to give back to the arts, the same way the arts relentlessly and unapologetically gives to all of us with no expectation of anything in return.”
Receiving a project grant from Calgary Arts Development (CADA) is funding that not only funds and supports artists, but, in Priscilla’s words: “provides validation and recognition for the iterative, expansive and ever-evolving process of defining what it means to be an ‘artist.’ CADA has a grant selection committee made up of artists and creatives — artists supporting artists. They understand it’s not all about data, numbers or outcomes, because the ‘numbers’ are the people and stories from community and artists living and breathing the ‘data,’ and the ‘outcomes’ are respect, reconciliation, recognition and healing.”