There is a quiet but powerful difference between being invited into a space and being intentionally centered inside it. I can usually feel the difference.
It's in how much of myself I allow to arrive.

Black Out Night at the National Arts Centre made that difference unmistakably clear. This was not simply a night at the theatre. It was an experience shaped with care, foresight, and cultural fluency. It was an example of what happens when an institution moves beyond access and honestly just cares about their impact. Access alone to something isn't safety. Invitation alone isn't belonging

Because access alone is not safety.
And invitation alone is not belonging.

So often, institutions say you are welcome but leave the room unchanged. The rules remain unspoken but firm. The expectations linger in the air. How loud you can be. How much space you can take. How you respond. How you speak. How much joy is acceptable. How much grief is allowed.

You are welcome, as long as you know how to behave.

Black Out Night disrupted that entirely.

From the moment the evening began, it was clear that Black audiences were not an add on. They were not a sidebar. They were not being accommodated. They were being centered. And that distinction matters more than most institutions realize.

The BON Market set the tone before a single line of dialogue was spoken on stage. Positioned as the opening of the night, not tucked away or treated as a pre show extra, the market communicated something essential. Community is not peripheral to art. It is art.

Local women led businesses/organizations and artists from Ottawa’s African and Caribbean diasporas had space to be seen, supported, and engaged with fully. People lingered. A relational and intentional plan and we know how much I love those (I love them alot)!!

This market felt like a gathering place. That kind of engagement does not happen in rooms where people are policing themselves. It happens when people feel culturally safe enough to respond honestly. When they are not worried about being read as disruptive or inappropriate. When they know the room was built with them in mind.

Cultural safety is built. It lives in a lot of things like language, programming, who is visible in leadership. In how events are framed and COMMUNICATED. AND ESPECIALLY in whether people are trusted to show up as themselves.

For some obvious reasons this hit me in a deeply personal way. I live in a small town, where spaces like these aren't created, aren't built intentionally and are sometimes cast to the wayside. It is usually up to marginalized communities to somehow build these intentional spaces with push back from institutions, communities surrounding and beyond. Intentional spaces allow for no code switching, scanning the room for cues, and a whole lot of tension.

What the National Arts Centre did in this moment was in still they are a place to nurture care, not just authority. This is not a small thing.

Institutions have historically been places where people are tolerated, not held. Where people are observed, not centered. Where people are invited in moments of trendiness (cough Black square) but forgotten when the work requires consistency.

The NAC (big ups to Rose Ingrid) who showed what is possible when institutions stop asking how to attract diverse audiences and start asking how to design spaces that communities want to return to. When they move past optics and into relationship. When they understand that inclusion is not neutral. It is an active choice. Black Out Night was a beautiful evening.

And I hope more institutions are paying attention.