Now in its 40th year, the annual Mayworks Festival of Working People & the Arts is once again weaving arts and activism together through performances, talks, exhibits and socials.
Here are my highlights so far, and what I’m looking forward to.
The festival opened on May 2 to a packed audience in the Steelworkers Hall downtown for “Who’s Afraid of Labour Justice?” Local poet Farah Ghafoor got the event rolling with a live reading, reminding us of how fear can live in the body in unconscious ways.
In the panel discussion that followed, Amazon worker Charlie Simmons spoke about the many layers of fear that workers there feel, including the fear of being silently mistreated on the job and fear of being targeted by the company for speaking up for yourself. Labour organizer Hassan Husseini also spoke about fears unionized workers have about going on strike, and panelists spoke about overcoming these fears.
The event was curated by local writer Furqan Mohamed, and the “Who’s Afraid of Labour Justice?” exhibition is up in Charles Street Video at 76 Geary Ave., showcasing the work of Farah Ghafoor, Nahomi Amberber and Saysah.
A couple days later, the films West Indies: Fugitive Slaves of Liberty (1979) and Souleymane’s Story (2024) were shown. The older film depicts the long history of colonialism and slavery in the Caribbean, as well as resistance to these systems. The more recent film turns the camera to Paris where Souleymane, an undocumented Guinean, bikes around as a food courier for one of the big apps. He lives in a homeless shelter and in his time off work he prepares for his asylum interview.
While time separates the two films, the concepts of freedom, time and penalty repeat over the generations.
Happening now, I recommend checking out the We Are Free solo exhibit of Andre Mandela Lopez’s art at the newly-renovated Wildseed Centre on Cecil Street downtown.
On Thursday, May 15, there is a sold-out screening of the archival film Tall el-Zataar (1977), which documents the 1976 massacre of Palestinian and Lebanese refugees in Beirut. The film was damaged in the 1982 Israeli invasion, and this version was restored by filmmaker Monica Maurer and artist Amily Jacir.
On Friday, May 16, Krish Dineshkumar’s Derailing Dignity soundscape art installation opens at Whippernapper Gallery. Dineshkumar brings the sounds of food delivery bikers in Toronto, displaying the poor labour standards, lack of respect and the exploitation these migrant workers face.
The screening of Monica Cheema’s To Look, and to Look Again on May 23 gives viewers a chance to see a film-in-progress about using Google landscape view to see precarious labour conditions on farms across Canada, complicating the idealized landscape images we might have of farms.
And on May 24, Palestinian writer Haidar Eid will be launching his new book, Banging on the Walls of the Tank: Dispatches from Gaza, published by Toronto-based Between the Lines. The book compiles two decades of writing from inside Gaza to give us a sense of what life is like there, and Eid discusses political alternatives and prospects for a just peace.
This year, the festival is also making available its archive of programs from every year going back to 1986, providing a unique way to see the history of labour arts. It is available at mayworks.ca.
Enjoy what the festival has left to offer by exploring the remarkable art and the stories of everyday people like you and me.
This article appeared in the 2025 Summer issue.