IBPOC Cultural Professionals Network
Connect with museum, gallery, and heritage IBPOC professionals from across British Columbia.
The IBPOC Network aims to help racialized workers and volunteers in the arts, culture, and heritage sector co-navigate career and workplace challenges through peer-to-peer mentorship, community-building initiatives, and professional development training.
We equip folks with tools, resources, and strategies to strengthen the professional agency of everyone who makes up this network. This is a space for a sector-based community, to ensure that you do not feel alone in these challenges. Our goal is to see higher employee retention, workplace wellbeing, and career stability for our members.
Curious about how we do this? Check out this online recording where we break down all the different levels of support that you can find here.
Programming for the network is guided by the 9 members of our IBPOC Network Advisory Group, who represent range of experience across this sector.
If you have any questions about the IBPOC Network or would like to share suggestions, please get in touch with Jazmin Hundal at communications@museum.bc.ca or Madison Bridal at outreach@museum.bc.ca.
News and Updates
NEWS
In-Person Sessions Are Back!
Join us for in-person Tea and Talks and Network Socials this year! Head to the 2025 Road Map for more info.
Popular Resource
Justification Letters
As we’ve travelled the province this year, many of you have shared with us how difficult it can be to explain the value of attending our sessions to your team.
So, we’ve written two letters that you can download to help with those conversations!
Popular Resources
Tea & Talk
Brew yourself a cup of tea and sit down with Madison and Jazmin to chat, seek advice, and get to know other cultural professionals of colour.
These sessions are always free, and don’t require registration.
Cultivating Careers Series
Join the BMCA for a new IBPOC Museum Professionals Network series on how to cultivate careers in the museum, heritage, and cultural sector.
This recurring series of sessions will focus on ways IBPOC museum, heritage, and cultural professionals can further their careers, encourage emerging IBPOC professionals, and navigate situations within their workplace all with the goal of strengthening IBPOC representation in the sector.
Feedback Survey
IBPOC Network sessions are regarded as safe spaces for all those who identify as IBPOC museum, heritage, and cultural professionals in what is colonially referred to as British Columbia. As such, the BCMA would like to learn additional ways the IBPOC Network can support these professionals.
Your responses will remain anonymous. Individuals can submit feedback more than once.
IBPOC Network Listserv
This Listserv provides a forum for IBPOC members of the arts, culture & heritage community to discuss issues and promote opportunities through a monitored mailing list.
Upcoming programming
Tea and Talk On The Road – Kelowna
May 23, 2024 / 2:00-4:00 PM
Join us for an in-person Tea and Talk at Okanagan Heritage Museum!
Gather together and get to know each other over tea, coffee, and snacks. This is a great place to ask for advice, co-navigate challenges together, and build a peer support network in your area.
Attendance is free, but we encourage you to register below and let us know if you have any dietary/accessibility needs.
Beyond the Margins: Networks Book & Media Club
June 11, 2025 / 12:00 – 1:00 PM
(with option to stay until 2:00 PM)
The IBPOC Network and 2SLGBTQIA+ Network are excited to join together to offer a book & media club this winter season! Beyond the Margins seeks to create a supportive intersectional space focused on community building in the arts, culture, and heritage sector. This growth-oriented network provides a space to learn from one another and build solidarity amongst queer and IBPOC folks through the exploration of diverse media.
For the spring/summer season of Beyond the Margins, we will be discussing media focused on the theme of “lessons from nature.” Our third session on June 11 will be a discussion of The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Hosting joint network events is intended as a way to celebrate and hold space for intersectionalities of identity and fill gaps in this type of programming – all who identify as IBPOC and/or 2SLGBTQIA+ are welcome!
Online Tea & Talk: Mentorship Edition
June 27, 2024 / 12:00-1:00 PM
The IBPOC Network is excited to present Tea and Talk: Mentorship Edition! Every few months, we’ll invite a guest mentor to join us for an online Tea and Talk, where they’ll answer your questions and provide career advice.
On June 27, we’re excited to welcome in Grace Wong-Sneddon! Grace is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in UVic’s Department of Art History and Cultural Studies, and sits on the board of the Victoria Chinatown Museum Society.
She’ll spend the first 10-15 minutes of the session sharing about her career and experiences, and then we’ll open it up to the group for an informal discussion.
This session is free, and open to anyone who identifies as IBPOC. Click the link below to join on the day of.
Why the name IBPOC (Indigenous, Black, and People of Colour)?
Originally launched under the name BIPOC Network, Indigenous BCMA members reached out and suggested using the term IBPOC to recognize that the discussions and activities facilitated through this network are taking place on the ceded, unceded, and sovereign territories of Indigenous communities across what is now referred to as British Columbia. The BCMA recognizes that we are uninvited guests on these territories and wish to centre this network around respect and reconciliation.
We recognize that grouping such distinct identities together suggests an interchangeability that fails to articulate the differential ways that racialized people experience race and racism and will continue to evolve and update our language in consultation with the community.
This Network was inspired by the #MuseumsAreNotNeutral Webinar in June 2020. Watch the webinar
Check out this recent webinar:
Community-centred Approaches to Museum Exhibits and Programs
The IBPOC Museum Professionals Network was joined by culture executive, Karen Carter for an informative webinar on community-centred approaches to museum exhibits and programs. Participants learnt how to become a co-conspirator for DEIA, build relationships not just partnerships, and what a call-and-response communications model is.
Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Justice
Explore our growing collection of resources on equity and justice.
