MAKING THE CONNECTIONS: WRCF volunteer Roshan James wants to strengthen arts community

Roshan James
Photo credit: Mathew McCarthy

As an artist, Roshan James believes that being connected in the community is everything.

“You can’t really create in isolation, in a vacuum,” the Waterloo Region-area-based Tibetan-Indian poet, interdisciplinary artist and musician said. “Being connected to community is absolutely critical to an art practice from my own experience and perspective.

“It’s an enriched experience overall because you’re able to hear other ideas and how others are thinking about things. That inevitably informs your own practice, and you can help others, too. For me, there has to be that symbiosis.”

Ensuring that those enriched experiences can become available and ultimately shared throughout the community is part of what drives James in her various volunteer efforts, including recently becoming involved with Waterloo Region Community Foundation (WRCF).

She joined WRCF’s Community Grants committee about a year ago and soon after became a member of their Arts Grants committee. WRCF distributes Community Grants to organizations within Waterloo Region that provide support to local residents, while the Arts Grants Fund is an arts focused grant stream that provides funding to small and mid-sized arts organizations and collectives, as well as projects focused on the arts in Waterloo Region.

“I felt it was a really good opportunity to understand how WRCF operates, what the committees look like from the inside out, and what the processes are like,” James said of her decision to volunteer with WRCF. “It was eye-opening and a great learning experience — the groups that I was a part of were awesome, so shout out to them.”

James hasn’t worked with WRCF for a long time, but has so far come away impressed.

“The structure, the governance, the accountability, and having a really clear process in place for folks to be able to get involved,” she said. “You can trust the process, trust the people involved. There’s good due diligence along the way.”

As someone who has applied for arts grants in the past, James said she understands the challenges artists face — and knows the value of direct conversations related to those challenges.

“The more we can strengthen our arts community and the community overall by having those strong connections, and working through tough things together… you realize we can work through just about any challenge when there’s a great environment and respect around the table,” James said. “That’s an important observation that I’ve pulled from this whole experience. These are practices and values that we can apply to the community at large.”

Though James has a vast portfolio of art projects, she said she initially kept a low profile in the area after arriving from the Greater Toronto Area in 2007. In recent years, however, her published poetry books have “opened the door for me to be more aware of other community groups and what’s happening in the region,” and her volunteerism has dramatically increased.

It was in high school that James first became passionate about giving back, particularly in the areas of “grassroots movements and social justice.” She helped establish a youth drop-in centre in Whitby, Ont., where she served as a Volunteer Coordinator at age 16.

“Service in general was instilled in my brother and me, by our parents, as a very important value. You look for ways that you can help,” she said. “I grew up seeing people around me doing that and trying to help others, especially folks in need.”

Combining her passions for volunteering, the arts and activism has always made sense to James.

“My art is art-as-activism,” said James. “Looking for ways to put love into action, I would say, without making that sound trite, because it’s not. It’s truly the driving force. That was very early on something that made sense to me. I think it’s because it was modelled for me, and it felt like it was a part of life. It’s simply what you do.”

Supporting the arts community through WRCF has been “deeply rewarding,” James said, and so, too, has “being able to spot other opportunities and connect dots for folks. I love connecting dots for people and bringing people together in that way.”

James said her Tibetan-Indian roots drive much of her activism, and she’s doing her part to ensure representation in the region.

Ultimately, she said her volunteer work is about doing what she can, where she can.

“It’s important to me as one of my values, that I’m looking for ways to serve around our family, and then it circles out from there. It doesn’t make sense to me to be involved in the community without also giving back,” James said. “I think there has to be that fair exchange, and so being able to help out where I can… is part of being an aware, engaged and contributing member of the community and society in general.

“The benefits back are that I feel like I know what’s happening in the region, I can have a voice, and make an impact,” she added. “I’m not always going to be able to do all the things, but there are certain things that I definitely care about a lot. So, I’ve contributed a voice to those conversations.”

To see a list of WRCF’s current committees, visit wrcf.ca/committees. If you are interested in learning more about future volunteer opportunities with WRCF, you can submit an Expression of Interest form, and we will reach out if a volunteer position becomes available.