untold truths, series 01
montréal, qc

All the planets were aligned for the launch of Gia's first event, between the sun warming Montréal's streets to twenty-two degrees for the first time since the start of winter, and the energy of our guests, April 17th, 2026 was a luminous day, filled with love and hope. Nonprofit members, designers, writers, artists, booksellers, accountants, engineers, navigating cultural ecosystems, real estate, film, education, technology, and food services. I watched exchanges unfold between souls who, just minutes before, had been complete strangers.

Gathered in the new space at Brique par Brique, we improvised (but always with intention) this meeting to take the time to put words to things. Words about what isn't working in the grants system. Because the decade unfolding around us has taught us to identify, to denounce, to expose even to cancel. But cancel culture isolates. Gia re-enchants. So that morning, we formed three groups and worked in two phases: problems / solutions. To try to put on paper the experiences and challenges encountered throughout the process of researching and writing grant applications. Very quickly, a kind of creative momentum filled the room, suddenly everything made even more sense. We needed this conversation. We needed to lay it all out together.

Team 1 Team 2

As I meticulously digitize the one hundred and seventy-five sticky notes from the workshop, I suddenly come across these two words followed by an arrow pointing toward love: "feeling alone → finding resources & friends for support." In that moment, I understand what this entire ecosystem had been missing: dialogue, listening, human warmth. The genesis of Gia. And in the middle of all of this, the work beneath the work. Because these sticky notes, these untold truths, revealed territories of unexpected richness that we will explore to cultivate our connections, our dreams, and Gia.

Among the one hundred and seventy-five sticky notes, I sometimes read the same message, written with different words, in lowercase, in capitals, circled, punctuated, decorated… Signals for a real need for expression. Starting from your messages, we identified ten key perspectives:

untold truth #1: The inaccessibility of the system
untold truth #2: Language as a barrier to exclusion
untold truth #3: Time as an exhausted resource
untold truth #4: Unrecognized work / denied value
untold truth #5: The opacity of eligibility
untold truth #6: Competition and the grip of the system
untold truth #7: The project above the mission / the process
untold truth #8: Tokenization and instrumentalization
untold truth #9: The absence of feedback and institutional silence
untold truth #10: The structural exclusion of certain communities

From there, we identified five areas of influence to untangle, dissolve, and transform the myths and narratives that, over time, have built up around the public funding system. With one clear goal: to re-enchant the dialogue between financial partners and funded entities, ground the ecosystem in reality, and illuminate social elevation.

Territory #1: Mapping and access to information
Territory #2: Semantic translation: the heart of Gia
Territory #3: Upstream eligibility verification
Territory #4: Community and resource-sharing
Territory #5: Structural solutions beyond the tool

Today, Gia is a raw diamond that we are polishing together, little by little, with precision , thanks to the words that have finally found their place, and the ears that knew how to listen to the walls :)

Last Thursday, April 23rd, we have already begun onboarding artists and organizations to rewrite narratives in a way that is honest and current, with the goal of creating eighty profiles on Gia by September 2026. To take the time to talk, to listen, to meet. To understand experiences and feelings. To capture the essence of each project and translate it as authentically as possible. To weave the invisible threads that connect us, and bring them to light. Because we will be a solidarity cooperative, we will be able to seek funding ourselves once Gia becomes a proven model. How? Simply by playing with Gia. The more we use it, the more material we have to feed Gia, and the more we feed Gia, the more weight we carry in the eyes of our (future) financial partners. A virtuous circle!