Kwentong Bayan Collective
photo by Haseena Manek
Kwentong Bayan is a collective of two Toronto-based artists, Althea Balmes and Jo SiMalaya Alcampo. Their artistic mandate is to explore a critical and intersectional approach to community-based art, labour, and education. In the Filipino language, "kwentong bayan" is the literal translation of "community stories".
Kwentong Bayan Collective have completed artist residencies with Art City St. James Town, SOY's Art & Mentorship Program for LGBTQ2S* Spectrum Youth, and the . Kwentong Bayan has organized self-defense workshops for Live-in Caregivers that promote personal safety in their home and workplace in partnership with Guro JB Ramos of Combat Science: Warrior Arts of Asia.
Althea and Jo are developing the comic book, Kwentong Bayan: Labour of Love in collaboration with migrant caregivers, who work in Canada under the Caregiver Program. Excerpts have been published in The Peak, Our Times, Briarpatch, and Ricepaper Magazine 19.4 on Asian and Asian Canadian activism, and featured in the Imaginings Project: Comics and the Anthropological Imagination curated by the Centre for Imaginative Ethnography.
Kwentong Bayan Collective contributed a 10-page mini-comic about the history of the Live-in Caregiver Program to the Graphic History Project. It was published online by the Graphic History Collective from 2014-2015.
Kwentong Bayan's 10-page mini-comic on the history of the Live-in Caregiver Program is featured in the anthology, Drawn to Change: Graphic Histories of Working Class Struggle, edited by the Graphic History Collective with historian, Paul Buhle. The book is published by Between the Lines Press. Drawn to Change was awarded the 2017 Canadian Historical Association Public History Prize, and the 2017 Wilson Book Prize for making Canadian history accessible to transnational audiences.
In 2017, the Graphic History Collective commissioned Kwentong Bayan to create one of twelve, "Remember | Resist | Redraw" posters to intervene in the Canada 150 conversation. Kwentong Bayan's poster examines the 150+ year history of care work performed by racialized women in Canada, and includes a contextual essay by Dr. Ethel Tungohan.
From 2017-2018, Kwentong Bayan participated in the Artists in the Library Program and partnered with the Toronto Public Library to create a weekly Comics/Komiks Meet-up for community members to create and receive mutual support.
In June 2019, Kwentong Bayan created a public programming series, to recognize the inaugural convergence of National Indigenous People’s month and National Filipino Heritage Month, in partnership with Mississauga Culture and the Small Arms Inspection Building. This project was entitled, HABI: Weaving Stories of Migrant Labour and Indigenous Resurgence. The month-long program explored Indigenous history, labour, migration, and our relationship with the land.
Kwentong Bayan Collective is honoured to be Myseum of Toronto's 2020/2021 Artist Collective in Residence. In May-June 2020, we co-present, Stories of Collective Care in the Time of Covid-19 - a series of online conversations exploring collective care in Toronto and beyond through panel discussions and storytelling.
Kwentong Bayan Collective has received support from the Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, and have been awarded the Min Sook Lee Labour Arts Award for artists who have captured the values of labour and social justice in their work.
Kwentong Bayan Collective have completed artist residencies with Art City St. James Town, SOY's Art & Mentorship Program for LGBTQ2S* Spectrum Youth, and the . Kwentong Bayan has organized self-defense workshops for Live-in Caregivers that promote personal safety in their home and workplace in partnership with Guro JB Ramos of Combat Science: Warrior Arts of Asia.
Althea and Jo are developing the comic book, Kwentong Bayan: Labour of Love in collaboration with migrant caregivers, who work in Canada under the Caregiver Program. Excerpts have been published in The Peak, Our Times, Briarpatch, and Ricepaper Magazine 19.4 on Asian and Asian Canadian activism, and featured in the Imaginings Project: Comics and the Anthropological Imagination curated by the Centre for Imaginative Ethnography.
Kwentong Bayan Collective contributed a 10-page mini-comic about the history of the Live-in Caregiver Program to the Graphic History Project. It was published online by the Graphic History Collective from 2014-2015.
Kwentong Bayan's 10-page mini-comic on the history of the Live-in Caregiver Program is featured in the anthology, Drawn to Change: Graphic Histories of Working Class Struggle, edited by the Graphic History Collective with historian, Paul Buhle. The book is published by Between the Lines Press. Drawn to Change was awarded the 2017 Canadian Historical Association Public History Prize, and the 2017 Wilson Book Prize for making Canadian history accessible to transnational audiences.
In 2017, the Graphic History Collective commissioned Kwentong Bayan to create one of twelve, "Remember | Resist | Redraw" posters to intervene in the Canada 150 conversation. Kwentong Bayan's poster examines the 150+ year history of care work performed by racialized women in Canada, and includes a contextual essay by Dr. Ethel Tungohan.
From 2017-2018, Kwentong Bayan participated in the Artists in the Library Program and partnered with the Toronto Public Library to create a weekly Comics/Komiks Meet-up for community members to create and receive mutual support.
In June 2019, Kwentong Bayan created a public programming series, to recognize the inaugural convergence of National Indigenous People’s month and National Filipino Heritage Month, in partnership with Mississauga Culture and the Small Arms Inspection Building. This project was entitled, HABI: Weaving Stories of Migrant Labour and Indigenous Resurgence. The month-long program explored Indigenous history, labour, migration, and our relationship with the land.
Kwentong Bayan Collective is honoured to be Myseum of Toronto's 2020/2021 Artist Collective in Residence. In May-June 2020, we co-present, Stories of Collective Care in the Time of Covid-19 - a series of online conversations exploring collective care in Toronto and beyond through panel discussions and storytelling.
Kwentong Bayan Collective has received support from the Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, and have been awarded the Min Sook Lee Labour Arts Award for artists who have captured the values of labour and social justice in their work.
