How Telling Tales is Writing a More Equitable Future

For over 15 years, Telling Tales has encouraged a love of reading by directly connecting youth and families with Canadian storytellers. Based in Hamilton, Ontario, the organization runs a signature festival and offers year-round interactive programming that invites children to read, write, and imagine. 

The Challenge

Telling Tales is at an exciting moment of change and growth. With a relatively new executive director, an evolving team, and the literary world facing shifting pressures, the organization recognized the need to re-evaluate its internal practices. That’s when they partnered with Evenings & Weekends Consulting (E&W) to set in motion a process of deep listening, reflection, and transformation.

According to Heather Kanabe, Telling Tales’ Executive Director, this was an opportunity to take a meaningful pause to ensure that the organization was truly reflecting its core values. “We wanted to take a deep look at all of our practices, from as many different directions as possible, to ensure they were prioritizing a lens of equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging,” Heather explains.

The Approach

In fall 2024, Telling Tales engaged E&W to review its policies and practices and offer recommendations to advance equity. We designed a Listening Campaign that included a survey and six focus groups (or “house meetings”) with staff as well as members of the Board, the selection advisory committee, and steering committee as well as local authors and community partners.

Our team sought to structure these nuanced conversations with intention, courage, and care, and to involve Telling Tales in co-creating our questions. Thankfully, we had a very willing team of collaborators! 

“We were very excited about the prospect of learning more,” says Telling Tales Board Member Jane Allison. “We wanted to know the tough messages as well as the positive things that we were doing. Harsh realities are important, because you can't fix what you don't acknowledge.” 

E&W Project Team

Rudayna Bahubeshi, Principal Strategist

Daniella Barreto, Strategist

What We Uncovered

Our listening campaign unearthed Telling Tales’ core strengths, which included being open to feedback and taking meaningful steps towards equity. 

• Progress on equity: Participants felt Telling Tales was genuinely seeking to do better when it comes to equity, diversity, and inclusion and they felt their concerns were heard. They observed meaningful changes being made, and not just “window-dressing diversity.”

• Fostering community partnerships: Respondents noted that Telling Tales has strong community partnerships. These relationships are making the festival and its programming more welcoming and inclusive by increasing the diversity of the books that the festival spotlights, the authors that it platforms, and the makeup of the Selection Advisory Committee.

• Championing accessibility: Respondents appreciated initiatives such as providing bus transportation to the festival, ASL translation, and compensation for the Selection Advisory Committee.

  
  

As for opportunities for improvement, pay equity surfaced as an issue. Telling Tales is a living wage employer, but as the cost of living is only increasing in Canada, some Telling Tales staff reported not being able to afford to live comfortably and meet their needs with their current salary. 

By helping open up those conversations, E&W supported Telling Tales in examining this and other areas for progress. As a result, staff and community members felt more comfortable sharing their experiences and offering suggestions on improving communication, representation, and clarity in decision making throughout the organization.   

“Pay is a deeply ingrained indicator of how people feel valued. Breaking open that barrier allowed us to break open other barriers. When we're having those candid conversations, it sets clear expectations all around that lead to better working situations, better collaborations, and better longevity and employee engagement.” — Jane Allison

Sharing personal experiences within a workplace can be a deeply uneasy experience for many people. To ensure that people feel confident that they won’t face repercussions for their honesty, E&W facilitators are trained in active listening and creating safer spaces for open conversations. At the start of our projects, we also ask that organizations commit to be transparent with participants about what findings were unearthed, to take action on the issues that they can address, and to communicate with their teams where change isn’t yet possible.  

“It's about deepening our capacity for conversations that can be uncomfortable. That, to me, was the biggest outcome. E&W gave us so many useful tools, we've got lots of steps to take, but my main takeaway is the process itself—welcoming the discomfort and having those brave conversations, and maybe forging a stronger, more honest connection because of that discomfort.” — Heather Kanabe

It was such a pleasure to work with Telling Tales on this equity audit. We're confident that the plan will provide strong momentum and clear direction for the organization as it embarks on its new strategic plan.

Interested in exploring an equity audit with Evenings & Weekends? Reach out to book an intro call!