Jade Music Festival and Awards is focused on creating and hosting a platform for an equitable and safe space for all Canadians. We aim to elevate the underrepresented languages in Canada, which will further the normalization and bridge the gap of equality amongst the IBPOC communities in Canada. Canadians have absolutely everything to gain and nothing to lose by supporting the elevation and normalization of its IBPOC peoples. By supporting the normalization of the IBPOC, Canadians we are helping countries of the world to establish better business with Canadians. Canada’s language, ethnicity, and cultural diversity is indeed its biggest strength. We at SWACT aim to make all Canadians aware of this.

IBPOC live music workers are disproportionately represented as artists, rather than entrepreneurs/owners and workers. Survey results revealed that gender diversity, sexual orientation diversity, and having a disability is more common among IBPOC live music workers. Because these facets of identity are underrepresented in the population at large and may be experienced as marginalized, it is likely that discriminatory and tokenistic experiences in live music are intersectional in nature. This further suggests that solutions to overcoming discrimination must likewise be intersectional in design. (Quoted from Closing the Gap) 

It is SWACT’s mission and reason for existing to create and host the JMFA platform for Canada’s  “Closing the Gap” initiatives. By leveraging the representation of underrepresented Canadians, we are creating better opportunities and better business for all peoples of Canada. To elevate the IBPOC music industry into Canadian mainstream life and media, Jade Music Festival and Awards will be the centerpiece of the “Closing the Gap” initiative, as the absolute opposition of tokenism and exclusion.

It should be known that countries in Asia have the most vibrant, evolving, and technologically advanced music industries in the world. SWACT’s aim is to provide that Asianic business to Canada, and to make it available to all Canadians. JMFA wants to elevate all Canadians and help Asian countries understand that Canada is the absolute best place for the Asian entertainment industries to do business outside of Asia. We believe it is SWACT’s role and obligation to be at the forefront of the Closing the Gap initiatives for the IBPOC communities. The Jade Music Festival and Awards show is the perfect opportunity to do this, with the City of Vancouver showing how much it loves and appreciates its beautiful diversity.