Belonging often means entering a system whose values, references, and aesthetics were never built with you in mind. Alica Hall asks what gets lost in that exchange—and what it might look like to stop asking for entry altogether.
Alica Hall is the Executive Director of the Nia Centre for the Arts, Canada's first professional multidisciplinary Black arts centre. Drawing on her own experience building the centre in Toronto's Little Jamaica, she explores the cost of belonging to systems not designed for you, and what becomes possible when artists are seen without having to translate themselves. This special episode of The Conversation Piece features content from The Walrus Talks: Power and Belonging, supported by The Belonging Forum.
Hall spoke at The Walrus Talks: Power and Belonging in April 2026.
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