Workers Arts & Heritage Centre

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Workers Arts & Heritage Centre Canada's only national labour history museum and arts centre, housed in Hamilton's historic Custom House.

✨Meet our Work in Progress: Survival and Dignity community curators, Kwentong Bayan Collective! ✨Kwentong Bayan Collecti...
10/15/2026

✨Meet our Work in Progress: Survival and Dignity community curators, Kwentong Bayan Collective! ✨

Kwentong Bayan Collective (KBC) is a Toronto-based artist collective. 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.” A major part of KBC’s work is in collaboration with Filipino migrant care workers, who support Canadian families to care for children, elders, and those with complex medical needs.

In 2025-2026, Kwentong Bayan Collective are participating in the Eastern Comma Artists-in-Residence Program, an initiative of the Musagetes Foundation that has its roots in a long-time programming relationship with the rare Charitable Research Reserve. KBC’s comic on the history of the Live-in Caregiver Program was published in the award-winning book, Drawn to Change: Graphic Histories of Working Class Struggle. KBC created a Visual Timeline of Caregiving Work in Canada poster that examines the 150+ year history of care work by indigenous and racialized women. Subsequently, this work has been published in textbooks, taught in high schools, colleges and universities, and presented at galleries in Toronto, Mississauga, Hamilton, and Noisel, France.

Work In Progress: Survival and Dignity is now on view in WAHC’s OPSEU/SEFPO Gallery. Pay is a visit and see for yourself.

Work in Progress: Survival and Dignity is presented in partnership with the Hamilton Community Foundation. Work In Progress is made possible through the Alfred & Joan Robertshaw Memorial Fund of the Hamilton Community Foundation, the Atkinson Foundation, and supporters of WAHC’s Legacy Fund. 

📸: Kwentong Bayan Collective, 2026

Kwentong Bayan
Hamilton Community Foundation

Are you between the ages of 16-29 and interested in workers’ rights, social justice, and labour arts & heritage? Looking...
10/14/2026

Are you between the ages of 16-29 and interested in workers’ rights, social justice, and labour arts & heritage? Looking to get involved in your local community? Join WAHC’s 2026-27 Youth Council!

Youth Council members shape WAHC programming & learn hands-on skills by developing a youth-led project throughout the year. There’s opportunities to connect with like-minded workers, and learn about contemporary issues in labour arts & heritage from professionals in the field.

Potential project inspiration: Create a workshop on how to organize your barista job, host wheatpaste poster-making sessions, collect oral histories from multigenerational activists, curate an exhibit about Labour Futurisms, and more! 

⏱️Time commitment is 2 meetings per month. 
🗺️Members can be local and non-local to Hamilton, ON.

We'll have our first meeting/info session on Friday November 6, from 6-7pm. You can join virtually or come in-person to WAHC. 

To receive the Zoom link, please register at the link in bio Workers Arts & Heritage Centre

FYI previous Youth Council projects can be viewed WAHC Youth Council and Youth Council WAHC

Artist Laura Rojas created a set of four postcards reflecting on the realities of labour injustice and exploitative food...
10/08/2026

Artist Laura Rojas created a set of four postcards reflecting on the realities of labour injustice and exploitative food systems experienced by migrant workers in Canada. Prompted by Anahí Gonzales and Katie Lawson’s residency at the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre, Rojas created the central images on each card using analogue cut-paper techniques. The postcards pair images with messages that invite participants to write to the Prime Minister’s office, physically adding their voices to demand for full labour rights and permanent status for all migrant workers. 

Tonight’s artist residency event, “Local” Food, Migrant Labour: Residency Reflections, will be the kick off of community engagement with this mail-in advocacy campaign supporting migrant justice in Ontario.
If you can’t make it to the event with Gonzales and Lawson Workers Arts & Heritage Centre, you can stop by the gallery during open hours to take a postcard, print your message, and place it in the mailbox. We will post your message to the Prime Minister via letter mail.

Laura Rojas is a Colombian-born, Tkaronto-based community-engaged artist, educator, and graphic designer who lives and works between both places. Her work is rooted in themes of diaspora and migration, popular education for social change, community-led agriculture, and arts-based learning. She is interested in using art and design as tools for education, mobilization, and social participation, as well as exploring how the arts can support community-building, strengthening our connections between each other and the world around us. You can find more of her work on instagram: Laura Rojas. 

Photo credit: Image of Laura Rojas by Hugo Cárdenas
Image credit: Postcard design by Laura Rojas, 2026.

Now on view on our website: The UAW Canadian Edition Newspaper Collection. 📰 This collection, originally owned by Harry ...
10/07/2026

Now on view on our website: The UAW Canadian Edition Newspaper Collection. 📰

This collection, originally owned by Harry Rowe, was donated to WAHC by Nicci Cohnstaedt in 2025. The collection includes 123 Canadian Edition, United Automobile Worker newspapers, accompanied by a scrapbook, scans, clippings, event information booklet, and a board of collaged clippings.

The original owner and compiler of this collection, Harry Rowe, was the Canadian UAW’s first Publicity Director, editor for the Canadian UAW newspaper in the 1940s, and secretary of the Toronto Newspaper Guild (now referred to as the South Ontario Newspaper Guild, or SONG).

The collection contains original Canadian Edition, United Automobile Worker newspapers from 1940 to 1947. These newspapers contain news stories centered around workers’ rights, strike and meeting announcements, and celebrations of gains achieved by the union. They include stories of women and people of colour within the union and involved in labour activism, fighting for equitable treatment and employment security.

Explore this fascinating collection yourself via the link below, and using the visual instructions included here! ✨

https://wahc-museum.ca/group-detail/?dataId=18732

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Join Anahí González and Katie Lawson on October 8, 6:30 - 8:30 pm at WAHC for an evening of conversation, reflection, an...
10/03/2026

Join Anahí González and Katie Lawson on October 8, 6:30 - 8:30 pm at WAHC for an evening of conversation, reflection, and collective engagement around migrant labour and food systems, drawing from their summer residency.

Together we will intervene in the migrant worker contract between Canada and Mexico, adding text, questioning its language, and sharing stories and reflections about labour. The evening will end over tamales and writing postcards designed by Laura Rojas, inviting participants to draft messages to the Prime Minister.

Intervention, conversation, advocacy, and tamales! Space is limited, so please register. Go to the link in bio Workers Arts & Heritage Centre to register.

Image1: The Harvest Stays. Postcard design by Laura Rojas, 2026. 
Image2: Annotated contract for the employment in Canada of seasonal agricultural workers from Mexico, 2026. Image provided by Anahí González and Katie Lawson.

Anahí González
katie lawson
Laura Rojas
Creative Food Research Collaboratory
Mexican kitchen

Tomorrow, WAHC is popping up at Telling Tales Festival! Join us 9:30-5pm to create one of a kind posters celebrating how...
10/02/2026

Tomorrow, WAHC is popping up at Telling Tales Festival!

Join us 9:30-5pm to create one of a kind posters celebrating how to be good stewards of the land.

This activity is geared towards children ages 6-8. We welcome festival goers to our both to explore stories about land defenders and environmentalists through books, displays and interactivity. We’ll be at Royal Botanical Gardens Canada Hendrie Park in Festival Zone F3.

Telling Tales

October is Women's History Month in Canada and to mark the occasion we are digging into the WAHC permanent collection to...
10/01/2026

October is Women's History Month in Canada and to mark the occasion we are digging into the WAHC permanent collection to share a piece of important but often overlooked history.

This pin, from our collection, was created to show solidarity with the strikers during what became known as The Fleck Strike.

This landmark labour action began in March of 1978 when 80 low paid workers, all women ranging in ages from 16-65, walked out to demand better working conditions at Fleck Manufacturing, a small auto-wiring plant just outside of London, Ontario. The women had been enduring unsafe conditions that resulted in frequent injuries and subjected to sexual harassment from their male coworkers.

Despite a bitter five month fight against management the strikers successfully organized with the United Auto Workers and were instrumental in codifying sexual harassment as a crime in Canadian labour law. The strike also made union security mandatory in Ontario and ensured that women's rights were part of the UAW's bargaining platform moving forward. Despite this landmark win their fight has been reduced to a footnote. Until now.

The Fleck strike is the heart of the new play Sisters of '78, from Hamilton playwright Kristen Da Silva and is on stage now at Theatre Aquarius until October 18th. Da Silva spent two years researching the strike and spoke to women who were there and their experiences laid the foundation for the show.

Don't miss the opportunity to learn about this important piece of women's and labour rights history at Theatre Aquarius.

We're delighted that WAHC ED, Tara Bursey, will be part of a pre-show panel as part of UNION NIGHT tonight. Grab yourself a ticket today using the promo code: UNION.

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Today, WAHC observes the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Our Centre will remain closed, with staff off-duty. ...
09/30/2026

Today, WAHC observes the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Our Centre will remain closed, with staff off-duty.

WAHC stands in solidarity with Indigenous communities impacted by the residential school system today, and every day.

One way WAHC strives to support Indigenous self-determination and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) is by ensuring Indigenous labour and activist histories are woven through all the work we do, guided by the leadership of Indigenous artists and community members.

Launched in early 2026, the redesign of our heritage exhibits includes one curated by artist and activist Layla Staats about 1492 Landback Lane– a land defense camp led by Six Nations community members resisting a proposed housing development project. The development was planned on the Haldimand Tract, land stretching along the Grand River promised to the Haudenosaunee in the 1784 Haldimand Proclamation.

Land defenders planted gardens, held cultural events, built barricades, and hosted rallies at the encampment. Allies, including union workers and leaders, supported the encampment. Ultimately, the work of Landback Lane successfully pressured developer Foxgate Development to back out of the project in 2021. Land defenders still occupy 1492 Land Back Lane, exercising their sovereignty to protect the land for generations to come.

This exhibit asks: How can Indigenous and non-Indigenous workers come together to protect water, land, and Indigenous ways of life?

We invite you to join us in considering this question on this important day.

📸1: Land Back Lane photographs, 2020s; Corn husk doll, 2020s by Elizabeth Doxtator; Braided white corn, 2020s. All objects on loan from Layla Staats. Image: Ada Bierling

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The Workers Arts and Heritage Centre recognizes operational funding support from the Ontario Arts Council (OAC) through ...
09/26/2026

The Workers Arts and Heritage Centre recognizes operational funding support from the Ontario Arts Council (OAC) through the Ontario Arts Operating Fund, Multi and Inter-Arts Organizations. This funding supports our mandate to present arts of all disciplines—visual, theatre, music, literary and beyond—that help honour and uplift the history and culture of working people.

At the time of writing this, our 2026 attendance and participation has matched our total attendance and participation in 2025! This is a testament to our role as a unique, inclusive arts presenter with a growing local and regional audience.

So far in 2026, we have presented the work of 25 artists, speakers and facilitators, partnered with 10 organizations, and supported two artists-in-residence. Our work bridges arts, heritage and advocacy in ways found in few other places, all under the roof of Custom House—a heritage building and National historic site that we are the proud stewards of.

Share your appreciation for all we do. Visit us, participate, and buy a membership. Support arts and culture in your community, and vote for it at the ballot box. The arts contributes to our quality of life, our sense of belonging, and movement building.

“Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew. Yes, it is bread we. fight for, but we fight for roses, too.“ —James Oppenheim, “Bread and Roses,” inspired by words by Helen Todd.

Robin Lennox
Ontario Arts Council | Conseil des arts de l’Ontario
Ontario Government

Address

51 Stuart Street
Hamilton, ON
L8L1B5

Opening Hours

Wednesday 10am - 4pm
Thursday 10am - 4pm
Friday 10am - 4pm
Saturday 12pm - 4pm

Telephone

+19055223003

Website

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