Amended SAA Bylaws
In February 2023, the SAA Board of Directors met to review and modernize the organization’s bylaws, which were last reviewed over 20 years ago. There are several amendments that were approved by the membership at the September 2023 AGM; they focus on the following areas:
- Making changes to simplify language, making our bylaws easier to understand and updating language to be more inclusive and gender-neutral.
- Refining our aims and objectives and shifting responsibilities for managing operational tasks from the board to SAA Staff.
- Clarifying who can serve as a director and simply defining how board terms work.
- Eliminating the Executive (President, Past-President, Secretary, Treasurer) and implementing two new positions, Board Liason and Financial Liason.
- Defining the duties of the Board of Directors
- Ensuring intersectional representation on the Board. The Board will endeavour to have 50% intersectional representation among the Directors. This includes Directors who self-identify as Indigenous persons, members of Racialized groups, Persons with a Disability, LGBTQIA2s+ persons, newcomers, youths, and elders. This also includes Directors who represent: diverse organizations (for example, grassroots as well as incorporated non-profits); individual artists and their media of practice; a variety of organizations (based on staff or budget sizes), and geographic locations, including urban and rural-based people. Board members are invited to bring their lived experience and not represent the entirety of any group.
