{"id":37444,"date":"2026-01-08T14:32:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T19:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=37444"},"modified":"2026-01-15T13:40:36","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T18:40:36","slug":"revolution-now-aims-to-rise-together-to-support-youth-making-social-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/revolution-now-aims-to-rise-together-to-support-youth-making-social-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Revolution Now aims to \u201cRise Together\u201d to support youth making social change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As 2SLGBTQ+ see their lives becoming increasingly politicized, a local group is striving to create platforms \u201cwhere they can be celebrated and loved.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Revolution Now was founded four years ago by local teacher Megan Glanfield with an aim to create visibility, opportunity and community for marginalized and racialized people and, since its inception, has raised tens of thousands of dollars to support youth through scholarships and donations to non-profits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Friday, January 9, their work \u2013 along with works of the individuals they have supported \u2013 will be in the spotlight as Revolution Now partners with Royal Rose Gallery to host Rise Together. Running from 6 \u2013 9 p.m., the event will showcase work of scholarship winners Justin Gray, Ava Dedier, Alyssa Morgan, and Michael Freitas, and raise much-needed funds for their 2026 scholarship program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRevolution Now started four years ago as a social enterprise that was built out of a response to homophobia and transphobia in public schools,\u201d says Glanfield, noting she witnessed this firsthand as a teacher. \u201cSince then, we\u2019ve generated over $32,000 for marginalized youth, either through scholarships or through non-profits that we\u2019ve donated to, [focusing] on Black, Indigenous, and 2SLGBTQ+ youth and artists who support those communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think we live in a time where people feel they don\u2019t have agency. I think we often turn on the news and we\u2019re discouraged and disheartened by the time and the news around us, and I think Revolution Now is the counterbalance to that. Our organization reminds people that we have agency all the time, and that we can develop and envision the world that we want to be a part of. Through the arts and learning about people from different life experiences than maybe our own, we can share in creating something that\u2019s really beautiful that envisions something better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is shaping up to be an exciting year for Revolution Now as they pivot away from their origins as a social enterprise to a non-profit model that will help them rise to the next level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As they work towards that long-held goal, Friday\u2019s event will be a celebration of the journey thus far and the individuals helped along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m super-excited about this event and it\u2019s something we haven\u2019t done this way before \u2013 it\u2019s a showcase of our first four years and the people who are in it,\u201d says Glanfield, turning her attention to the youth. \u201cI think the world needs to see their work, needs to see their message, needs to see their vision of what the world can be. Justin Gray has been amazing and with our organization for a long time, and was one of the winners of our Black Excellence Scholarships. Now he\u2019s a student at OCAD University and is an amazing artist who is going to take the world by storm. He\u2019s one of those people where, if you go to the event, you\u2019re going to say, \u2018I knew him before he was big.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dedier, another winner of the Black Excellence Scholarship, has just started a non-profit of her own, while Freitas, a member of the 2SLGBTQ+ community, is a visual artist, fashion designer, and author who has served as Poet Laureate for the Rainbow Awards, a key initiative spearheaded by Revolution Now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re really excited about our fourth-annual Rainbow Awards and we\u2019re very thankful to the York Regional Police and the York Region Catholic teachers who have traditionally funded scholarships with us,\u201d says Glanfield. \u201cThe Rainbow Awards are a celebration of 2SLGBTQ+ youth and I think in a time where \u2013 and I am going to use the word \u2018queer\u2019 as an umbrella term that represents all those letters in the alphabet \u2013 at a time where queer youth are often having their lives politicized, what we\u2019re doing is the opposite. We\u2019re creating platforms where they can be celebrated and loved, and encouraged to be exactly who they are, where they are right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think when we start talking about creating the world we want through the arts, it\u2019s done one small step at a time. We\u2019re a very grassroots organization that\u2019s just starting to grow and we appreciate all the people of Newmarket and Aurora who have helped us start, who believed in us and believed in what we were talking about: that the world can be better and can be better through community, visibility and opportunity. The more we get to know each other, the better we can make the world around us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information on Revolution Now, including tickets to the January 9 event, visit revolution-now.ca.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As 2SLGBTQ+ see their lives becoming increasingly politicized, a local group is striving to create platforms \u201cwhere they can be celebrated and loved.\u201d Revolution Now was founded four years ago by local teacher Megan Glanfield with an aim to create visibility, opportunity and community for marginalized and racialized people and, since its inception, has raised […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9JW","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-12 04:56:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37444"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37445,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37444\/revisions\/37445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}