Paul Salvatori

“I’m really concerned about how the marginalized – whether we’re talking about the homeless, the racialized, the low income – do not have an amplified voice in the mainstream,” Salvatori says. “Typically, we have educated, professional people writing stories about them (in media and academic studies), but what I would like to create is an initiative … where they can tell their own stories on their own terms.”

That vision could include providing tools and training to enable writing, documentary video, podcasting and photography. Salvatori says the important point is that “they are the authors instead of the subject. Instead of the ones being talked about, they are the ones doing the talking.”

Recording under just his surname, Salvatori is now using his skills as an artist to “shine a light” on homelessness in Toronto, which he describes as “a public health disaster that we’ve kind of just normalized.

“I was thinking a lot about music, not just as entertainment or an art form, but as a tool to communicate important ideas with political relevance,” he says, citing Leonard Cohen and Jamaican dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson as inspirations. source