Winter 2026 Programming at the Workers Arts & Heritage Centre

For the Winter 2026 season, WAHC presents a solo exhibition by Jay Youngdahl and launches the first installment of renewed heritage exhibits, Work In Progress: Fightbacks! Visit the website to view all program offerings. Admission to WAHC is free and fully accessible.

Jay Youngdahl, Training Center 6 (detail), 2025. Image courtesy the artist.

Jay Youngdahl: I Don’t Want Your Millions (Billions), Mister

February 13 – April 11, 2026
Opening Reception: Friday, February 13, 6:30 – 8:30pm
WAHC’s CUPE/SCFP Gallery

Drawing on Jay Youngdahl’s experience working with trade unions as a lawyer, organizer, and member, I Don’t Want Your Millions (Billions), Mister proposes two ideas: that all workers are artists, and working people can build solidarity through collective struggle.

Featuring worker-made objects and documentation from trade apprenticeship centres from Alberta’s oil sands to Little Rock, Youngdahl showcases the creative expression of workers, recognizing their labour as art. Through exploring conversations about the working class with its members, Youngdahl investigates what it means to identify, belong, and create together as workers.

About the Artist

Jay Youngdahl is an artist and practicing union lawyer in the southern USA. He specializes in photography and thematic exhibitions. Before going to law school, Jay was a member of the Sheet Metal Workers (SMART), USW (Steelworkers), and NALC (Postal Workers). Since becoming a lawyer he has represented all major US unions, including many which have Canadian members.

Layla Staats in concert. Image courtesy of Layla Staats.

Join WAHC for a series of free public programs presented in support of Jay Youngdahl’s I Don’t Want Your Millions (Billions), Mister:

Opening Reception alongside WIP: Fightbacks!, with musical performance by land defender Layla Staats
Friday, February 13, 6:30 – 8:30pm

Virtual Artist Talk with Jay Youngdahl
Thursday, February 19, 6:30 – 8:30pm ET

IWD Sing-a-long with Tuesday Choir
Saturday, March 7, 1 – 3pm ET

Opportunities and Obstacles: Class Strength in North America Today, a virtual panel discussion with Jay Youngdahl, Sam Gindin, and Adolph Reed Jr
Thursday, March 26, 6:30 – 8:30pm ET

Images (left to right): Protesters march against the Cantonese BBQ Ban in Vancouver’s Chinatown, 1975. Photo courtesy University of British Columbia Archives and Rare Books, J. W. Chu fonds. Photo of AGO strikers on the picket line. Photo: Shawn Clarke.

Work in Progress: Fightbacks!

December 19, 2025 – December 17, 2028
Opening Reception: Friday, February 13, 6:30 – 8:30pm
WAHC’s CBTU/SMCC Hall of Labour

For centuries, working people have found ways of pushing back against injustice on the job, and in society.

The labour “fightbacks” explored in this first instalment of Work In Progress include collective actions like strikes, challenging racism and colonialism, and using art to make statements that push back against those in power. They illustrate how groups have challenged the status quo and organized for change across Canada and across time.

Work In Progress: Fightbacks! includes contributions from community curators Shawn Clarke and Stephanie Cormier of OPSEU Local 535; Mohawk land defender, musician, filmmaker and educator Layla Staats; and Vancouver-based artist Marlene Yuen.

Join us Friday, February 13, 6:30 – 8:30pm for a joint Opening Reception alongside I Don’t Want Your Millions (Billions), Mister, with musical performance by land defender Layla Staats.

A barricade at 1492 Land Back Lane. Image courtesy of Layla Staats.

About Work In Progress:

Work in Progress—a multi-phase redesign of the Workers Arts & Heritage Centre’s heritage exhibits unfolding until 2027—reimagines how working people’s stories are told, and who gets to tell them.

Experiences of labour and work are changing at a pace not seen in decades. This project positions our exhibits as an evolving process, and a long-term collaboration between WAHC and community members across the country.

Through Work In Progress, 30 snapshots in labour and people’s history will be honoured with the help of a group of community curators– workers, activists, artists and organizers from Hamilton and beyond. From land defenders to care work, tenant activism and mutual aid to unions of unemployed workers, Work In Progress honours and uplifts the many ways people have worked for a more just future across space and time.

Acknowledments

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.

WAHC acknowledges the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Hamilton, the Province of Ontario, the Canada Council for the Arts, CUPE National, Canada’s Building Trades Unions, OPSEU/SEFPO, the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario, and Teamsters Local Union 879 for their support of our exhibitions and ancillary programs.

Workers Arts & Heritage Centre
51 Stuart Street
Hamilton, ON L8L 1B5
wahc-museum.ca

Public hours:
Wednesday – Friday, 10am – 4pm
Saturday, 12 – 4pm

Workers Arts and Heritage Center is an accessible space. For more information, visit wahc-museum.ca/accessibility.

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Image Descriptions:
1. Brooms and steel beams lean up against a plywood wall.
2. A woman with beaded earrings and a wide-brimmed hat sings into a microphone.
3. One image with two panels: the left panel shows a group of people holding up a sign in Cantonese and English that reads “Save Chinatown: Support Chinese BBQ Products”; the right panel shows a person with a large cutout pipe on their chest that reads “Living Wages at the AGO: This is not a pipe dream.”
4. A yellow bus adorned with flags, banners, and graffiti sits across a torn-up street.