Curator Helena Reckitt designed the exhibition Habits of Care as a response to “the notoriously unregulated art world, in which the ideology of ‘labours of love’ justifies ubiquitous underpayment of those who derive their livelihoods from the sector.” As part of this response, the exhibition included a selection of protocols, policies, and proposals for cultural care—from existing museum policies on the treatment of human remains and expropriated objects, to more recent activist efforts such as those of W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy) certification for arts organizations, and the CARFAC (Canadian Artists’ Representation/ Le Front des artistes canadiens) Policy Proposition for an Artist’s Resale Right in Canada. The selection also featured unrealized proposals, such as Seth Seigelaub and Robert Projansky’s Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement, a document aiming to protect artists’ rights as their work circulated within the art world’s commercial systems.

London-based composer, vocalist, and improviser Lisa Busby translated several of these propositions into a series of experimental scores, then interpreted and animated vocalist and conductor Christine Duncan and The Element Choir. The resulting live realizations, Protocols, Policies, and Proposals Performed, were sung by The Element Choir, led by Duncan at various locations on the University of Toronto Mississauga campus in an effort to create an open and mobile form to define and influence cultural care.