YORKTON – The pARTners Gallery located at the Yorkton Public Library is currently showcasing the works of Cultural Intelligence Facilitator, Wilbur Sargunaraj, from now until July 27.
"I'm a Cultural Intelligence Facilitator — that's just a fancy way of saying my work involves helping people make friends with other people from different cultures," said Sargunaraj in an interview with Yorkton This Week.
"Sargunaraj is a musician, photographer and certified Cultural Intelligence Facilitator based in Treaty 6 Territory, Saskatoon and Tamil Nadu India where he is the director of CQ Worldwide Consulting. His work takes him to International schools and organizations where he offers fun, interactive keynotes and workshops on Cultural Intelligence using music, dance and motivational speaking," read a press release from pARTners Gallery.
Sargunaraj said his love for other cultures came by way of his time spent as a touring musician.
"About two decades ago I was touring as a musician and that really connected me with so many different people . . . I started connecting with different people from different cultures and I always had been fascinated with developing relationships with people from different cultures."
Sargunaraj said that his interest in photography grew from his time spent editing videos where he would educate viewers on different subjects related to different cultures.
"I would document some of these videos when I was travelling as a musician," said Sargunaraj, "I started making these cultural videos and it started off as quirky toilet videos ... I made a video called 'How to use the Eastern toilet'."
"I think Youtube was in its infancy and I uploaded one just for the fun of it — "I thought, 'people need to learn how to use an Indian squatting toilet — all of the sudden people started knocking on my door saying, 'Hey Wilbur did you see your video? You know it went viral'.
It was at this point that Sargunaraj said people began to use his videos for educational purposes and his Youtube channel would eventually grow to a current 43,000 subscribers.
"To make a long story short, I started getting into the video end of things — I started compiling what started off as toilet videos from around the world but then that kind of grew into a more serious thing," said Sargunaraj.
"People were very interested in food so I started documenting and making different videos about food from different cultures," said Sargunaraj, noting he branched off into other cultural events and music.
"Naturally that kind of progressed into photography because I'm always trying to capture a shot," said Sargunaraj.
"For the last 15-20 years I've collected a series of photographs and I thought to myself when I became a Cultural Intelligence Facilitator — CQ (Cultural Intelligence) has been pushed more as an academic thing — I thought to myself, 'no one is actually explaining cultural intelligence to the common person'."
It was during COVID times that Sargunaraj's ideas would materialize.
"I thought why not create a virtual journey for people so they can increase their cultural intelligence right from where they're at," said Sargunaraj noting he had enough photographs to put together an exhibition that would document cultural values and cultural clusters or groupings from around the world.
"That's how it was born," said Sargunaraj, "the relationships and friendships formed by all these cross-cultural interactions are the inspiration behind the exhibit."
Sargunaraj explained that a cultural cluster is "a grouping of nations and they have shared beliefs and similar cultural values — an example would be Canada, Australia, New Zealand — countries which have English as the main language."
Sargunaraj said that though he does have an interest in photography, it's not the driving force behind the art.
"While I am interested in photography . . . I am more passionate and explaining to people about these interactions that took place and that's kind of the inspiration behind the exhibit," said Sargunarj, "there's more than 40 different photographs taken across all these different cultural clusters which people can learn about when they go to the exhibition."
"There's also photographs explaining specifically what is cultural intelligence and what CQ is — it's very simple — it's your ability to work effectively with people from different cultures," said Sargunaraj.
"It's something that I'm really passionate about because I see we need that so much here — both in Canada and around the world — we don't have to jump on a plane to increase our CQ — we don't have to step into different cultures — the cultures are coming here to Canada."
"That's just one aspect of it," said Sargunaraj, "if you dig deeper there's the whole aspect of our relationship with First Nations here in Canada as well ... for genuine reconciliation we need to understand what cultural intelligence is."
Sargunaraj said that his photography exhibition has its limitations.
"I can't share a lot of stories because it's an exhibition — at the heart of the exhibition it's all about relationships."
That being said, Sargunaraj is set to release a book about his stories and relationships in early 2024 and hopes to return to the city after its launch.
"I feel we can delve more into the relationship side of things as opposed to just seeing a bunch of pictures," said Sargunaraj on the subject matter of the upcoming book, "I really feel stories are some of the most important things."
Aside from the book, Sargunaraj said he has a busy fall ahead of himself.
"This fall I'll be partnering with OSAC (Organization of Saskatchewan Arts Councils) ... so we're doing the school tour called Exploring CQ. We have workshops for kindgarten up to junior high and also high school."
"Some of the small towns here in Sask. have so much immigration taking place and people coming in from different countries and how do we navigate this with all our differences and I think that's where cultural intelligence comes into play," said Sargunaraj.
"At the end of the day it's not about how many countries that you've visited because increased travel does not mean that you have increased CQ — it's really about increasing your CQ right here at home and we can all do that no matter where we are ... by really stepping out of our comfort zones and by really confronting our unconscious bias."
For more information on Cultural Intelligence and Wilbur Sargunaraj, visit www.wilbur.asia, wilbursargunaraj on Youtube or follow @wilburworldwide on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Twitter.
