Blockstar Collective

Nala Haileselassie

BlockStar Collective is an 16mm analogue film workshop collective inviting youth ages 14-18 from priority neighbourhoods to experiment with the filmmaking through radical film education, workshops and the creation of a collective 16mm film. Through BlockStar Collective, youth filmmakers will be supported in investigating their changing neighborhoods, and what it means to grow up in Toronto and how our stories of migration and living here are disparate yet overlapping. How can we learn from each other's homes, families and blocks?  The workshop series will culminate in works to be shared publicly through a community film screening.

Field Research

Moe Pramanick

“I wish we’d met someone who knew us, to remind me that you and I existed beyond our bubble – for better, were we to forget ourselves, and for worse, were we to think that this was all there is.” — Yasmine Haj

Field Research invited South Asian youth to unearth, investigate and share their families’ migration stories. Over the course of four gatherings, participants used arts-based approaches to navigate the questions: How did you arrive here? How can we work together to document our collective histories? How will this inform where we want to go next? The project culminated in a public group exhibition showcasing works and works-in-progress developed throughout the workshop series.

Special thanks to our program site partner, Misbah Ahmed (Sehn Studio).

Another Way

Wend Yasen

“Poetry is…a bridge across our fears of what has never been before” -Audre Lorde

Another Way invites multilingual participants with tenuous & fragmented ties to language to explore storytelling practices beyond fluency. Through a series of interdisciplinary activities, prompted writing, and group conversation, participants will be asked to consider what poetry can teach us about noticing, living, and translating our lived experiences into a story. Participants will develop poetic scores — sets of creative instructions, gestures, prompts, or notations used to guide performance and artistic creation — which will shape the development and recording of their final works. The series will culminate in works to be shared publicly through an exhibition.

Solidarity Seeds

Anélia Victor and Fatin Ishraq

Solidarity Seeds engaged precarious urban agricultural workers across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) — those growing food under conditions that rarely feed them back. Despite meeting urgent needs for local, healthy food access, these workers continue to navigate hostile environments: ongoing discrimination, exploitative workloads, and workplace retaliation, particularly for queer and trans growers. Insights from a full-day gathering focused on co-learning urban agricultural and land liberation practices were transformed into a collective zine and a series of ceramic seedling pods — vessels that carry both story and seed — shared with the public through an exhibition.

Special thanks to our program site partner, Scadding Court Community Centre ( 707 Dundas St W, Toronto, ON, M5T 2W6), and presentation partner, Arcadia Art Gallery ( 680 Queens Quay W, Toronto, ON, M5V 2Y9)

Title to be announced

Emkay Adjei-Manu

Description to be shared.

Griefs and Glimmers

Harmeet Rehal

Griefs & Glimmers brings together high-risk, covid-aware 2SQTBIPoC artist-organizers to reflect on five years of care work in the pandemic. Through collaborative collage-making and archival practices, participants will explore the textures, griefs, and glimmers of harm reduction and community care. Rooted in accessibility and relational facilitation, this workshop series responds to an arts sector increasingly hostile to immuno-compromised communities. The project culminates in a group exhibition honouring the need for safer, creative, and immuno-accessible spaces to gather, connect, and co-create.

Special thanks to our program site partner, JAYU INC.