Nala Haileselassie

BlockStar Collective is a film program inviting youth ages 14-18 from priority neighbourhoods in Toronto, ON to experiment with filmmaking through radical film education, hands-on production workshops and the creation of a collective film. Through the program, youth filmmakers will be supported in reflecting on themes of family, friendship, community, neighbourhood, change and belonging. Participants will collaboratively create a collective short film investigating how our stories within our current communities and everyday environments 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. BlockStar Collective is interested in experimental, emergent and exciting perspectives of youth in Toronto who have something to say about their apartment buildings, their plazas, their parks.

Apply to the Call for Participants before June 29, 2026!

Wend Yasen

Another Way is an experimental workshop program that invites multilingual participants based in and around Hamilton, ON with tenuous and 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 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 workshop series will culminate in works to be shared publicly through an exhibition. Another Way is interested in experimental, emergent, and expansive approaches to language and storytelling from participants navigating complex relationships to language and communication.

Apply to the Call for Participants before June 29,2026!

Emkay Adjei-Manu

Details coming soon.

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, Sehn Studio.

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 and presentation partner, Arcadia Art Gallery.

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.