EDUCATION PROGRAM

Have you ever had an idea for a film but had no idea where you’d find the money to make it yourself? This course will walk participants through development to finishing touches on making high-quality short films, with low to no budgets. Filmmaking can be an expensive medium; however, this course will help guide member artists on tips to maximize their budget and where they can save money. Additionally, there will be a strong focus on crafting high-quality films that will stand out and get industry opportunities.By the end of the course, participants will learn how to make a short film, gain new resources, pick up problem-solving skills tailored to film production, and acquire industry insight on how to make money from short films.Class Objectives:- Empower artists with the skill set they need to make high-quality films with micro budgets- Learn best practices for film sets and networking tips to support emerging media careers- To produce a festival-bound short film made with low to no budget. Please note that class participants must have access to a device that can film videos and a device that can edit videos; smartphones are recommended.

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Lauren Eden is a freelance filmmaker and facilitator working in Toronto. Her filmmaking style can be described as absurdist feminist fairytales; however,she loves the opportunity to work on any female-focused stories. Her sophomore short My Digital Boyfriend (2024) was a finalist in Season 17 of the CBC Short Film Face Off and is currently screening on CBC Gem. Her directorial debut is Lavenza (2024), an absurdist, anachronistic dark fairytale inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and old Hollywood cinema. The film is has screened in over 50 festivals internationally, has won numerous awards, and is available on Crypt TV’s YouTube channel. She is excited to teach her first course after leading a two-day emerging filmmaker workshop in May 2026 at Creston, BC's Bleeding Tree Film Festival. She hopes to help provide more emerging filmmakers with the tools to create a fabulous body of work.

Monday

12PM - 2PM

Online

Oct 19 - Nov 23

Building a career as an artist often means navigating funding, exhibitions, and residencies with little guidance. This course is designed to demystify that process by providing the practical knowledge, strategies, and tools artists need to build a sustainable practice.Open to artists at any stage of their career, the course combines practical instruction, guided exercises, and personalized feedback to help participants identify meaningful opportunities and develop a strategic approach to their artistic path. Participants will learn how to find and evaluate grants, residencies, and exhibition calls; write compelling artist statements and project descriptions; develop realistic budgets and timelines; and gain insight into how applications are assessed.Rather than following a one-size-fits-all model, the course encourages each participant to define their own goals and identify the opportunities that best support their practice. Whether you're preparing your first grant application, applying for a residency, planning an exhibition, or refining your professional materials, you'll leave with practical skills, greater confidence, and, ideally, a completed application or proposal that supports the next step in your career.

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Ghinwa Yassine (Lebanon/Canada) is an anti-disciplinary artist based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, also known as Vancouver. Her practice spans film, installation, performance, sculpture, and text.Yassine was awarded the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Fellowship in the Humanities in 2023. Her work often engages with archival material—from site-specific debris to oral and visual histories—to materialize experiences of loss and erasure. Her first solo show took place at la Centrale Gallerie Powerhouse in 2024, and she was 3-times nominee to the Lind Prize at Polygon Gallery. Her works have been exhibited internationally, including the Netherlands, Lebanon, the UAE, Canada, Iran, and Croatia. She holds an MFA in contemporary art and interdisciplinary studies from Simon Fraser University, an MA in Digital Video Design from the University of the Arts Utrecht, and a BA in Graphic Design from the American University of Science and Technology in Beirut.

Tuesday

2PM - 4PM

Online

Oct 20 - Nov 24

ARTS APPRECIATION IS BACK!

Sign up and get the scoop on free tickets to plays, concerts, exhibitions, and more around Toronto. *Limited spots available.

*Most events have a limited number of spots and not all those who register will be guaranteed a spot. When tickets for events become available, we will contact members who have registered for Arts Appreciation. Tickets will be distributed through a lottery system.

Once an event has reached capacity, we may have a wait-list. For events with a wait list, participants are also chosen through a lottery system. You will receive a confirmation email directly from the Education Coordinator, Susana, indicating whether you have been granted a ticket or placed on the wait-list.

For more information, please contact Susana at Susana_Meza@workmanarts.com

Wednesday

10AM - 6PM

EMAIL LIST

Sep 16 - Dec 18

This 6-week introductory singing course is designed primarily for singers, and is equally valuable for those working in spoken word, storytelling, public speaking, recording, or live performance. In a space that's safe and supportive, you'll optimize your vocal ability and take your creative expression to the next level.We'll dive into vocal warmups, breathing and projection techniques, articulation work, and performance tools that help you find strength, clarity, and confidence in your sound — along with how to care for your voice, own your stage presence, and connect more deeply with your audience. Everything you learn will be applied to your own artistic work — a song, spoken word piece, or prepared presentation. We'll close with a group reflection and individual progress reviews, leaving you with a clear sense of where your voice is headed next. By the end of the course, you'll have developed practical vocal skills and performance knowledge to support your professional artistic work.

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Meet Madette — a Filipina-Canadian performing artist, mental health speaker, and vocal instructor.Whether you want to strengthen your voice as a singer or present your work with confidence as a speaker, Madette creates a genuinely welcoming space where students feel safe to explore their voices.Having performed on stages from the TD Beaches Jazz Festival Main Stage to audiences of over 10,000, Madette understands firsthand how to overcome stage fright and vocal challenges. Her holistic approach goes beyond technique, helping students build confidence and authenticity.An award-winning inspirational speaker, Madette placed 2nd at Speaker Slam, North America’s largest inspirational speaking competition. Her original music has been featured on CBC, Jazz FM, international film festivals, with 100,000+ YouTube views. Madette is also a Certified Mindfulness & Meditation Practitioner (UofT) with Mental Health First Aid training. With Madette, you will gain the tools to optimize your vocal ability — taking your performances and presentations to the next level.

Wednesday

12PM - 2PM

32 Lisgar

Nov 4 - Dec 9

Join us for a six-week programme that will lead to a new theatre troupe born! We will work intensively within a collectivist process of performance, learning to create authentic characters, to play out scenarios with urgency and document the outcomes of our work, to the end of producing complete, original theatrical productions. All skill and experience levels are welcome, though those who sign up for this workshop series are expected to prioritise presence during all six sessions and a final performance at the Workman Arts holiday party. Additionally, participants will be expected to push themselves beyond the bounds of their comforts to genuinely improve their active and passive performance skills, as well as to form real working relations with others in the group. Participants can expect any necessary conversations between artists to be mediated by Âwsémoon, and for their relationships and work to be wholly supported throughout this process. Upon completion of this workshop series, those who have demonstrated their dedication and skill can expect to be a part of a new theatre troupe that will perform in spaces beyond Workman Arts.

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Âwsémoon Shab is a dealer of images: she translates ancestral, conceptual, textural & emotional forms into new questions and dialectical understandings. She works with the faith that art-making opens us to the necessary struggle for internal change towards greater self-agency, communal seeing, commitment to reflection and transparency. Âwsémoon’s theatrical art derives from the traditions of the Theatre of Cruelty and the Panic Movement, and she has been privileged to learn directly from Irani artist, Saman Arastoo. Âwsémoon’s performances have been featured in local DIY spaces, including UKAI Projects, Soybomb HQ, York University’s Hurricane Club, and ULTRA Magazine’s The Garrison performance series. She has directed and choreographed independent, original productions in NYC, San Francisco and Toronto. Âwsémoon has performed as the lead dancing mycelium during the virtual-reality Nordwind Festival and has performed guerrilla in various on-site locations, including subway cars, High Park, and both inside & outside the Eaton Centre.

Wednesday

3PM - 5PM

32 Lisgar

Nov 4 - Dec 9

Writers are sharp observers of their environment; they are good readers of any given text. From the mundane to the extraordinary, poets are able to alchemize their environments and lived experiences into a clear expression, insight, even critique, of the complexities of daily rhythms and encounters. Audre Lorde’s well-known axiom, “for women, then, poetry is not a luxury,” is where we shall start exploring the ways in which writing and embodiment are interweaved. In this six-week course, we will do a deep dive into how this somatic relationship with writing might help us clarify and articulate our persona and lived experiences.This is a slow and deliberate practice to uncover different perspectives of embodiment and the ways in which these understandings can be weaved into our writing practice. Alongside this exploration, we will also touch on what it means to write in a world grappling with rising fascism, seemingly imminent climate collapse, the continual late-stage capitalist oppression of our bodies, among other things.The objective of this course is to help writers develop a stronger connection between their lived experiences and writing practices by exploring the ways in which knowledge and understanding are stored within the body. As we get more familiar with this relationship, we come to a better understanding of how embodied writing can truly move the reader. We will also develop much stronger technical reading and writing components through the course.Participants are encouraged to write in whatever format they choose. There are prompts provided each week and participants can choose to write a new piece every week or to build a singular longer text, or three, in any genre they choose. At the last session, participants get to share their work as a way of closing the course.

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Jacqueline Chia is a queer Southeast Asian poet and artist currently living in Tkaronto, on the land known as the Dish with 1-Spoon Wampum territory and Treaty 13. After spending more than a decade steeped in academic literary perspectives, Jacqueline is now engaged a deliberately slow practice of writing slow. In 2023, Jacqueline published the poem, “Self-Portrait,” in a collaborative project called I See You with Kyoto-Seita University in Japan and a small group of Tkaronto’s queer community. Over the last few years, she has read her work in various poetry showcases. Jacqueline currently editing a full-length manuscript, The Garden of Good Bones for publication, a project supported by the Toronto Arts Council. She draws from memories and recollections of Southeast Asian folklore, creation myths, and superstition passed down from her family as ways to explore themes of migration, diaspora, childhood, grief, and love. Jacqueline is also a professional jazz musician and vocalist, and an enthusiastic gardener who is into plant identification, food sovereignty, and foraging.

Thursday

2PM - 4PM

Online

Oct 22 - Nov 26

In this beginner-friendly class, participants will learn how to make sculpture using plaster cloth, a lightweight material that can be shaped when wet and dries into a hard, durable surface. Classes will explore the full sculptural process including the construction of armatures from simple materials such as cardboard, paper, tape, and aluminum foil. Topics will include building form, surface refinement, exterior decoration and options for sealing and protecting finished work.The objective of this course is to build confidence in working three-dimensionally while reducing barriers often associated with sculpture. Plaster cloth is an affordable, forgiving, and accessible material that allows participants to focus on creative exploration rather than technical perfection. Participants will be encouraged to work at their own comfort level and adapt projects to their interests and abilities. Whether you’re new to sculpture or looking to expand your practice, this course will offer a supportive environment that encourages experimentation, problem solving, and the creation of a finished artwork.

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Serena McCarroll received her BFA degree from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and her MFA from Ryerson University. Her work has been shown in galleries such as Harbourfront Centre (Toronto), Stride Gallery (Calgary), The Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, Paved Arts (Saskatoon), The Nickle Arts Museum (Calgary) & IMA Gallery (as a featured solo exhibition at Toronto’s Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival). She is the author of the book All Citizens (Conundrum Press, 2012). She currently teaches art to inpatients at CAMH as part of Art Cart, a partnership between Workman Arts and Gifts of Light, which pairs established Workman Arts member artists with CAMH client services to provide peer-to-peer arts instruction with an emphasis on skill development and creative exploration.

Friday

3PM - 5PM

1025 Queen St. West #2400

Nov 6 - Dec 11