A-site’s cutting-edge, custom workshops and interactive toolkit series provide artists hands-on learning opportunities with an international network of digital and technological experts. Presented by the experimental media arts collective, KRAKlab, A-site’s first pair of workshops introduce mobile augmented reality and AI as essential tools in the contemporary presentation and dissemination of artwork in individual, institutional and public practice. 20 participants maximum per workshop.

Augmented Reality (AR)

Saturday, October 30 2:00 – 6:00 PM EST

This workshop explores some of the more accessible and relevant AR tools for digital exhibition. How public is augmented (AR) public art?

Facilitators: Dr. Christine Sprengler, David Psutka (Halocline Trance), Vladimir Alexeev, Mandy Lam, Xavier Snelgrove, Karen Vanderborght (imagefatale)

In Person: Participants will interact with their own AR creations on site, and publish them through their networks.

Outcomes: “Big tech” offers ubiquitous, accessible tools that abet digital access — but at a cost in areas of autonomy, ethics, and finances – for artist, curator, and public. Do we really want a global conglomerate gatekeeper? A-site offers artists and artist-run institutions the tools, access, and knowledge to benefit more fully from AR and AI technologies.

Equipment and Materials:

This workshop requires the following equipment, materials and/or software: 

• Computer/Laptop or Tablet 
• Access to Zoom
• Google Drive storage space (30 GB Recommended)
• We encourage you to bring chargers for all devices 🙂

For Workman Arts members who require equipment rentals please contact Kais Padamshi at Kais_Padamshi@workmanarts.com before October 18 to make arrangements.

Registration:

Pre-registration is required. This workshop supports up to a maximum of 20 participants. Registrants will be placed on a waiting list once the workshop reaches maximum capacity. 

In-Person Location: 

In-person/outdoor activities for this workshop will take place on-site at Workman Arts further details will be disclosed upon registration confirmation. We will be spending a short period of time outside to test our works in situ — please wear outdoor-appropriate clothing and gear (for wet/cold/etc).

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Sunday, Oct 31, 12-2PM (fully remote)

Explores the treatment of AI as a co-curator and co-creator. Can AI be creative? What are some creative uses of AI in art-making?

Facilitators:

Mandy Lam, Xavier Snelgrove, Karen Vanderborght (imagefatale),  David Psutka (Halocline Trance),  Vladimir Alexeev, Dr. Christine Sprengler

Registration: Pre-registration is required. This workshop supports up to a maximum of 20 participants. Registrants will be placed on a waiting list once the workshop reaches maximum capacity. 

Outcome: “Big tech” offers ubiquitous, accessible tools that abet digital access — but at a cost in areas of autonomy, ethics, and finances – for artist, curator, and public. Do we really want a global conglomerate gatekeeper? A-site offers artists and artist-run institutions the tools, access, and knowledge to benefit more fully from AR and AI technologies.

Equipment and Materials:

This workshop requires the following equipment, materials and/or software: 

• Computer/Laptop or Tablet 
• Access to Zoom
• Google Drive storage space (30 GB Recommended)

For Workman Arts members who require equipment rentals please contact Kais Padamshi at Kais_Padamshi@workmanarts.com before October 18 to make arrangements.

Accessibility:

Closed Captioning services will be provided for the virtual portion of the workshop. If you require ASL interpretation please contact Raine Laurent-Eugene at raine_laurenteugene@workmanarts.com or call +1 416 583 4339 extension 9 by October 18 to request ASL interpretation for the both the online and in-person workshops.

Are you an artist who’s looking to expand your skills in entrepreneurship alongside your creative practice? In this workshop, Entrepreneurship for Artists: Creativity Meets Business, participants will be introduced to the fundamental pillars of business management and administration. Participants will be guided through a series of topics ranging from financial management, branding, and marketing, which are essential to sustaining and further advancing one’s creative practice.

Accessibility:  If you have any accessibility requests or questions, please contact Justina Zatzman at justina_zatzman@workmanarts.com. ASL interpretation is available by request; if you require ASL interpretation, please let Justina know by May 20, 2021.

PUFF Paddy is Queer, Asian-Canadian Artist and Arts educator based in Toronto. Their work focuses mainly on project design for commercial and community events, and installations for public spaces. Their work explores the balance between the ephemeral nature of experience and the joyful permanence of memory. Paddy is passionate about bringing the arts to their community and creating community through the arts. They are interested in exploring the qualities of art healing, playfulness, and communal experience. Their mission is to continue breakdown barriers and cultivate moments of spiritual awareness and powerful, joyous interactions through making art.

Paddy has exhibited and created installations for the Art Gallery of Ontario, The Royal Ontario Museum, The Drake Hotel, Gladstone Hotel, Project Gallery, Whippersnapper Gallery, The Theatre Centre, and Toronto Public Library. In recent years, their practice has focused largely on community arts and providing inclusive programming, primarily for youth. Working with The STEPS Public Art, VIBE Arts, AGO Youth: Free After Three, Xpace Cultural Centre and Design Exchange, among others. Paddy is helping to transform the landscape of Toronto’s community arts scene.

In this interactive workshop, participants will be guided through the fundamentals of preparing a grant application to support their artistic/creative practices. The workshop will also touch upon grant writing from various artistic disciplines from visual artists, writers and performers. In addition to the workshop activities, participants will also be provided with insights for identifying funding opportunities and building relationships with funders and grant officers.

Accessibility:  If you have any accessibility requests or questions, please contact Justina Zatzman at justina_zatzman@workmanarts.com. ASL interpretation is available by request; if you require ASL interpretation, please let Justina know by May 10, 2021.

Marisol Fornoni has worked with non-profits, social enterprises and incubators across the Greater Toronto Area to diversify their revenue streams and create realistic sustainability plans since 2012. She is an experienced fundraiser and currently works with organizations to implement and test their social enterprise ideas. She has worked with organizations like the Centre for Social Innovation, Art Reach, George Brown College and Action Canada for Sexual Health & Right to explore social entrepreneurship and implement their fundraising strategies. She is a seasoned grant writer.

In this interactive workshop, participants will be supported in further articulating their artistic/creative practices within written and verbal communication for public presentation and exhibition purposes. Grounded in a series of small activities, participants will be empowered with different approaches and techniques when creating artist biographies, exhibition statements and proposals that capture the essences of their creative expressions.

Accessibility:  If you have any accessibility requests or questions, please contact Justina Zatzman at justina_zatzman@workmanarts.com. ASL interpretation is available by request; if you require ASL interpretation, please let Justina know by May 18, 2021.

Fiona Raye Clarke is an award-winning Trinidadian-Canadian writer and community-engaged artist. Her writing has appeared online and in print in Broken Pencil Magazine, The Puritan Town Crier, Room Magazine blog, and others. She is on the editorial board of Canthius and a Creative Catalyst Creative Writing Mentor with the Nia Centre for the Arts. She is an alumnus of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and a certified Amherst Writers & Artists Method facilitator.

Becoming more aware of equitable practices in relation to community-based work. Engaging in conversations around language and terms aligned with anti-oppression, anti-ableism, and anti-sanism. Uncovering how we can align disability justice into everyday practices.

ACCESSIBILITY: If you require any accessibility supports to participate in this workshop, please contact Justina Zatzman at justina_zatzman@workmanarts.com.

Parul Pandya (she/her) has been skillfully working in non-profit in various roles through the past decade, including as a community builder, consultant, programmer and producer. After managing in community granting for the largest government funder in Canada, she seamlessly transferred her knowledge, passion and skills to open her own consulting practice. Community Impact Consulting strategically enables community engagement and equitable innovation. She has had the honour to work with such clients as StreetART Toronto, North York Arts, WorkinCulture and many other local service organizations. Parul is a highly in- demand teacher and facilitator, delivering over 30 trainings around anti- oppression, equity and community-engaged arts education. Her attraction to advocacy emerged with her work as a Queer South Asian freelance writer/poet, over a decade ago. She strongly believes representation matters and it’s important to share stories. She has a deep passion for ethics and social justice, which she teaches at Centennial College. She feels fulfilled when using community arts as a tool for community engagement and colourful expression. Her approach to exchange is a high-engagement approach, encouraging participation through self-reflection, empathy, creativity and common understanding. She is also lending her expertise to a variety of Canada-wide initiatives to foster better understanding towards social justice when working with racialized communities.

Jenna Reid (she/her) is the current Artistic Director at Kickstart Disability Arts & Culture. As a fibre artist, Jenna works primarily with the practices of quilting and natural dyes as a way to engage with activist based aesthetics. Throughout the spring, summer, and fall of 2020, Jenna has worked alongside prominent social movements in Toronto creating large scale banners and pennants to creatively activate messages for racial justice and radical change. Jenna has completed a residency on Toronto Island with the Feminist Art Conference, and has exhibited her work and presented on panels in Canada, the US, the UK, and Australia. Jenna’s studio work explores inter-institutional violence informed by the histories of queer, feminist, Deaf, disability, and mad movement organizing. With a studio based PhD in Critical Disability Studies at York University, Jenna’s teaching and research specializes in the emergent field of Mad Studies. Jenna has published in The Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Canadian Art, Intersectionalities: A Global Journal of Social Work Analysis, Research, Policy, and Practice, Journal of Progressive Human Services, and Studies in Social Justice.

Based on a 2021 Digital Workshop Series that Lisa Anita Wegner created for Yuri Araj for KickStart Disability Art and Culture in Vancouver, Workman Arts presents the Toronto Edition. You will hear from Apanaki Temitayo M & Lisa Anita Wegner, two extraordinary artists who live with multiple invisible disabilities and have made it a priority to not let that stand in the way of achieving their creative and life goals. Join us for an hour and a half long presentation of art, films, stories and inspiration. Talks will be followed with a Q&A period.

Where: Zoom
When: Thursday, April 8, 2021, 6 PM – 7.30 PM EST

This is a free event for Workman Arts members and the general public.

ASL interpretation and live captioning will be available.

Join us for a collective virtual paint night to raise $2,500 for mental health programming! Have fun and contribute to a cause that is essential for all.

Where: Zoom
When: Thursday, January 27, 2022, 7 PM – 9 PM
Only 50 tickets available! (only one ticket needed per screen/household)

Cost is by donation with a minimum donation of $50*

• First person to donate $100 receives an all-access pass to Rendezvous with Madness Festival
• First person to donate $200 receives the instructor’s painting AND an all-access pass to Rendezvous with Madness Festival

Materials needed

• 1 small canvas (5 x 7 or 8 x 10)
• 5 paint colours of your choice (colours used for the example painting are primary yellow, magenta and primary cyan/blue, with black and white)
• Two paintbrushes:
  • #10 flat/bright brush (#10 round can also work – 2 inches wide)
  • #2 round brush (pencil size)
• Paint Palette (Plastic cover or lids)
• Small bucket of water
• Paper Towel
• No solvents are required. All paints are water-based. 

Materials can be purchased at the dollar store or an art supply store (Aboveground Art, Curry’s, Michaels) or mailed to your home for an additional fee of $25 per kit. Click here to open the materials kit in a new tab to add to your cart after you’ve added your ticket.

Please note that orders for materials kits for mailing must be received no later than Friday, January 21, to ensure they will get to you in time.

*Tax Receipting Policy: In accordance with CRA regulations, the value of benefits must be deducted from the total gift. We will provide a tax receipt for the portion of any donations above $50 (i.e $75 ticket eligible for a receipt for $25, $100 ticket eligible for a receipt for $50, etc.). Materials kits are not receiptable.

As we navigate our professional lives we are sometimes separated from our authentic voice. We participate in a way that is informed be the institutions where we are retained. As such, our identity is muted through professional constraints.

Join Dene artist Lisa Boivin for an afternoon of image-based storytelling. Lisa will explain how creating images to define the self is healing and transforms the working experience. Make meaning out of life’s tasks by designing a visual narrative of the self.

ACCESSIBILITY: If you require any accessibility supports to participate in this workshop, please contact Justina Zatzman at justina_zatzman@workmanarts.com.

Lisa Boivin is a member of the Deninu Kue First Nation. She is an interdisciplinary artist and a doctoral candidate at the Rehabilitation Sciences Institute at University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. Lisa uses images as a pedagogical strategy to bridge gaps between medical ethics and aspects of Indigenous cultures and worldviews. She is working on an arts-based thesis which confronts the colonial barriers Indigenous patients navigate in the current healthcare system. Lisa strives to humanize clinical medicine as she situates her art in the Indigenous continuum of passing knowledge through images.

This workshop will be a hands-on, participant-focused learning about and practice with boundary setting and addressing conflict. As we build skills for boundary setting, we do so understanding boundary-setting and -maintaining can sometimes be particularly challenging for those of us with lived experience of trauma. In pairs and small groups we will assess, understand and make note of where we are each at with different types of boundaries in our lives. We will then practice communicating them. We will also use real-life case examples to explore how to address boundary-crossing conflicts, both when they come up and how we may prevent them. Key workshop techniques practiced will be:

• Understanding & setting different types of boundaries
• Assertive communication paired with active listening
• Calling-In
• De-escalation

Sheila has been engaged in collaborative consulting work with arts organizations since 2014, in the intersecting areas of conflict resolution and equity-focused practice. Topics have particularly included an attention to whiteness and racism. The work has included research, workshop design and delivery, training and policy guide development, and conflict mediation.

She teaches in the Community Engagement, Development and Leadership certificate program at Ryerson University (The Chang School). She is the Subject Matter Expert for the Community Engagement Practices and Capstone courses she has taught since 2013.

She was the staff Equity Officer for a union Local for almost 14 years. She successfully negotiated equity-related contract provisions, and effectively represented union members in human rights focused- grievances and complaints.

Sheila holds a PhD in Adult Education and Community Development from OISE/University of Toronto (2011). She is also the author of Taking responsibility, taking direction: White anti-racism in Canada (Arbeiter Ring, 2005).

This workshop will be a hands-on, participant-focused learning about and practice with boundary setting and addressing conflict. As we build skills for boundary setting, we do so understanding boundary-setting and -maintaining can sometimes be particularly challenging for those of us with lived experience of trauma. In pairs and small groups we will assess, understand and make note of where we are each at with different types of boundaries in our lives. We will then practice communicating them. We will also use real-life case examples to explore how to address boundary-crossing conflicts, both when they come up and how we may prevent them. Key workshop techniques practiced will be:

• Understanding & setting different types of boundaries
• Assertive communication paired with active listening
• Calling-In
• De-escalation

Sheila has been engaged in collaborative consulting work with arts organizations since 2014, in the intersecting areas of conflict resolution and equity-focused practice. Topics have particularly included an attention to whiteness and racism. The work has included research, workshop design and delivery, training and policy guide development, and conflict mediation.

She teaches in the Community Engagement, Development and Leadership certificate program at Ryerson University (The Chang School). She is the Subject Matter Expert for the Community Engagement Practices and Capstone courses she has taught since 2013.

She was the staff Equity Officer for a union Local for almost 14 years. She successfully negotiated equity-related contract provisions, and effectively represented union members in human rights focused- grievances and complaints.

Sheila holds a PhD in Adult Education and Community Development from OISE/University of Toronto (2011). She is also the author of Taking responsibility, taking direction: White anti-racism in Canada (Arbeiter Ring, 2005).