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).

Microaggressions. What are these? Why do they occur? What can be done about them? These are the questions that will be explored during this session. As workplaces continue to change with increasing representation from Indigenous, Black and People of Colour, women, LGBQT2+ peoples as well as deaf, disabled and individuals with mental health challenges, the language of everyday communication is important and, most recently, has been called to attention due to insensitive and inappropriate language based on social biases and unexamined stereotypes. Often unwittingly used, these unfortunate terms contribute to the everyday experiences of racism, sexism, homophobia and ableism that permeate our society and, if left unchecked, can damage workplace and personal relationships. This session will examine what microaggressions are, the damage they can cause and the importance of both spotting and addressing them.

*Please note that this session will emphasize working interactively through case studies to build and practice applicable skills for addressing microaggressions in the arts community.

charles c. smith is a poet, playwright and essayist who has written and edited twelve books. He studied poetry and drama with William Packard, editor of the New York Quarterly Magazine, at New York University and Herbert Berghof Studios. He also studied drama at the Frank Silvera’s Writers’ Workshop in Harlem. He won second prize for his play Last Days for the Desperate from Black Theatre Canada, has edited three collections of poetry (including the works of Dionne Brand, Marlene Nourbese Phillips, Claire Harris, Cyril Dabydeen, Lillian Allen, George Elliot Clarke, Clifton Joseph), has four published books of poetry and his poetry has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including Poetry Canada Review, the Quille and Quire, Descant, Dandelion, Fiddlehead, Anti-Racism in Education: Missing in Action (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives), the Amethyst Review, Bywords, Canadian Ethnic Studies and others. charles was the founder of the Black Perspectives Cultural Program in Regent Park and recently received a grant from the Ontario Arts Council’s Writers Reserve Grants Program and the Toronto Arts Council Writers Grants Program.

His first book, Partial Lives, appeared through Williams-Wallace Press and a chapbook, Fleurette Africaine (wind in the leaves collective), was released in February 2012. charles is also Artistic Director of the wind in the leaves collective.

His book, Pluralism in the Arts in Canada: A Change is Gonna Come, was released in June 2012. His new book of poetry, travelogue of the bereaved, was published in 2014 by TSAR Publications (now Mawenzi Press) and his latest non-fiction book The Dirty War: The Making of the Myth of Black Dangerousness was released in 2014 by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. His new book, destination out, will be released by Tightrope Press.

“The Collage Party” serves as a platform for people of all backgrounds and artistic levels to come together in a group setting and experience the benefits of exercising their creativity through collage making. “The Collage Party” is accessible to all. With collage, you respond to images, as opposed to starting with a blank page like with painting and drawing. One does not have to know ‘how to draw a straight line’ with collage. The objective with “The Collage Party” is to provide participants with a platform to express themselves and exercise their creativity in a supportive, social environment.

Currently based in Toronto, Paul Butler is a multi-disciplinary artist with an interest in artist- driven projects that challenge current art world models. His practice includes: hosting “The Collage Party” – a touring experimental studio established 1997; directing the operations of “The Other Gallery” – a nomadic commercial gallery focused on overlooked artists’ practices; founding “The Upper Trading Post” – an invitational website that facilitates artist trading and initiating “Reverse Pedagogy” – a traveling, experimental residency. He has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; White Columns, New York City; Creative Growth Art Centre, Oakland and La Maison Rouge, Paris.

The first 25 people who sign up for The Collage Party Zoom event get a collectible Collage Party pencil case with necessary tools to collage with. They are available for free curbside pickup at 651 Dufferin Street between the hours of 10AM-9PM, October 15-25.

Join multidisciplinary artist and creative writer, Hanan Hazime, for an online poetry workshop and art installation. Instead of psychiatric medicine, participants  of “The Mad Poetry Apothecary” will be prescribed creative prompts that encourage mental wellness. Participants will be guided through the creation of mixed-media poetry postcards and given the opportunity to virtually showcase their work. Those who would like to participate in the virtual art installation but cannot attend the online workshops have the option of submitting their poetry postcard via email. All levels of writing and artistic skills are welcome. Folks with lived experience of mental health and/or addiction issues are highly encouraged to contribute their voices to this project.

Click here to view the virtual Mad Poetry installation.

Hanan Hazime is a multidisciplinary artist, creative writer, community arts educator and writing instructor living in Tkaronto/Toronto. She also identifies as a Lebanese-Canadian Muslimah Feminist and Mad Pride Activist. Through her intersectional and interdisciplinary artwork, Hanan aims to push boundaries, question arbitrary binaries, dispel stigmas and shatter stereotypes. Her primary mission as an arts educator is to provide accessible arts education to marginalized communities with a special focus on crafting safe, empowered spaces for Muslims, individuals with mental health challenges, folks with disabilities and BIPOC youth to discover and enhance their writing and art skills.

Theatre artists make and see theatre to challenge and be challenged, to share and listen, to ask and be asked questions that might not be asked elsewhere. We sometimes tell stories that might be difficult for others to hear. We can hit a nerve, touch a deep wound, or flick a switch that triggers old memories, reactions or feelings. 

So how do we take care of our audiences when we offer sensitive material? How do we take care of the performers who reach deep into their souls and put them on stage, show after show? How do we ensure everyone else on our team is ok? And whose responsibility is it?

Playwright, actor, producer and instructor Lorene Stanwick shares some strategies and ideas to navigate these sometimes-murky waters using Broken Branches, her play that explores the issue of sibling abuse, as a guide.