Playing Masquerade: Parading Radical Participation (Presentations)
This event offers multiple portions; please register for each portion individually:
- Presentations: 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM (this current page)
- Workshop + Parade: 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
Participants are welcome to attend either portion independently, though attending both is encouraged as the talks directly inform the collaborative workshop and parade experience.
Please note that workshop capacity is limited. The workshop portion will conclude with a celebratory parade around the OCAD University campus - attendees are encouraged to stay and join the parade, even if they are unable to register for the workshop.
The Global Centre for Climate Action Presents
BMO Climate Action Speaker Series
Playing Masquerade: Parading Radical Participation
What if climate action felt like a parade: creative, collective, and impossible to ignore?
Well, it can! Playing Masquerade is a climate gathering that transforms conversation into costume and collective anxiety into collective action. Part presentation, part workshop, part parade – we invite participants to imagine new forms of climate intervention through art, movement, and radical participation.
Featuring:
Michael Lee Poy, OCAD University
Michael Lee Poy is an Afro-Caribbean artist-activist and architect from Trinidad and Tobago and Canada. His practice and interests are centered on post-colonial Caribbean design and fabrication in the festival arts – specifically Carnival. He is currently developing pedagogy to address the absence of masquerade design, construction, and presentation in curriculum through the Carnival Architectonics course. Michael has been incubating Moko Jumbie (stilt dancer) Mascamp workshops in Trinidad, Cleveland and Toronto for the last decade. Similar to a studio learning ecosystem, mascamps are socially conscious design build fabrication laboratories for innovation. The Moko Jumbie Mascamp focuses on the sustainable design and fabrication of costumes (regalia) in a co-creative and safe environment.
Leesa Hamilton, NSCAD University
Leesa Hamilton is an Assistant Professor in Textiles/Fashion with NSCAD University. She was born and raised in Kjipuktuk/Halifax and is of Filipino-Canadian ancestry. Leesa is a costume designer, textile artist, community arts facilitator and consultant. Through her practice and research, she explores textiles, costume and fashion as tools for community building, storytelling and social change. Leesa studied costume with Dalhousie University, Fashion with George Brown College and holds a Master of Arts in Education from OISE/University of Toronto. Leesa’s current research falls under NSCAD’s Sow to Sew and Art Factory Programming where she works with students and community to co-develop community-based programming that explore identity, representation and allyship through textiles and garment making. Programs take the form of residencies, mentorships, free schools and camps.
Monica Polo, Toronto Metropolitan University / mpolo designs inc.
Monica Polo is a leading interior design professional specializing in sustainable, health-focused environments. With over 30 years of expertise in design and education, she pioneers methodologies that promote wellbeing and sustainability through creative art and play. Currently completing her Master’s in Environmental Applied Science and Management at TMU, she founded Ecoapt – A Sustainable Living Lab. This immersive space invites guests to explore eco-friendly alternatives and overcome the "inertia bump" of starting their sustainable journey. Leading by example, Monica has achieved a Net Zero home, showcasing urban sustainability retrofits and empowering homeowners. Through mpolo designs inc., she collaborates with institutions like Sunnybrook Health Centre’s Green Task Force to drive strategic sustainability initiatives, including educational artwork. She also mentors the next generation, believing the journey toward sustainable choices is as important as the destination.
Come join us! Come participate! Come play masquerade!
Generously supported by BMO.
About the Host:
The Global Centre for Climate Action (GCCA) is a research centre at OCAD University that draws on creative vision, sustainable design, and artistic practice to imagine new approaches to sustainability, climate justice, and decolonization.
We are a vibrant community of artists, designers, and scholars building cultural communities, creating arts projects, curating exhibitions, supporting creative action and research, and cultivating a global network for creative climate justice.
Our work is committed to fostering regenerative relationships between people and land and to Indigenous knowledge on sustainability. We are committed to a decolonial, social justice framework that highlights both the origins of ecological crisis and the disproportionate impacts on Indigenous and marginalized communities.
Event graphics by: Patricia Robin Wisniewski
Attendees consent to the following: I understand when I attend an event I enter an area where photography, audio, and video recording may occur. By entering the event premises, I consent to such recording media and its release, publication, exhibition or reproduction.