Design Workshop

Cities like Toronto are made by design. Thus changing the city means that youth have to design as well. The IMFTO Design workshop on Jan 25, 2023 and How To Design videos show youth how. Professional designers and faculty, students, and staff from OCAD University will walk youth through their own processes of Imagine and Make, in order to Connect to either Journalism, Policy, or Advertising.

All youth participants must complete the Design Workshop to proceed to the workshops that follow.

Location: Youth and chaperones will meet at the ROM by 10:00am to visit the biodiversity exhibitions, located at 100 Queens Park, Toronto, ON M5S 2C6.

At 11:30am, busses will transport the groups to OCAD University for lunch and the Imagine & Make sessions located at 100 McCaul Street, Toronto, ON M5T W1W. Thank you to Above Ground for providing free design supplies for the youth.

Youth and chaperones will depart by 3:00pm via busses.


INTRO

What is design?

Learn about the design process as IMAGINE MAKE, and CONNECT; how design has been harmful to BIPOC communities, and then meet six BIPOC designers who are changing design: Mark Rutledge, Sage Paul, Julien Christian Lutz (pka Director X), Angela Bains, Gary Taxali, and Ranee Lee.

STEP 01

Imagine

You ever have ideas in your mind and you don’t know where they came from? They come from your imagination. Designers imagine problems and solutions and then draw lots ideas of how to make things better. More Indigenous, Black, and POC designers are designing for us and by us so that the world can better reflect our cultures. What do you imagine to be the problems and solutions that you, your family, your neighborhood, and community face?

How to Imagine

Learn from Dori Tunstall and Ian Kamau how to IMAGINE solutions to the five flavours of problems youth in BIPOC communities face, meditate with Julien Lutz (pka Director X) from Operation Prefrontal Cortex, and then Show & Tell us your own imagine process.

“All ideas begin with the imagination”

STEP 02

Make

Once you have a solution, sometimes words and drawings are not enough to truly share it with someone else. Sometimes you need to make a model, or prototype (meaning, first kind of thing). The prototype helps connect the design to others so that they can give you feedback. What they tell you can help make the next version of your design better. 

How to Make

Learn from Ian Kamau how to MAKE models and prototypes of the solutions to problems and hear from BIPOC designers Mark Rutledge, Sage Paul, Julien Christian Lutz (pka Director X), Angela Bains, Gary Taxali, and Ranee Lee on how they made something that at first did not work, but then turned out okay.

STEP 03

Connect

Connect to others in order to have impact by sharing your fresh ideas on Toronto’s Biodiverse Futures. Select one of three CONNECT workshops—Journalism, Advertising, and Policy—to bring your fresh ideas to the wider City.

Meet the Design IMFTO Team

Dori Tunstall, OCAD U (co-lead)
Michael Lee Poy, OCAD U (co-lead)

Beatrice Porbeni (coordinator)

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