WORKSHOPS - experimental schools/pedagogy
Ephemeral University
@ Université de Montréal , 2017
In 2017 Université de Montréal moved to the neighborhood of Outremont and, in the transitional period, experimented with an ephemeral research-creation school: le Virage. I was invited by professor Myriam Suchet to design and lead a public workshop on the future of learning in the university.
This one-day workshop was held inside the temporary wooden ziggurat structure. I invited participants to reflect on the future of university learning through discussion and hands-on exercises about body movement, muscle memory, and athletic conditioning as a methodology and counter to rote memorization and over-saturation of information. I am interested in embodied knowledge and took cues from my training as a youth competitive figure skater. Therefore, the workshop started with the question, “What can college professors learn from figure skaters and other athletes when creating a learning environment?” I think this becomes even more collectively prescient as our reliance and proximity to information renders expensive higher education less a space needed for learning information and more a space for experience, something unattainable in the digital realm.
The Unschool
@CCA, Montreal, 2012
What could a school be?
For a week over summer 2012, students of The Unschool explored the spaces in and around schools and pushed the limits of the camera as a social instrument. In collaboration with artist Monica Nouwens, participants compared how people live in schools and cities, and how design can encourage and limit behaviors, relationships, and activities.
Could architecture be the most appropriate medium to break new ground in learning initiatives? By looking at the physical spaces of schools and re-defining their institutional position and attitude, we can reconsider the space students traverse most.
The first phase of The Unschool used photography to forge relationships between teens and the built environment that surrounds them. The second phase of The Unschool looked at the city-as-school, a space of constant learning. Most of our day-to-day experience is filled with information that we filter and process for personal and collective use. The world around us is composed of kitchen tables, city parks, beds, train cars, laundromats, restaurants, warehouses, all of which make for dynamic educational environments. What is the difference between a space of hidden learning and a classroom? Participants considered the change in space, sensation and vitality. Finally, what kind of symbolic, poetic, alternative or drastic action for school architecture could students of The Unschool produce? How could we expand or change the existing role of the school, come up with new ideas, take a new direction and reform the existing institution? The week concluded with the production of a photobook that acts as a guide for the 21st century urban student/teacher/explorer.
“D” is for Debate
@CCA, Montreal, 2013
How can newspapers engage in and inspire debate about the city? This workshop invited local postsecondary students to take on the role of citizen journalists and investigate contemporary issues of the Montreal cityscape: construction, student protests, snow removal. The workshop considered the concept of “exhibition as city” and used the form of a student produced newspaper to participate in urban debate. A circuit of three stations in the galleries inspired reflection on the built and social environment of Montréal. Students thought journalistically through imagery, interviewed their fellow classmates and wrote a manifesto to the public. They also produced a newspaper which added to the exhibition, ABC:MTL. This workshop was conceptualized and implemented for ABC:MTL as an urban abecedary and exhibition-based initiative that mapped the contemporary Montréal cityscape through design, photography, installations, models, and public programs at the Canadian Centre for Architecture.