The Fikra House Research Creation Workshop
- info1509366
- Sep 3
- 2 min read
Saturday September 13th
1-4pm
Free
Facilitated by: Ola Idris and Ayat Salih
The Fikra House Research Creation Workshop is an immersive learning experience where
emerging artists will explore possible ways to the never-ending challenge of how to start an art project. Our answer is through research skills, introspection, and each other.
This 3-hour session will employ a circular learning pedagogy to offer instruction and guidance for the logistical and intangible skills required for research creation and eventual art-making. This will be facilitated by artistic activities and experiential learning to enhance the peer-to-peer structure, empowering our consciousness-raising as a group and giving us all a chance to learn with each other.
This program is responding to several gaps and growing concerns in the artistic community as well as youth populations. As humans, we love to learn. Through intentional gatekeeping, most educational institutions treat learning and research as a money-making scheme rather than an empowering skill that is enriching to different disciplines. Participants will be guided through different pedagogies and skills to imbue into their practice and eventually practice them through a group activity of collage making. They will also be given journaling prompts and resources to promote self-reflection, intuition building, and independent working, leaving the session.
All Materials will be provided.
Ola Idris is a passionate facilitator, researcher, and curator who combines curiosity, creativity, and theory to create impact. She has developed multi-generational learning programs with institutions like the U of Waterloo, RPFF and led the TRAD Magazine Fellowship. She has explored Blackness in Academia, Afrofuturism, civil mass movements, and community psychology. Centering care and community in her work, she is a lifelong student of life aiming to reignite imagination of a better world with boundless possibility.
Ayat Salih is a Sudanese visual artist, filmmaker, and researcher with a Bachelor’s degree in Media Production from TMU. She is well-versed in arts-based research methods that center immigrant narratives, decolonial education, queer placemaking and feminist media. Her visual art meditates on Sudanese womanhood and Black queerness. Operating from a place of humanity, she works to document processes that are hidden and capture fleeting moments, hoping to uncover and reveal new perspectives.
