“In a single drop of water, there are universes, microworlds animated by tiny animals,” says Manning, an assistant professor in philosophy and cultural studies at Queen’s and a member of Kettle and Stoney Point First Nation. “Our project’s philosophy stems from my theory of Mnidoo-worlding, a way of being from Ojibwe Anishinaabe knowledge, that sees human relations to niibii (water) as interrelated with spirit, potency, potential, process and energy, not human-centric, and more than a mere resource to extract.”

Titled Emerging from the Water, the project has been exhibited in multiple mediums at various venues, including at the United Nations 2023 Water Conference (in front of dignitaries from across the globe) and more recently at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, as part of a 2024 World Water Day event co-hosted by the UNITAR Global Water Academy and �첥��Ƶ.

Bunch and Manning hope the project will spark critical conversations about the power of Indigenous thought and knowledge, environmental stewardship, and our collective responsibility to water. They are particularly interested in presenting the work to youth in the future.

“As a non-Indigenous scholar, the project has made me think about the emergence of modern technology and how the microscope gave the West and the world another view of reality invisible to the naked eye. But Indigenous cultures already accounted for that,” says Bunch, an associate professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Arts in the School of Art, Media, Performance and Design (AMPD) and Canada Research Chair in Vision, Disability and the Arts. Bunch is also a member of Connected Minds, a major York-led research initiative on socially responsible technologies.

Bunch continues: “What if that conversation between Western cultures and Indigenous cultures, instead of it being dominating and subjugating, had been a real conversation 500 years ago. Our sciences could have come together then, rather than more recently. More equitable relations have the potential to positively alter how we think and live. It could help to protect the environment and help improve the global water crisis.”

Emerging from the Water marks Bunch and Manning’s first research collaboration together. Funding for the project was provided by MITACS, the Native Women in the Arts, VISTA – Vision: Science to Applications (York’s first Canada First Research Excellence Fund program), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Media Arts program at York.

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Bathory’s beadwork is part of a much larger collaborative research project facilitated by Anna Hudson, an art historian and curator at York, and funded by the Canada Inuit Nunangat United Kingdom Arctic Research Programme, or CINUK, an international collaboration between Polar Knowledge Canada (POLAR) and the UK.  

Titled Inuksiutit: Food Sovereignty in Nunavut and the Co-production of Country Food Knowledge (IFSNu), the project explores the interconnectedness of traditional Arctic food to knowledge, language and cultural practices of Inuit Nunangat communities in Nunavut, particularly in Kinngait (Cape Dorset) and Mittimatalik (Pond Inlet).

In the Inuktut language, inuksiutit is a term for country food, translated as “that which makes us human.” 

“The tradition of living off the land was made difficult for Inuit because of colonization, particularly with aggressive government-imposed settlement after World War II that disrupted communities and forced children to attend Western models of schools, including residential schools,” says Hudson, who is also a professor in the Department of Visual Art and Art History in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD).

“Our project is about advancing Inuit self-determination in environmental health policy and re-understanding the nutritional value of country food, whether that’s walrus, whale, seal or caribou, and remembering ways to eat them.”

The interdisciplinary project team, led by Hudson and Dr. Nancy Wachowich at the University of Aberdeen, is made up of Inuit and non-Inuit academics, Elders and youth, whose collective expertise spans various fields including Inuit nutrition, public health and epidemiology, social anthropology, and more.

The team hopes to translate Inuit country food knowledge through social media, visual and performing arts and Indigenous curatorial practice, and to digitally document food preparation and preservation to support food sovereignty and climate change adaptation.

Climate change has dramatically altered the Arctic’s temperature, with the region warming three times faster than the global average. These changing conditions affect the meat fermentation process, increasing the risk of foodborne botulism if not preserved properly. 

“Sanctions, bans and wildlife management of country food are disconnected from Inuit ways of being and circumpolar cultural sovereignty,” says Hudson, who specializes in socially conscious and community-facing art practices. “Our project hopes to remind community members and non-Indigenous people of how beautiful country food is and how nourishing it can be, strengthening climate resiliency and advocating for Inuit food sovereignty, which the community has identified as a key step towards decolonization.”

One method to help remind people about the beauty and value of country food is through Williamson Bathory’s beadwork, which Hudson commissioned for IFSNu. The series of five beaded works, which Williamson Bathory describes as a labour-intensive and meditative project, is all about food, including the scene of her mother’s birthplace.

For that work, Williamson Bathory tanned the caribou hair herself, and caribou represents inuksiutit - or country food - a mainstay of her family’s diet.

“I am incredibly fortunate that my husband and I have been able to raise our family in Inuit Nunangat, to be on the land, to have a cabin and to fill our children’s bodies and minds with Inuit food and food thinking,” she says.

“Watching them figure out who hunted the food they eat and where they got it from is great satisfaction. My kids have formed a visceral connection to nuna (Inuit for land) and all it provides, and they are Inuit in the way that my family has always chosen to be.”

IFSNu is a three-year project, concluding in 2025, and will culminate in a book composed of recipes, written works, drawings, and art – including Williamson Bathory’s beaded works with accompanying prose.  

Itis one of 13 projects that are part of CINUK, which involves Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI), Polar Knowledge Canada (POLAR),  the National Research Council of Canada, Parks Canada Agency and Fonds de Recherche due Quebec (FRQ).

Much of the aims of IFSNu will advance with Hudson’s next collaborative research project, called Curating Indigenous Circumpolar Cultural Sovereignty: advancing Inuit and Sámi homelands, food, art, archives and worldviews.

In 2022, the project received a nearly $2.5 million Partnership Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) over the next six years. Hudson says it will leverage curation to address the importance of cultural sovereignty for Inuit, Sámi and Alaska Native decolonization.

To learn more about CINUK, visit

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Among the resulting 80 applicants, five artists – including Vickerd – were chosen to submit detailed proposals. Vickerd knew the BIA wanted something that addressed the history and future of the location, so he began researching what architecture had existed near the LRT site in the past. He discovered that, between 1873 and 1956, the one-room Elia Public School once stood near the sculpture’s current location before being demolished to make way for future developments.

For Vickerd, the old schoolhouse, and the education it would have provided as a driver for social and communal change, neatly connected the past to the present with how another school – �첥��Ƶ – has helped shape and drive the community it belongs to. He found his inspiration and submitted his proposal to the Duke Heights BIA: a multi-faceted open design and architectural abstraction of the school made of Corten steel, which has a rusted metal finish that he says would give the sculpture a weathered, aged appearance, embodying a quiet assertiveness that is distinctive in its depth and the richness of its colour.

The work ahead wasn’t without its pressures. Vickerd, who has previously created sculptures for cities like Edmonton, Thunder Bay, Calgary, Ottawa and others, had never worked on something quite so close to home as �첥��Ƶ, where’s he worked for the last 20 years. “I can almost see the location of the sculpture from my office window on campus. I knew all my colleagues are going to be driving by it every day, and our students live in that community,” he says. 

“There was a pressure of doing something that honoured a community that I was part of.”

Nonetheless, Vickerd’s art often works with notions of history and community, which made “The Heights” project well within his comfort zone. “The way I think about public art is it’s about giving back to the community,” he says. “It can’t be about making something that I just want to see or that I think is cool. It has to be something that comes from that community and contributes back to it.”

The design process – including engineering revisions and community feedback – took six months, then the actual creation took another six months. Vickerd credits the University too with not just the academic knowledge, but practical knowledge he’s gained that enabled him to create projects like “The Heights” sculpture. “It’s the accumulation of years of working with my colleagues and students in a way that can only happen at a university like York, which allows us to push boundaries, try out new ideas, think through things and experiment with materials. So, when opportunities like this come up, we can then better develop projects that are successful and create a greater experience in the community for the people who live it day.”

       
Part of the experience he hopes “The Heights” creates is the opportunity for locals to reflect on the physical, social, and economic changes in the neighborhood with the opportunity to literally see the community in new ways.

“Because its design is open, and there’s so much negative space, it changes and evolves as you move around. It was important to me to give the viewer the opportunity to have the piece shift and change. It’s never static. It’s never just one perspective. I’m trying to connect that to how we experience community and how we experience urban geography. As we move through the city, things change,” says Vickerd.

Currently, the sculpture – funded and managed by Duke Heights BIA, but now a permanent collection of the City of Toronto – is visible because of its size, but not yet accessible for closer viewing. Remaining landscaping and roadwork must be finished first, then the piece becomes open to the public.

Vickerd is excited for residents then – and even now – to take in the sculpture, and what he intends it to do more than anything else.

“The goal of this project is to acknowledge the historic significance of the site while celebrating the changing dynamic of the Keele and Finch intersection. ‘The Heights’ accomplishes this through a design that balances the monumental sculpture with a sense of dynamic tension and wonder. This sculpture is about the relationship between time and memory. It reflects on the role of history in providing a guiding light that illuminates a path forward into the future,” he says.

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Now, at 26, he’s turned that passion into his career. 

Joshi is a producer and president of Fae Pictures. Working out of Los Angeles and Toronto, he and his team are building an impressive track record of movies and TV series.

And, as he gears up to start production on Queen Tut, a full-length feature film about an Egyptian teenager who travels to Toronto to become a drag queen, he’s helping the next generation of film, TV and digital professionals to get the hands-on experience they need by involving them in his work. 

“Students at York have great opportunities to learn this craft by creating their own productions. I really benefited from that. There is room for making mistakes and getting great feedback from our professors. But with this opportunity to work with my team on Queen Tut, they’ll be on a real-world production that is financed, has a distribution plan, and investors we have to answer to. If you make a mistake on a student film, it’s part of the learning process. But if you make a mistake on a larger, commercial set, like Queen Tut, there are bigger ramifications, so they get a taste of the world they will experience when they graduate.”

This kind of real world is enabled by Cinespace Studios’ new management team who renewed their commitment to York with a $3.12 million gift in November 2021.

The investment that began with the Mirkopoulos family created a dedicated space called the �첥��Ƶ Motion Media Studio in the Cinespace facility in Etobicoke for students of York’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design (AMPD) to use state of the art technology and interact with the pros. And Cinespace has some serious cred – acclaimed series like The Handmaid’s Tale and Umbrella Academy are made there. 

Joshi got a similar experience in between third and fourth year at York when Ingrid Veninger, an AMPD professor and highly regarded film director, hired him to work on the production team of her feature, Porcupine Lake. 

“It was a bigger budget than anything I’d worked with and a working environment where there were higher risks, because you were building something that was commercial that had worldwide distribution. I remember having to do things like booking a hotel room for one of our production executives. A simple thing, but if that guy showed up and he didn’t have a hotel room and was stranded for the night, that would be bad form. There is a lot to do on a production and this was a great opportunity to work with Ingrid and learn from her and build my producing ability.”

Veninger, who is also associate director of the Motion Media Studio, agrees that it’s essential for students to see that a production is not just about the big names in the credits. 

“Sometimes students don’t have a full sense of the different pathways to this industry. I see students’ eyes light up when they get on a set at Cinespace and see people in the production offices, carpentry and art department, and they start to think, ‘This is how I can access this world. It’s not just about directing, writing, cinematography, or editing.’”

Cinespace President and Co-Managing Partner Ashley Rice, who got the film and TV production bug when she was 11, is a firm believer in learning by doing. “We can read about what it is to drive a car, but actually driving one requires you to get behind the wheel. The York Motion Media Studio at Cinespace provides the vehicle for the students to drive.”

On the more macro scale, Motion Media Studio Director (and AMPD professor) Ken Rogers points to the disruption-innovation that is changing the traditional film and TV industry – how Netflix and an increasing number of streaming platforms’ demand for quality content is transforming the screen industry. 

“Toronto is a global centre for film and television production. �첥��Ƶ’s Department of Cinema and Media Arts has a world-class reputation for producing talented screen industry professionals for the region. York’s strategic partnership with Cinespace helps prepare our students to enter this changing environment, and to upskill professionals already working in the field. We are creating a training hub for workforce development that will help make a vital contribution to the economic development of Toronto and Ontario.”

Rice agrees, noting that in 2021, Ontario had a record $2.88 billion in total production activity, with a goal to grow the industry to $5 billion in the next few years.

“We can achieve this by enabling workforce development. Cinespace is dedicated to supporting initiatives to create visible pathways to jobs in our industry. Working with York to educate future filmmakers is very much a part of this cause.”

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