LOCATION
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, New York, NY, USA, and Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

SPONSORS
The Mitchell Art Gallery at MacEwan University, ProjectArt, and Newcastle University

PROJECT DATES
Spring 2018 - present

Project Components
- Workshop Design & Facilitation
- Partnership Development

We Shape This City 

We Shape This City is a laboratory that explores themes of belonging, displacement, and spatial justice through creative expression. Drawing on dance, visual art, and theater practices, we build connections between these ideas and our stories. The experience is especially suited to people curious about the role of the arts to help us look at civic processes and structural inequities anew.

Places are shaped by memory. When communities are destroyed or extracted from, we lose more than just wealth. In We Shape This City, we look at the hierarchy of memory created through systemic violence. We feel through our memories as we experience others’ memories. The experience invites people to move differently in association with their neighbors and in the environments they move through daily. In doing so, we implement a micro-space of justice within the context of the workshop space. These new insights travel with us. 

We Shape This City was initially developed as an Artist-in-Residence at MacEwan University’s Mitchell Art Gallery in Alberta, located on Amiskwacîwâskahikan, Treaty 6 Territory, Canada in 2018. It was recently supported by the 2023 Diversity Scholars program out of the Office of Recruitment, Diversity, and Inclusion. 

I’ve led We Shape This City with Andreza Jorge (dance, Mulheres ao Vento), Hiromi Okumura (visual/performance), and Rosa Stourac McCreery (theater).