Building Inclusive Cities Symposium
How Oral Histories Inform Equity-based Community Planning and Heritage Policies and Practices
Thursday, Oct. 27,
5:00 - 7:00 pm (EST)
A symposium that centers the Block by Block Exhibition to explore how community-engaged research processes and oral history methodologies can inform equitable city-building and heritage practices in the future.
In the face of rapid redevelopment, who gets to tell the stories, document the histories, and shape the future of Toronto’s migrant neighbourhoods? What are the opportunities, challenges, and implications of using oral histories as a form of knowledge sharing for professional practice and the policymaking process? How can neighbourhoods transform while honouring the migration history, cultural networks, and forms of resistance found in its past and present?
Funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Connection Grant, the “Building Inclusive Cities” Symposium addresses these pressing issues through a series of arts-based workshops and public panel discussion held over two weeks in October 2022.
Workshop #1
October 13
Engaging migrant communities as makers of cultural heritage
Workshop #2
October 17
Establishing and maintaining non-extractive co- creative practices
Workshop #3
October 19
Researching ‘lived experience’ with mutual care, respect, and understanding
Workshop #4
October 21
Channeling community-centered research into effective change and improved futures
Panel Discussion
Building Inclusive Cities
This symposium is an opportunity for city-building professionals, policymakers, students, researchers, arts and culture workers and members of the broader community to learn about the specific challenges marginalized communities face through neighbourhood change, and the planning and engagement strategies that work best for these communities.
Using the Toronto Ward Museum’s Block by Block exhibition and methodology as a springboard for discussion and analysis, the symposium focuses on exploring how community-engaged research processes and oral history methodologies can inform more equitable city-building and heritage practices for the future.
Panelists
Xu Yingsi
Dr. Gary Miedema
Project Manager, Toronto Heritage Survey, Heritage Planning/Urban Design/City Planning, City of Toronto
Sonia Mrva
Byran Peart
Golden Mile Coordinator, Working Women Community Centre
Dr. Thy Phu
Moderator
Dr. Zhixi Zhuang
Dr. Zhixi Zhuang is a Registered Professional Planner and an Associate Professor at the School of Urban and Regional Planning, Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University). Founder and director of the DiverCityLab, her research explores the growing urban diversity and how city-builders can instill the values of equity and inclusion into planning policies and practices. Her work aims to understand how the intersections of individual characteristics have an impact on different lived experiences of cities, and how diversity and differences play out to shape planning policies and practices. Specifically, she explores the lived experiences of immigrant and racialized communities, their strategies for cultural recognition, and negotiations for social, economic, political, and spatial inclusion. Her research addresses the impacts of global migration on local governance and inclusive community-building and sheds light on equity-based approaches to planning and design with diversity.
Discussant
Brannavy Jeyasundaram
Brannavy Jeyasundaram is a writer and the co-executive director of the Toronto Ward Museum. In 2020, she was a youth researcher and curator for the Block by Block program’s Agincourt team. She is also the managing editor of the literary journal exploring global politics, Adi Magazine. Her main interest lies in exploring movement traditions and memory formation through understanding histories of displacement. Her writing on cultural memory can be found in The Local, Briarpatch, Jacobin, and the Tamil Guardian, among other places.
Building Inclusive Cities Team
(funded by SSHRC Connection Grant)
Collaborators
Agincourt Community Services Association
Regent Park Film Festival
Toronto Public Library
Working Women Community Centre, Victoria Park Hub