Annual Speaker Series

A central part of SMACT's programming was our annual speaker series. Since 2015, we have organized a total of nine speaker series bringing together Canada's most compelling media scholars, artists and activists to explore a range of topics around media, art-making, activism, and theoretical/scholarly investigation.
Hacking The Culture (2015)
Means Of Production (2016)
Mapping Media Activism (2017)
Artivism Lab (2018)
Place and Displacement (2019)
Pleasures of Resistance (2020)
MAYDAYS! (2020)
Black in Motion (2021)
Intimate Dwellings (2021)
FEELING: complaint, madness, and anger (2022)
Reclaim The University (2023)

Hacking the Culture

Our inaugural speaker series invited the public to look critically at the global mediascape and investigate power and privilege in society.
Learn more about the events in this series:
Hands On: Artists/Activists Discuss State & Police ViolenceMigrant Media: An Evening with Documentary Filmmaker Min Sook LeeThunder and Flowers: Queer AuralitiesDames Making Games: a workshop with Merritt Kopas

Means of Production

Through workshops facilitated by leading media activists across the city, this series invites the public to look critically at the global mediascape and investigate power & privilege in society.
Learn more about the events in this series:
Disability Media & Digital StoriesAboriginal Community MediaCo-Creation & Anti-Poverty MediaRace + Archives + Media

Mapping Media Activism:
Collectives & Collaboration

Our 2017 speaker series explores the geographies of media activism and how it traverses physical, digital, and social borders.
Learn more about the events in this series:
Resisting Erasure, Rising Up, and Raising VoicesMapping Safe Crip SpacesInuit Women’s Voices

What the %@*# is Artivism?!

The Artivism Lab Speaker Series spotlights creative initiatives that integrate art, media activism and collaboration.
Learn more about the events in this series:
Dreaming Big: A Teach-In on the Intersectional University#NotMyPremier: Media Activism in Ford's OntarioDeath CaféThe Laboratory of Feminist Memory Bar

Place and Displacement

This salon series explored the question of space and invited participants to remember the vibrant and magical spaces we once had and rebuild new intersectional queer feminist spaces in the here and now.
Learn more about the events in this series:
Put on Your Pain Suit and Party! Designing Crip FuturesLaboratory of Feminist Memory II: Place and Displacement

Pleasures of Resistance

Our pre-pandemic 2020 speaker series reflected on pleasure, access, and place in all of its manifestations.
Learn more about the events in this series:
Arts-Based Research Practices Beyond the Research Ethics BoardStillNotMyPremier: A Teach-InLocation, Location: Queer/ying Disability & AccessThe Laboratory of Feminist Memory: Laughter, Joy, and Pleasure

MAYDAYS! Radical Thoughts on a Pandemic

In face of the unexpected global pandemic, SMACT organized a special four night virtual speaker series dedicated to the discussion of radical activism, art and media in the age of COVID-19.
Learn more about the events in this series:
Radical Health AdvocacyPandemic Aesthetics and PoeticsPolicing, Surveillance and ControlActivism Across Social Distance

Black In Motion

This special speaker series highlighted the often forgotten Black voices in media activism and was the second annual Black History Month programming at the Creative School.
Learn more about the events in this series:
Race, Accessibility, and Online LearningBehind The Camera

Intimate Dwellings

In this pandemic edition speaker series, we ask our quarantining artist/scholars to consider the home as a generative space for feminist/queer counter archives of all kinds.
Learn more about the events in this series:
Unsettling the Feminist/Queer Archive: A Roundtable DiscussionRemediating the Feminist/Queer Archive: Objects in Domestic Space

FEELING: complaint, madness, and anger

This speaker series celebrates negative affects like complaint, madness, and anger as forms of activism, creativity, and pedagogy.
Learn more about the events in this series:
Complaint & the Neoliberal University: A Virtual Round TableMake Madness Mad AgainLaboratory of Feminist Memory - Wartime Edition

Reclaim The University

Our final speaker series digs deep into the state of the neoliberal university today and the different technological and creative strategies students and faculty have designed to resist the new challenges that have emerged.
Learn more about the events in this series:
Equity/Diversity/Inclusion: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?The Power of the Pen: Writing for Social JusticeLaboratory of Feminist Memory - Reclaim The University Edition
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