Toronto artist Ian Kamau, getting a haircut from the renown Halifax/ Toronto barber “Pops”
Non Essential by Ian Kamau
Toronto artist recently released a very important poetic piece about what is deemed essential and non essential work. Ian has been creating great music in Toronto for decades and this video is a good reason to pause and thank Ian for his thought provoking work.
Ian is not a Black father himself, however has mentored thousands of artists over his career, and he is the son of Roger McTair who is one of Canada’s pioneering Black documentary filmmakers and author. Ian, the Black Daddies Club is hailing you up and giving gratitude for the work that you have done, and the even the work that goes unrecognized, we see you and love brother.
You can find Ian Kamau’s music on Spotify, YouTube, I-Tunes and other platforms.
As the founder of the Black Daddies Club, I first got introduced to the Ecoversities Alliance in 2015, when I connected with them at Tamera in Portugal, and the idea of Un-conferences and un-learning really spoke to me. Most importantly, the idea of re-imagining education really resonated to me as a community activist here in Toronto, where community based education approach is something that Black Daddies Club has been doing since our inception in 2007. Meeting folks from all around the world and finding out more about how we differ but more importantly what do we have in common, made me think about the opportunity to network with like minded folks and to grow the work that I wanted to do, ever since then I have been apart of the network.
Fast forward to 2021, and I am on the planning committee for the first North American Turtle Island Ecoversities Gathering taking place on January 22nd to 24th 2021, which is taking place virtually due to Covid-19. You can see the schedule here and register for the free gathering by filling out the short form. For folks who are interested in hosting a session over the weekend, you can do so by filling out this form.
Also a part of this weekend’s gathering will be the Black Daddies Club co-presentation of Sunday Dinners virtual discussions (The Black Liberation edition), the online forum will focus on Blackness, Gender and Race. This special session will be open to the general public and not only to Black men, which the Sunday Dinner online gatherings are usually known for. This special edition of Sunday Dinner is a collaboration with Michael Roberson Maison-Margiela (New York) and Twysted Miyake- Mugler (Toronto). In 2016, Black Daddies Club partnered with Michael and Twysted to co-produced the Journey to Black Liberation Symposium and the Black Liberation Ball, which was held at the Harborfront Center in Toronto. In 2021 we will be collaborating with quarterly online conversations a part of the Sunday Dinner conversations, these conversations will look at various entry points into the Black communities, to register for the Sunday Dinner taking place Sunday, January 24th 2021 from 5pm to 6:30pm, you can register at this link.
Join us Tuesday, January 26 at 5:30pm! Anthony Gebrehiwot will be in conversation with Brandon Hay and Randell Adjei to discuss Gebrehiwot’s ‘From Boys to Men: The Road to Healing’, currently installed in the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus Instructional Center Vitrines.
Image: Anthony Gebrehiwot, A Soft Touch, 2019
‘From Boys to Men: The Road to Healing’ challenges how masculinity can fit into today’s society by focusing on the act of care. This series is a continuation of Gebrehiwot’s ‘From Boys To Men’, presented in Scarborough’s 2019 Nuit Blanche. This exhibition features portraits of artists from RISE (Reaching Intelligent Souls Elsewhere), a Scarborough-based, youth-led, movement that provides opportunities and spaces for youth to develop artistically, professionally, and spiritually.
The founder of the Black Daddies Club, Brandon Hay, sat down with Michelle Joseph, host of the podcast “Words with Michelle”, to speak about the origins of the Black Daddies Club
The Black Daddies Club has collaborated with Michael Roberson Maison-Margiela (New York) and Twysted Miyake- Mugler (Toronto) to put on a special edition Sunday Dinner- Virtual Gathering , which will be taking place on Sunday January 24th 2021 from 5pm (est) to 6:30pm (est). This special virtual conversation will apart of the Ecoversities Alliance North American online Gathering which takes place from Friday, January 22nd 2021 to Sunday January 24th 2021. This special gathering is open to the general public, this event will be a free event.
First… Thank you for all your inspiring work in the world. We honor and welcome your commitment, your diverse dreams, your gifts, your struggles and your experiments.
We invite you to gather this January (22nd – 24th) as part of a growing community of learning practitioners from around the world committed to re-imagining higher education. This gathering will be specific to those in Turtle Island/North America, to connect around the unique social, political, and educational ecosystems present here and now. We see these as charged times, with much at stake. This gathering is a place for deep, Earth-based togethering, so while we will use screens, we will also use our feet and hands and roots to learn.
The theme we are centering around is HOPE. Arms open. Fists raised. Hearts ablaze. Breathing together we will find our inner orientation that allows us to more wholly embody the hope we each hold.
Together, anchored by our individual and collective hopes, we will hold questions such as:
How do we practice a politics of care and pedagogy of hope in these times of multiple crises?
How can we learn with/from the multiple knowledges that are found in Turtle Island?
How can we create the kinds of relationships that can hold us as we address the racial, ecological, patriarchal, capitalistic violences of white supremacy and settler colonialism?
What could accountability, reparations, and healing look like in our learning communities?
How can we collectively build learning communities rather than education systems to meet the challenges of the time and to nurture future generations?
How can we be queering education? What can the LGBTQ community teach us about learning?
What kinds of healing practices can be used to support us through times of crisis?
How can we re-build and re-connect our relationships to the places we dwell?
About Ecoversities
We strive to cultivate human and ecological flourishing in response to the multitude of urgent and critical challenges of our times. Since 2015, the Ecoversities Alliance has hosted 4 international gatherings and regional networks have been active in Latin America, Indian sub-continent, Pacific, Europe, Africa and the Arab World.
The Invitation
We invite you to join us as a co-creator of the 1st Turtle Island Regional Gathering of this planetary alliance. We will be meeting for ~4 hours per day on Jan 22-24th, 2021. Our aim is to keep this first gathering focused on connecting, opening, and exploring how we desire to be a regional group.
Please complete this short form. We will then send more details as they become available.
Note: There is no monetary charge for this event, we recognize it is an investment of your time and energy. We are creating a solidarity fund that will be available to support certain folks’ participation and hope those who are able can donate gifts (money, skills, time, etc.).
Our vision
The Ecoversities Alliance seeks to transform the unsustainable and unjust economic, political and social systems/mindsets that dominate the planet. We wish to do this by actively transforming the ways we learn, the tools we use to make sense of the world, and the ways we create and share knowledge.
Our mission
– To support learners and communities around the world to reclaim their own processes of un/learning, knowledge co-creation and community building.
– Inspiring, nourishing, connecting and giving visibility to diverse ecoversities initiatives around the world.
– Building solidarities, collective inquiries, inter-cultural dialogue and new experiments in higher education.
– Nurturing an ecology of knowledges, radical pedagogies and learning commons to expand human consciousness and cultural and ecological regeneration.
We invite you to be part of our Community.
The Ecoversities Alliance is a trans-local learning community of over 100 transformative learning spaces from more than 40 countries around the world who have been meeting and working together since 2015 through international and regional gatherings, learning exchanges, campaigns, workshops, learning journeys, film festivals and publications.
