Ctrl+Shift | A Strategy Session Series

Smart Cities
October 17, 2019
7-8:30PM
Register for your FREE ticket here

Ctrl+Shift is a strategy session series that invites influential members of Toronto’s creative community to propose solutions to urgent challenges that affect the artists living in this city. Structured as a panel discussion, Ctrl+Shift seeks to facilitate productive conversations and actionable strategies that can elicit change in our shared creative landscape. This event is free and welcome to everyone.

This most recent edition of Ctrl+Shift will unpack the idea of the Smart City and Sidewalk Labs' proposal for Toronto's waterfront. Panelists will consider key issues related to data collection, surveillance and privacy, and the role artists have to play in shaping the city's increasingly digital urban environment. This session will be moderated by Shawn Micallef, and will feature panellists Nasma Ahmed, Anthea Foyer, Leslie Shade, and Howard Tam.

PANELISTS

Nasma Ahmed is a technologist based in the city we now know as Toronto. Nasma is currently the Director of the Digital Justice Lab, whose mission is to build towards a more just and equitable digital future. She has experience working alongside the public service and the non-profit sector, focusing on technology capacity building. In 2017 she was an Open Web Fellow with Mozilla and Ford Foundation, focusing on organizational digital security. She is passionate about community engagement, knowledge translation, and speculating the possibilities of the future. 

Anthea Foyer is the Project Lead, Smart City Mississauga. Throughout her time at the City she has been the Curator Digital Public Art, Digital Strategist for the Culture Division and has worked in Planning & Building helping to develop their digital strategy. She is also part of the extended team for Mississauga’s Community Engagement program and helped to develop the city’s community engagement strategy. Prior to this Anthea was the founder of a digital narrative company, led a collaborative residency program at the CFC Media Lab, and has advised and mentored on diverse projects ranging from community building and urban issues to arts and entertainment. She is currently the Co-Chair of the Board at InterAccess Media Arts Centre and a Board member for the Department of Imaginary Affairs. She also has a visual art and storytelling practice.

Leslie Regan Shade is a Professor at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. Her research focus since the mid-1990’s is concerned with the social and policy aspects of information and communication technologies (ICTs), with particular concerns towards issues of gender, youth, and political economy.

Howard Tam is a Designer and Urban Planner. He is the founder of ThinkFresh Group, a City Building consultancy based in Toronto responsible for such projects as the Dragon Centre Stories Commemoration Project and the upcoming Honest Ed’s Alley Micro-Retail Market. In his spare time, Howard likes to think about the impact of technologies in cities and, along with Nate Gerber and Amy Zhou are the brains behind Smart City Playground – an experiential pop-up that engages the general public about digitally-enabled cities that was most recently at the Toronto Reference Library in June 2019.

MODERATOR

Shawn Micallef is the author of Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness, Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto, and The Trouble With Brunch: Work, Class and the Pursuit of Leisure. He’s a columnist at the Toronto Star and senior editor and co-owner of Spacing Magazine. Shawn teaches at the University of Toronto and was a 2011-2012 Canadian Journalism Fellow at Massey College. In 2002 he co-founded [murmur], the location-based mobile phone documentary project.
 

Accessibility

We regret that at this time InterAccess does not have barrier-free access; we are currently working to improve the accessibility of all facilities. There are five steps up to our main entrance. Once inside all facilities are on the same level, and there is a single-user washroom inside the unit.