Catalyst Connect
Welcome to Catalyst Connect
About Catalyst Connect
Here you will be able to find information and resources such as articles, podcasts, blogs and videos from our incredible community members.
We will be working with the various FCAD schools and community members to best determine how to support our graduate students, faculty and researchers. Our goal is to build an online community that is connected and supportive, just as The Catalyst has always been.
During the COVID-19 closure
The Catalyst is developing online content. If you have any ideas for online events, talks or SRC initiatives - we can help! Please feel free to email Natalie Ramtahal at nramtaha@ryerson.ca
Spotlight
The Catalyst at FCAD is celebrating Pride month! In June we will be hosting some exciting initiatives, including movie screenings and an amazing talk. We want to kick-off Pride with a strong message of support to our LGBTQIA2+ faculty, staff, and students.
The Creativity Everything Podcast
Alia Youssef
Photography and how to keep going with creativity | (60 minutes)
Alia Youssef is a portrait photographer interested in diversifying the media landscape and highlighting underrepresented stories and histories. Her personal projects have been exhibited in solo and group shows at prominent galleries and festivals across Canada such as The Ryerson Image Centre, Gallery 44, The Parliament of Canada, and Nuit Blanche Toronto. Her commercial projects with global brands have been displayed internationally, including in New York’s Times Square and London’s Piccadilly Circus. Her work has been published in numerous online and print publications including Elle Magazine, VICE, The Globe and Mail, and Oprah Magazine. Alia has done many public artist talks, most notably for the Aga Khan Museum, We Day Toronto, and Instagram.
Presented and directed by Camille Favreau.
Co-produced and music by David Gauntlett.
Listen On
Alia Youssef
Jodianne Beckford
Jodianne Beckford
Sharing creativity, plants, podcasts, and mental health | (56 minutes)
Jodianne Beckford is the creator and host of the popular podcast The E Project, discussing ‘Epiphany’ moments that lead individuals to do what they love. She also works as a commercial lifestyle photographer and is the creator of Noire Girls Plant, a platform to build community through educating people on the importance of nurturing plants for personal healing.
Presented and directed by Camille Favreau.
Co-produced and music by David Gauntlett.
Listen On
Naomi Skwarna
Writing, acting, sewing, and “finding peace in enough” | (54 minutes)
Naomi Skwarna is a Toronto-based writer and artist, having published in Hazlitt, The Hairpin, The Walrus, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, The Believer, and others. As an actor, she performed in Toronto and New York in Sheila Heti’s All Our Happy Days Are Stupid, and the Slamdance Festival prizewinning feature, Dim the Fluorescents. She currently works as a custom seamstress, and apprentices at Toronto’s Horses Atelier, learning about professional garment production.
Presented and directed by Camille Favreau.
Co-produced and music by David Gauntlett.
Listen On
Naomi Skwarna
Jamie Miller
Jamie Miller
Biomimicry, or looking at nature’s designs for creativity and innovation (50 minutes)
Jamie Miller is the founder of Biomimicry Frontiers, an award-winning sustainability consultancy that leverages the genius of nature to create bold solutions. He built the company after earning his PhD in engineering, which focused on applying systems-level biomimicry to urban resilience. Since 2004, Jamie has been studying and applying biomimicry with the leaders in the field. He was the director of the only biomimicry University program in Canada, is a two-time TEDx speaker and was named a “New Centurion” by the David Suzuki Foundation.
Presented and directed by Camille Favreau.
Co-produced and music by David Gauntlett.
Listen On
Romana Kassam
Becoming a visual storyteller and embracing creativity | (40 minutes)
A self-taught multi-disciplinary artist, inspired by identity, duality, the human condition and the spaces in between – Romana experiments with several mediums to express her journey as a woman of colour in Toronto. A true artist, creator and engineer – Romana is a singer/songwriter, painter, installation artist and experience designer. Romana feels that it is her responsibility to use her art as a platform and voice the issues and ideas that are important to her and the many diverse communities she belongs to.
Presented and directed by Camille Favreau.
Co-produced and music by David Gauntlett.
Listen On
Romana Kassam
Tasneem
Tasneem
Music, acting, writing: a creative journey | (46 minutes)
Tasneem is a multi-disciplinary artist with a focus on music, writing, and acting. Their music career started out in NYC performing at Carnegie Hall & singing back-up and playing guitar for Kelis on Saturday Night Live. Tasneem is currently a music producer mentor at Artscape Daniels Launchpad. Their EP Just Before The World Ends is out now on all streaming platforms. As a writer, they have participated in the CBS Diversity showcase, and are in pre-production for a short film called September 10th about 3 Queer Muslims the night before 9-11, which was workshopped at the John Humphrey Center For Peace and Social Justice in Edmonton. As an actor, they have appeared on Netflix, FX, and AMC. Tasneem counts art as a tool for survival and self-awareness.
Twitter @iamtasneem
Facebook @iamtasneem
Instagram @lastmangoinparis
Presented and directed by Camille Favreau.
Co-produced and music by David Gauntlett.
Listen On
Meet Dr. Cheryl Thompson
Cheryl Thompson is an Assistant Professor at Ryerson University in the School of Creative Industries. She is author of Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada’s Black Beauty Culture. She previously held a Banting postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto. Dr. Thompson’s essays have appeared in Emergent Feminisms: Challenging a Post-Feminist Media Culture, the Journal of Canadian Studies, Canadian Journal of History Annales canadiennes d'histoire (CJH/ACH), and Feminist Media Studies. She has also published articles in The Conversation, Toronto Star, Montreal Gazette, Spacing, Herizon’s Magazine, Halifax Coast, and Rabble.ca. She grew up in Scarborough, and currently resides in Toronto.
Meet Linda Zhang
Linda Zhang is a maker, thinker, and educator. Her design research and teaching proposes the process of making as a form of cognition; production as thought—thinking always translates into making and making into further ideas. Through this process, her work explores how material and technological processes can become productive agents in thinking critically about culture, meaning,identity and memory. Her design and architecture practice, Studio Pararaum, links techniques of making to felt and embodied experience. Her work has been published and exhibited internationally in Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and the United States. Prior to Ryerson, she was the 2017-2018 Harry der Boghosian Faculty Fellow at Syracuse University School of Architecture as well as a 2017 Fellow at the Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik ZK/U (Center for Art and Urbanistics) in Berlin.
The Future of Video Games: The Children
Here is a brief conversation surrounding where the next big technological shift in the video games industry will come from: The Children.
Video Games as Artistry
The combination of talent & timing cause video games to have an inherent component of artistry - from visuals, sound, and even code organization, it is difficult to deny the medium as a legitimate art form.
Pandemic Games
What are some of the positive aspects of video games as a result of a pandemic? Let's discuss some of those cool things.... like, saving money, and social connection, and... stereotypes....
This video was inspired by a conversation with Michael McDonald, of the Canadian Press.
The Return to Gaming
Have video games resurfaced as an overtly legitimate pastime? Will esports finally start to be seen as a viable source of entertainment, and respected as such?
Let's talk about it.
This topic was inspired by a conversation with Emily Baron Cadloff, from the Globe & Mail.
April 3rd, 2020
My home office. What a disaster...
By Greg Elmer
March 23rd, 2020
Advice for journalists whose desks are now in the kitchen
By Sarah Do Couto (RRJ)