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What is Canada?

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Project Lead

Cyrus Sundar Singh

Team Members

Anna Triandafyllidou

Theme: Citizenship and Participation
Research Cluster: The Role of Advanced Digital Technologies in Shaping Citizenship and Belonging 
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Objective

What makes us a community and why? A digital storytelling series by and about diverse communities from coast to coast to coast on this land we call Canada. 

As our identity as a country is presently challenged through an uncertain geopolitical environment, What is Canada? recognises the nation’s racial and cultural diversity that promotes the inclusive and equal participation of all citizens. Our collective diversity has brought enthusiasm as well as disappointment, equity and inequality, and community and exclusion, especially around Indigenous reconciliation and decolonization. 

What is Canada? offers a community-led, intersectional and co-creative space to explore our communal sense of belonging or not-belonging along the continual journey towards our identity as a nation. Each community’s talents and communal beauty are showcased via a live gathering that will be produced locally and documented for the project. These communities co-share their people, wisdom, food, music, dance, sport, recipe for resilience, recipe for a favorite stew and/or a communal secret with each other and with a national audience. These stories contribute to lived-research exploring belonging and identity on lands we call Canada.

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Research Questions

  1. How do theoretical perspectives on national identities and citizenship inform the analysis of contemporary developments?
  2. What identities emerge among diasporas and 'digital migrants', and how do they differ from past identities?
  3. How do advanced digital technologies, especially social media, influence democratic processes and civic participation?
  4. What new avenues, such as social media and digital storytelling, empower immigrant agency and advocacy for societal change?
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Methodology

Teams of 2 to 3 participants, including at least one graduate student, will co-produce a story of the Community they wish to highlight. The selected cohort will receive creative mentorship, production workshops, and continued support towards producing their local stories in their communities that will be documented as individual short films. The program workshops and mentorships will be delivered virtually. 

The selected cohort will be mentored through their creative process, learn various methods of storytelling, frame their narrative through multimedia, produce a short presentation, and participate in a festival premiere of their work.

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Related Projects

What is Canada? (2026) is the fourth iteration of cross-Canada multimedia projects, which includes:
As identity and belonging are not fixed but ebb, flow and evolve as the land beneath us shifts, these projects helped explore diverse experiences of rootedness and displacement and inspired creative outputs. What is Canada? reflects the continuing search by closing the circle from i to we to us and explores our communal sense of belonging or not-belonging recognizing the nation’s racial and cultural diversity that promotes the inclusive and equal participation of all citizens. Our collective diversity has brought enthusiasm as well as disappointment, equity and inequality, and community and exclusion, especially around Indigenous reconciliation and decolonization.
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Status

This project is ongoing, with participants collection currently underway.

Expected completion date: Winter 2027

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Keywords

Community; Culture; Identity; Belonging; Sovereignty