Transformation Cafe Series Wrap Up - 2024 - 2025
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OSI held three Transformation Cafes during the months of April and May, rounding out our series for the year. All five Transformation Cafes explored our strategic theme: social justice approaches to accessing education and campus space.
The third installment of this series, Insurgent Flourishing, focused on how Indigenous and Black students flourish at TMU and the various ways students, staff, faculty, and administration can support student success for all. Our fourth Transformation Cafe, Inviting Death: The life and death consequences of access to housing, was presented as part of TMU’s School of Interior Design’s housed…[un]housed…[re]housed symposium. During this event, audience members explored the necropolitical connection between precarious housing and medical assistance in dying by watching a documentary by disability activist Liz Carr, Better Off Dead?, and discussing this topic in a death cafe. We were pleased to welcome TMU’s provost and vice-president, academic Roberta Iannacito-Provenzano to open the event. We held our final Transformation Cafe of the year, Transforming Access to Education: Free education for all, as part of the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching’s Learning and Teaching conference. This panel explored free education as a vital part of making education accessible with folks working in curriculum development and student support, activists, and policy developers.
Our Transformation Cafe series saw great attendance with 240+ attendees and featured panelists ranging from faculty members, to policy makers and activists. These events proved to be a great learning experience for those in attendance, with one attendee stating “I wanted to learn more about the issues faced by Black and Indigenous communities, what is being done to enact change, and how I could be a part of it.”