OCAD University students, faculty, staff and alums are once again among the artists, designers and innovators at this year’s DesignTO Festival, Canada’s largest annual design festival.
DesignTO returns to Toronto from Jan. 23 to Feb. 1, 2026. Now in its 16th iteration, the ten-day festival celebrates design as a multidisciplinary form of thinking and making, leading to a sustainable, just and joyful world.
This year’s festival features more than 100 exhibitions, installations, free events, discussions and performances by designers and artists from all disciplines at venues throughout the city.
OCAD U is hosting three events and supporting several others that explore the role of art and design in the ideal use of artificial intelligence, health care planning, and the circular economy.
Don’t miss the many exhibitions, talks and installations led by OCAD U community members during DesignTO.
EVENTS HOSTED AT OR SUPPORTED BY OCAD UNIVERSITY
Democratizing AI Futures Through Community Centred Design
OCAD University, 205 Richmond St. W. | Jan. 27, 5 to 9 p.m.
This hands-on workshop, presented by a team including students Aileen Dong, Amin Forootan, Hana Kidwai and Saraf Raidah, Chair of the Industrial Design program and Associate Professor Dr. Peter Coppin, instructor Zainab Husain, and alums David Barter, Amin Forootan and Senthurri Thiruchenthooran, aims to democratize artificial intelligence (AI) through creating a free, welcoming space for people of all education levels, experience and abilities to learn about AI, share concerns, and imagine human-centred uses for the technology.
Participants will leave with practical knowledge and hands-on experience. They will learn common AI terms, then apply the design process to develop their own concepts. Attendees will also experiment with accessible AI tools, such as Google’s Teachable Machine and create a simple prototype.
An Evening of Craft, Digitality, and Critical Reflection: Artist Talks
Studio Theatre, Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay W. | Jan. 29, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Join the Craft and the Digital Turn (CDT) team in partnership with the Craft & Design Studio Residency at Harbourfront Centre and OCAD U for thought-provoking artist talks and discussions emerging from the CDT SSHRC-funded international Partnership Development Grant initiative. The CDT team includes Adjunct Professor Dr. Lynne Heller, who is the principal investigator of the grant. This event brings together an international trio of educators, makers and researchers who will share insights on how digitality enables new forms of fluidity, reinterpretation, and the way that we can reuse, reinterpret and repair our crafted world. Dr. Lesley-Ann Noel, thedean of OCAD U’s Faculty of Design, will moderate the conversation.
Dying.dialogues 2026
OCAD University, 100 McCaul St. | Feb. 2 to 3
A two-day symposium that invites reflection and exchange on design, art and the end-of-life experience. Bringing together designers, artists, scholars, health care practitioners, and the wider public, the event creates space for dialogue around death, dying, loss and grief, and explores the ways creative practice can shape how we engage with these universal experiences.
Presented by the Dying.series collective that includes OCAD U students, faculty, staff and alums. See below for information on the Dying.exhibit also on view during DesignTO 2026.
To build from nothing and also from everything: Craft and the Digital Turn Open Studio
OCAD University, 205 Richmond St. W., Room 718 | Jan. 24, 12 to 4 p.m.
The Craft and the Digital Turn (CDT) team, which consists of representatives from Alberta University of the Arts, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, NSCAD University, OCAD U and Sheridan College, invites members of the public to tour their OCAD U-based studio.
The team will be showcasing work produced during a three-year research project to create new and useful objects from materials otherwise deemed to be disposable. Originally inspired by 80 sheets of recycled cardboard, the team worked under the possibility of creating from nothing.
Join the CDT team for conversation and exchange around craft methodology, digital tools, processes and networks.
OCAD U community members who are a part of the CDT team, including Curriculum Specialist Travis Freeman, Adjunct Professor Dr.Lynne Heller, Associate Professor Dorie Millerson and alum Stephanie Cloutier.
EXHIBITIONS
ALL LIGHT
Gallery1065, 1065 Bloor St. W. | Jan. 23 to Feb. 1
Lighting is an essential part of everyday life, both beautiful and functional, technical and sculptural. ALL LIGHT, an immersive exhibition, brings together 15 Ontario-based artists and light designers, including Khadija Aziz, Charlotte Blake, Steph Cloutier, Christian Lo and Mohammad Tabesh. Through unique interpretations of ceramics, glass, textiles, wood and metal, this multidisciplinary group show celebrates the creativity, materiality and technical innovation of our local Canadian maker community. The exhibition is curated by alum Kate Tessier (Kilowatt Kate) and Common Good Studio.
Assembly: A holding space for culture
It’s OK Studios, 468 Queen St. W. | Jan. 24 to Feb. 1
A collective exhibition featuring work by a variety of artists, including former OCAD U staff member Alycia Shanika. Visitors will also be able to tour a mixed-media installation, a zine and magazine library and interactive programming.
Assembly Not Required 3.0: Current Practices from Members of the Contemporary Textile Studio Cooperative
99 frames, 527 Parliament St., | Jan. 23 to Feb. 15
This exhibition showcases work in the form of textile techniques on cloth bags, from a cooperative of textile artists who share a studio space in downtown Toronto. These artists, including alums Diana Fox-Revett and Brenda Goldstein, are unified by this creative space and a shared exploration of design and textiles that bridges art and craft, beauty and utility.
Beyond Function: An OCAD U x Baycrest Exhibition
All Ours Studios, 62 Geary Av. | Jan. 23 to Feb. 1
This exhibition showcases tangible product prototypes co-created with older adults living with dementia at Baycrest Terraces. Featuring work from second-year OCAD U Industrial Design students in a Human-Centred Design course, the exhibition highlights thoughtful design responses shaped through close collaboration and community engagement that go beyond function to support dignity and enjoyment in older adults’ daily lives. Led by Adjunct Professor Nadine Hare and Associate Professor Ranee Lee, the students who participated in this project include Max Acreman, Natalia Banton, Gerald Blaboe, Finlay Brodylo, Maddox Couperthwaite, Jade Davidson, Terrell Duke, Jena Elrayes, Ghazal Fathi, Sabrina Huffman, Chloe Kim, Daesung Kim, Tracy Le, Aurora Linnington, Noah McBriar, Zacharie Menard, Brandon Mo, Aurora Perez Molina, Kaitlyn Nguyen, Nayyara Nizam, Nekie Obalo, Neris Ozbek, Owen Palmer, Malini Pandya, Mitchell Pretak, Sarah Ramos, Stella Rossi, Harshini Shankar, Cameron Teixeira, Gabriel Upton, Rebecca Wakefield and Zhiqi Zhou.
Close Your Eyes, Heal In A Parallel World
MCA Gallery, 95 St. Clair Ave. W. | Jan. 23 to Feb. 1
This body of work by artist and student Firouzeh Saremifar explores the intimate connection between the human spirit and the natural world. The exhibition features 3D acrylic paintings created with woodcut techniques and steel sculptures that merge material strength with emotional delicacy.
Rooted in moments of personal reflection, the series draws inspiration from the quiet transition before sunrise: when darkness slowly yields to the first light of dawn. This fleeting time, filled with stillness and subtle transformation, becomes a metaphorical threshold between struggle and renewal.
Connections
55 St. Clair Ave. W. | Jan. 23 to Feb. 1
This immersive installation by alum Cherie Leung invites viewers from around and within the building at 55 St. Clair W. to think about the spaces between one another, physically and metaphorically. The hustle and bustle of daily life in urban settings isolates us into little travelling imaginary pods, bumping shoulder to shoulder. It can be simultaneously lonely and overwhelming. We may be strangers, but with mindfulness and reflection, we can share a common space of belonging.
Contemporary Textile Art x Contemporary Design
Minimal Toronto, 100-260 Richmond St. E. | Jan. 23 to Feb. 1
NoBa (North Baltica Contemporary Art) places the work of international contemporary textile and fibre artists into the newly opened Minimal Toronto showroom, where life and style are harmonized through art and design.
This exhibition explores imagination through manual and digital processes with tactile materials that integrate technology with nature. Textile art blurs boundaries of art, craft and design, combining artistic vision with technical skill and fine material engineering. Visitors are able to experience this innovative artistic practice and envision how these pieces find a home in interior spaces. Featuring the work of alum Beta Ludviks and others.
Dying.exhibit
Youngplace, 180 Shaw St. | Jan. 24 to Feb. 7
This group exhibit co-created by the Dying.series collective aims to shape death literacy by initiating conversations on death, dying, fragility, loss and grief through socially engaged art pieces that embrace diverse cultural and spiritual lenses.
The Dying.collective, which includes alums Mary Calarco, Anupama Krishnan, Maryam Mallakin, Luz Paczka, Sara Rashighi and Krittika Sharma, among others, is producing an exhibition to expand the public narrative on death by creating opportunities for conversations on end-of-life, beyond the clinical setting or before people are facing a life-limiting situation. See above for information on the Dying.dialogues also on at OCAD U during DesignTO 2026.
Exploring Biomaterials in Textile Applications
DESIGNwith, 220 Yonge St. | Jan. 23 to Feb. 1
This showcase features innovative plant and bacterial cellulose biomaterials, developed through extensive experimentation, demonstrating their durability, quality, and potential to replace unsustainable textiles. Large and small-scale samples, patterns, and moulds will reveal the material’s versatility, with real-life applications such as shoes and bags produced in collaboration with DESIGNwith’s skilled women sewists. Organized by DESIGNwith founder Associate Professor Ranee Lee, alum Jennifer An and others.
Fleeting Botanicals: A Study in Time and Texture
ESTHETEAK, 203-411 Richmond St. E. | Jan. 24 to 30
An immersive event that explores one’s relationship with nature through the art of handmade postcards. Each postcard is created using preserved botanicals — leaves, petals, and natural pigments — collected and pressed with care. Participants will write letters, reconnecting with the tactile beauty of slow creation and human connection. A collaboration between Pressed Preserved (including alum Nishi Bhoraniya) and Estheteak.
From the Ground
Collision Gallery Windows, 30 Wellington St. W. | Jan. 20 to Feb. 14
From the Ground is both an exhibition and the name of the creative partnership between alum Christina da Graça and Songshu Liu. In this exhibition, the two artists have blended their practices to create four collaborative sculptures made solely from clay and wood. Working intuitively, da Graça and Liu have shaped each piece to allow the materials to speak for themselves, revealing the natural textures, forms and quiet dialogue between ceramic and timber.
Signs of Change: Pedaal
Pedaal Bikes + Coffee, 168 Brunswick Ave. | Jan. 23 to Feb. 1
An installation that explores the future of cities and mobility through street signs. Developed in collaboration with Pedaal, a local bike shop, the project invites the public to imagine how cycling and urban landscape might evolve in response to shifts in climate, technology and public policy. Through a series of fictional street signs, visitors are invited to take part in future-making – sharing their hopes, frustrations and ideas for how public policy could move toward more livable and inclusive streets. Organized by Signs of Change, Pedaal Bikes + Coffee, Radical Norms, Daniel Daam-Rossi, Bettina Schwalm, OCAD U instructor Koby Barhad, Associate Professor Angelika Seeschaaf-Veres and OCAD U Research.
Legacy & Impressions: A Salon Experience
Arterial, 451 Adelaide St. W. | Jan. 24 to Feb. 1
An immersive, gallery-style exhibition that blends art and design in a cozy, thoughtfully curated environment. It features works by Canadian artists alongside select design pieces and botanical accents, creating a warm, interactive atmosphere where community gathers, ideas are exchanged, and creativity is experienced rather than simply observed.
Inspired by the intimacy of creative salons, the exhibition invites visitors to slow down, explore, and engage directly with the works: from paintings and sculptures to textiles and functional pieces that reflect a uniquely Canadian sensibility and aesthetic. Participating artists include alums Franziska Barczyk, Timonthy Manalo, Julia Rago and Sara Sattari.
Lineage
STACKT Market, 28 Bathurst St. | Jan. 23 to Feb. 1
A collaborative exhibition that unveils a sculptural lighting collection inspired by nostalgia and reimagined for contemporary living. This exhibition celebrates the duality of design, blurring the boundaries between utility and artistry, memory and modernity. Lineage is a collaboration between Confit Design (OCAD U alums Yana Kaz and Justin Vinet) and Good Shit Studio (Jan Czebreszuk).
Nice to meet you!
Gagné Contemporary, 401 Richmond St. W., Studio B-20 | Jan. 23 to 31
A group exhibition proudly presented by design collective, Table, bringing together emerging designers to reflect on the act of greeting. Table is a collective of more than 400 designers and students, including OCAD U alums Sony Chen, Dan Cui, Simran Dadlani and Clara Wu.
The work will explore how design can welcome and invite people in by creating a sense of belonging, with work spanning from physical objects to digital interactive projects. In addition to the exhibition, there will be a panel talk, The Design of the Third Place, exploring how community spaces are designed, sustained and experienced.
Proximities of Presence
Moss Park Espresso Cafè, 185 Queen St. E. | Jan. 23 to Feb. 1
A group exhibition featuring works by multidisciplinary fashion designer, artist and researcher Keunsu Cho; interdisciplinary conceptual artist Nina Rastgar; alum and industrial designer Mehnaz Aydemir; and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow Stephen Severn, who is also an OCAD U alum.
Renaissance
Must Société (Formerly Home Société), 570 Adelaide St. E. | Jan. 23 to Feb. 1
Renaissance demonstrates how the traditional craft of stained glass can be reimagined in a contemporary style. Art windows don’t have to be limited to religious icons and traditional frilly flowers. Artist and alum Laura Pop’s work focuses on how colour, texture and light can bring uniqueness to a space.
Traces
Gallery 235, Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay W. | Jan. 23 to March 29
Traces is a group exhibition featuring the work of local and international artists, designers and collectives, including alum Dennis Lin, exploring the weight of migration, forced relocation and preserving culture and identity: what we carry, what we leave and how we belong again.
As climate crisis, geopolitical conflict, and economic precarity reshape our sense of place, Traces considers creative expression as a form of protection, dignity and hope.
Transforming Scadding Court Community Centre Through Collaborative Design
Scadding Court Community Centre, 707 Dundas St. W. | Jan. 23 to Feb. 1
This exhibition highlights three exciting design projects that have transformed and rejuvenated the main lobby of Scadding Court Community Centre. Scadding Court is a vital City agency in downtown west Toronto offering diverse community, social, educational and recreational programs.
For the renewal of this community space, students from OCAD U’s Participatory Design class, Sheridan College’s Furniture program and St. Clements School collaborated with the Scadding Court community and Codesign to create new lobby furniture, an art installation and accessible wayfinding. The Participatory Design class included students Renniel Aguirre, MacKayla Brown, Jaden Cho, Sil Kukucska and Rachel Leung, led by Associate Professor Sarah Tranum.
Urban Love Letters: Encaustic Art Exhibition
Urbanspace Gallery, 401 Richmond St. W. | Jan. 23 to Feb. 1
A photography exhibition by PH1 Studios (alum Melissa Espina and Pietro Gallo) that captures the poetry and personality of urban landscapes. Through a lens of layered wax and pigment, this exhibit reveals the quiet beauty of unexpected messages spray-painted on alley walls, pasted on abandoned buildings, or stuck to street poles.
Spanning several years and multiple cities, this collection documents anonymous declarations of love to fleeting street ephemera. Each photograph is a moment of intimacy made public: a love letter embedded in the built environment and preserved in wax.
Within Bloom
Carbonic Coffee, 870 Dundas St. W. | Jan. 23 to Feb .1
Within Bloom is a series of eight hand-punched yarn tapestries by alum Madeleine Bailey that magnify botanical cross sections at a large scale. Through buds, stems and flowers rendered in fibre, the work reveals the intricate architectures that lie beneath the surface of natural forms.
By abstracting and enlarging the interior worlds of plants, the exhibition invites reflection on the complexity and interconnection within living systems, showing how structure, texture and pattern shape the quiet intelligence of nature.
WINDOW INSTALLATIONS
BE/HEALING
Someone Editions, 2059 Dundas St. W. | Jan. 23 to Feb. 1
Be/Healing examines the act of letting go of memories that no longer serve us. The work explores the tension between release, repetition and the challenge of finding comfort without reverting to pain.
Screen-printed fabric books and wall hangings combine text, image and touch. Large-scale depictions of intimate spaces are paired with original poetry, inviting visitors to engage with the work on both a physical and emotional level. Trauma-informed textile artist and alum Olivia Mae Sinclair’s work explores cycles of healing, stillness and rest. In collaboration with alum Deborah Barnett and Someone Editions.
Drop Ceiling
Haworth Toronto Showroom, 55 University Ave. | Jan. 23 to Feb. 1
This installation implements an open-source hardware and software system to transform ubiquitous office lighting into an interactive installation. It responds to the movement and position of people on the sidewalk using data from a LIDAR sensor array. Over time, the panels will develop an animated language to communicate with passers-by throughout the day and night. This work by student Joshua Pothen and Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Global Centre for Climate Action Nick Puckett is the latest in a research series from Puckett Research and Design that investigates how contemporary forms of Machine Vision can be re-purposed for playful interactions.
Piece by Piece
Dialogue 38 Inc., 865 Dundas St. W. | Jan. 23 to Feb. 12
Alum Jennifer Coghill’s window installation featuring two textile-inspired works, Flow and Labyrinth, crafted from fragments of used paper coffee filters. Delicately patterned with various combinations of ink, indigo dye, tea, and cyanotype, they are sewn into lace-like hanging panels.
At its heart, Piece by Piece is about transformation: of material, of meaning, and of perception. Reassembling these used and discarded fragments into something new and whole shows how renewal can emerge from the overlooked. Seen together, Flow and Labyrinth create a dialogue between order and openness, structure and fragility, and beauty and sustainability.
Remnants for the Future
Stantec Window Gallery, 401 Wellington St. W. | Until March 18
Alum Yana Rzayeva’s site-responsive textile installation reflects on diasporic memory, inherited traditions and cultural hybridity. Originally presented as a large-scale immersive sculpture, the work is composed of hand-knotted net structures using undyed natural fibres, embedded with organic copper fragments. These forms resemble clay vessels, stones, or charred remnants, evoking the domestic, the archaeological and the ancestral.
Soft Curve, Hard Line
Souk and Silk, 789 Dundas St. W. | Jan. 23 to Feb. 1
An installation of ceramics and textiles by alums Helen Kong and Amanda Rataj. It playfully explores how checks and grids contrast aesthetically and functionally for a pleasingly maximalist clash of pattern and shape. By juxtaposing hand-woven textiles and ceramic forms, each artist explores the visual language of checks, squares and lines and how they converse, distort and change between mediums. Presented together, these intersections create a visual contrast between hard and soft, hand-drawn and precise, 3D and flat, square and curve.
The Fool
Milky's, 760 Dundas St. W. | Jan. 23 to Feb. 1
OCAD U alum Ella Morreale explores transformation, beginnings and endings, and the cyclical nature of life. In making, Morreale accesses the essence of Tarot archetypes, interrogating the nature of the psyche through semiotics. Subconsciously, she translates stories to the viewer by embedding symbols into textile. Unexpectedly, one day you can find yourself back on shaky feet, feeling like the juvenile Fool at the start of her journey. Morreale investigates what we can learn from the freedom and the anxiety of change.
Turning Faces
TK Creative, 916 Ossington Ave. | Jan. 23 to Feb. 1
Alum Frances Hahn’s enlivens the storefront, transforming a window into an interactive, contemplative display. The subtle rotations and vivid faces coax passersby into a moment of pause, inspiring reflections on how identity and place are ever-shifting yet deeply human. This playful transformation invites viewers to reflect on the fluidity of identity and place, exploring the dualities of selfhood and the delight of changeability.
WORKSHOPS
Seasons of Care: A Co-Design Workshop
STACKT Market, 28 Bathurst St. | Jan. 29, 5 to 8 p.m.
An interactive workshop hosted by The Seasons Collective and ClearSpace Wellness. Guided by alum Krutika Galgalikar (designer and founder of The Seasons Collective) and Mihret Haile (the trauma-informed wellness coach at ClearSpace Wellness), this gathering invites attendees into an evening of reflection, dialogue and gentle creativity. Through guided prompts, small-group conversations, and hands-on making activities, participants will co-create a collective visual artifact that surfaces both the gaps and possibilities of care.
TALKS AND DISCUSSIONS
DesignTO Talks: Within the Weave
Collective Arts Toronto Taproom, 777 Dundas St. W., Lower Level | Feb. 1, 2 to 3 p.m.
Join DesignTO for a conversation tracing the meeting points of material and memory. This panel brings together artists who explore how fragments of personal and environmental histories can be gathered and transformed into new, interconnected wholes.
Through dialogue, the artists, including alums Jennifer Coghill and Amanda Rataj, will reflect on how material practice becomes a form of storytelling, revealing how the landscapes we inhabit might be translated by incorporating elements of repetition and irregularity, the familiar and the abstract.
Ideas Forum: Advocating for a Better City
Online | Jan. 28, 12 to 1:30 p.m.
Advocating for a Better City features five fast-paced presentations (20 slides shown for 20 seconds each) by researchers bridging the gap between academia and policy, including OCAD U instructor Michelle Gay, exploring different approaches and case studies of advocacy in Toronto’s built environment. The presentations will be followed by a moderated Q and A.
TOURS
DesignTO Tours: hollis+morris
hollis+morris, 4-501 Alliance Ave. | Jan. 30, 9:30 to 11 a.m.
This tour provides an opportunity to take a deep dive into the 14,000 square foot Toronto production studio of hollis+morris, where furniture and lighting are designed, prototyped, manufactured and showcased on-site.
As a combo shop, assembly hall, office and showroom overlooking a park, the studio tour provides a behind-the-scenes look at a space for local manufacturing that was designed by architect Jonathan Mandeville of Passage Studio (Halifax) in collaboration with hollis+morris founder Mischa Couvrette. Architects, interior designers, journalists, design students and members of the design industry are invited to join Couvrette and DesignTO Artistic Director Deborah Wang, an OCAD U alum, for an opportunity to tour the studio, complemented by refreshments.
DesignTO Tours: Material Memory
40 St. Clair Ave. W. | Jan. 25, 2 to 3 p.m.
Tracey-Mae Chambers and alums Firouzeh Saremifar and Cherie Leung invite members of the public on a walking tour of the St. Clair W. neighbourhood that explores artworks that reflect ongoing dialogues between artist, object and environment. Moving through the neighbourhood, visitors will encounter works that have been added to and layered over time and across generations, highlighting how material practice becomes a vessel for memory, care and interconnection.
The Birthplace of Canadian Design: Events at The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto
The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto, 14 Elm St. | Jan. 30, 3 to 9 p.m.
Discover the historic Arts and Letters Club at an open house event and enjoy self-guided tours and special installations by Club members, including alums Lisa Frost and Michelle Walker. Explore the Club’s permanent art collection, which features works by the Group of Seven and other artists spanning over a century. Enjoy a rare glimpse into Canada’s graphic art history through the Club’s annual executive lists and view the current exhibition showcasing works by Club artists.
