2025/26 BMO Climate Action Speaker Series Launch
Art in the Climate Commons
Event
Public
You're invited to The Understory: Art in the Climate Commons | GCCA Symposium Sat Oct 25 at Evergreen Brick Works
Evergreen Brick Works, 550 Bayview Avenue, Toronto
9:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
GCCA
Evergreen Brick Works, 550 Bayview Avenue, Toronto
9:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.
GCCA
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The Global Centre for Climate Action (GCCA) is pleased to invite you the opening symposium of the 2025/26 BMO Climate Action Speaker Series – “The Understory: Art in the Climate Commons” on Saturday Oct. 25 at Evergreen Brick Works.
This retreat-style gathering provides space for sharing creative practices, research, and organizing towards non-extractive economies: slow, relational, emergent.
Join us for special guest speakers, participatory workshops, and forest walks where we will engage with themes such as: Experiments in Low-Carbon Living; Joyful Economies; Art, Not Consumption; and Zero-Carbon Art Methods & Targets. Artists, designers, researchers, and more are welcome to explore relational networking and opportunities to foster future collaborations and creative research along these themes.
The morning will open with guest speaker Julius Lindsay, Environmental Futurist.
Workshops and forest walks by Toronto artists, academics, and researchers from Circle Community LandTrust, Delve in Social Arts, Pollinator Partnership, OCAD University and more.
Participants are encouraged to register early for their free tickets. Morning refreshments and lunch are provided.
For more info and to register online: 2025 GCCA Symposium -- The Understory: Art in the Climate Commons Tickets, Sat, 25 Oct 2025
The event is generously supported by BMO.
Thank you to our event partner Evergreen Brick Works.
Thank you to the organizing collective for this symposium:
OCAD University: Natalie Waldburger, Peter Scott, Victoria Ho, Ian Clarke
Alia Abaya, CEO, Circle Community Land Trust
Charlene K. Lau, Art Historian, Critic and Curator of Public Art at Evergreen Brick Works
About the Global Centre for Climate Action (GCCA)
The Global Centre for Climate Action (GCCA) at OCAD University is a research centre grounded in the belief that solutions to climate change aren't just technical and economic - they are also cultural, social and creative - and the arts are a critical intervention to renewed climate futures. The Centre responds to the urgent need for global climate action by foregrounding the role of art and design in fostering systemic change, cultural resilience, and intergenerational transformation.
Vision: To become a catalyst for creative, community-led, and interdisciplinary approaches to climate action that address the root causes and cultural dimensions of climate justice
Mission: To advance climate justice through studio-based civic infrastructure that bridges disciplinary silos, centers Indigenous knowledge systems, and creates shared spaces for interdisciplinary climate action. GCCA positions creative practice not as supplementary to climate research but as methodologically essential for addressing systemic, complex challenges.
The GCCA supports research creation, education, and public programming that advance climate justice through Indigenous knowledge systems, speculative design, sustainable materials, and narrative shifts.
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