Creative Climate Action Residency

Residency

From September 8 to 22, 2025, OCAD University’s Global Centre for Climate Action (GCCA) welcomed five artists for its inaugural Creative Climate Action Residency, held at the Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts on the Toronto Islands. Co-organized by Jennie Suddick, Manager, International Projects & Partnerships, and Jasmine Cardenas, International Networking Assistant, the residency invited artists, designers, and community leaders to explore how creativity can inspire meaningful climate dialogue and action.

Generously supported by BMO, the residency brought together artists from Latvia, Spain, New Zealand, the United States, and Canada. Participating artists Zwena Gray, Eugenia Castillo, Caroline McCaw, Sabīne Šnē, and Cat Bluemke took part in a two-week program that combined hands-on making, site-specific learning, and collaborative reflection to deepen their understanding of sustainability and community resilience.

Just a short ferry ride from downtown Toronto, the Islands provided an ideal environment to contemplate the interconnectedness of people, place, and ecology. Through workshops, discussions, guest studio visits, and shared creative practice, participants engaged with the land and one another to imagine new ways of connecting and responding to the climate crisis.

The residency featured visits and presentations from a range of guest speakers, including Jana Macalik, Director of the Global Centre for Climate Action and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Design, OCAD U who led a session on collaborative research and creation. Alessandro Tersigni, Project Manager, Cultural Initiatives at ERA Architects, invited residents to envision a waterfront cultural corridor in Toronto. Participants also visited OCAD U’s Sustainable Colour Lab, where Nicole Collins, Associate Professor of Material and Visual Culture in the Faculty of Art, OCAD U and Co-Director of the Sustainable Colour Lab (SCL), led a tour and demonstration on using natural materials to create dyes and pigments.

Residents further engaged in discussions with contemporary practicing artists and educators Nadia McLaren, who brings deep knowledge of Indigenous community wellness, pedagogy, professional development, and meaningful relationship building; and Cole Swanson, a Toronto-based artist and educator whose interdisciplinary practice explores the sociocultural and biological histories embedded in art materials and everyday resources.

The residency emphasized creativity as a catalyst—a force that sparks conversation, envisions alternative futures, and cultivates hope in the face of global environmental challenges. Artists experimented with materials, exchanged cultural perspectives on climate issues, and reflected on how their artistic practices can contribute to sustainable change.

The program concluded with an Open Studios event, coinciding with the Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts’ 25th anniversary, where the public was invited to engage with the artists and learn about the work and research developed throughout their time in residence.

Learn more about the residency by reading a reflection by Deanne Fisher, OCAD U Vice-Provost, International & Students.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS & DESIGNERS

Sabīne Šnē

LATVIA

Sabīne Šnē (she/her) is a Latvian visual artist who explores the intersections of culture and nature, with a particular interest in the relationships between humans and more-than-human, meaning the organisms, elements and entities that sustain us and life on Earth. By weaving together scientific research, posthumanist theories and fiction, she creates worlds that highlight entanglements in ecosystems and multispecies intelligence. Šnē’s practice spans video, 3D animation, text, sound, sculpture and drawing.

She holds MFA from the Art Academy of Latvia (2022). For her graduation work, she received the Helen Scott Lidgett Award and Acme Studios residency in London (2023). Her work has been shown internationally in solo and group exhibitions, as well as in video screenings and festivals, including Animator Festival (Poznań, 2025), Braziers Park (Oxfordshire, 2025), RIXC Gallery (Riga, 2025), RIO Cinema (London, 2024), National Library of Latvia (Riga, 2024), Riga Photography Biennale (Sigulda, 2024), Kupfer Gallery (London, 2024), Lot Projects (London, 2023), National Gallery of Art (Vilnius, 2023), Survival Kit 13, LCCA (Riga, 2022) and KIM? Contemporary Art Centre (Riga, 2022). She has participated in several artist residencies, most recently at Cité internationale des arts in Paris (2024).

Sabīne Šnē
Cat Bluemke

Cat Bluemke

CANADA

Cat Bluemke (she/her) is an artist working primarily in game design, expanded reality, and performance. She has created games, performances, and immersive experiences that explore technology's ability to obscure the line between work and play. Her work has been exhibited internationally with prominent institutions including Rhizome and the New Museum (2020) and the Venice Architecture Biennale (2018) as part of the American pavilion's corollary exhibits. Recent exhibitions and screenings include the LikeLike Gallery (2025), Fotomuseum Winterthur (2024), the Milan Machinima Festival (2024), the Singapore Art Museum (2023), Art Gallery of Regina (2023), and the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie (2022).

Zwena Gray

CANADA

Zwena Gray (she/they) is a queer ecology hike leader, community cultivator, and storyteller originally from Detroit. With a deep-rooted passion for the environment, they are committed to fostering meaningful connections between people and nature. Zwena recently graduated from Trent University with a degree in Environmental Studies, where they honed their understanding of ecological systems and sustainable practices. Their work blends guided hikes, community-building efforts, and storytelling to inspire others to engage with the natural world in a way that is both mindful and inclusive. Through their practice, Zwena strives to create spaces where diverse voices and perspectives are heard and celebrated, and where environmental stewardship becomes a collective, empowering experience.

 
 
Zwena Gray
Caroline McCaw

Caroline McCaw

NEW ZEALAND

I’m an artist, designer, mover&shaker and educator based in Ōtepoti Dunedin, Aotearoa New Zealand . My creative social practice develops partnerships with people, places and more-than-human beings, and draws attention to our connections. The work often lives in conversations.

At this residency I’m interested in learning about and working with the shoreline of the islands, and in partnership with people, place and practices that can emerge from the land, bodies ofwater and the shores we share. I am a professor at Otago Polytechnic School of Design where I co-ordinate a DESIS lab (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability). I have a PhD in site-specific socially engaged art from Griffiths University. I was a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at SUNY Canton in 2016-17, and am a member of the AKO Aotearoa Academy for Tertiary Teaching Excellence.

Eugenia Castillo

SPAIN

Eugenia Castillo (b. 1989, Granada, Spain) is a visual artist working primarily in sculpture and drawing, with occasional forays into installation. Her work explores themes of nature, memory, and the relationship between natural and built environments. Castillo’s interest in complex organic forms—sometimes abstract, sometimes echoing aquatic life or natural systems—serves to evoke a sense of deep interconnection between living beings and their environments.

She combines traditional materials such as wire with foraged elements like ashes, local clay, rocks, and other natural substances, reflecting a conscious engagement with her immediate surroundings. Her meditative process invites the audience to reconnect with the material world in a continuous search for simplicity amid the excesses of overproduction, digital distraction, and urban chaos.

Some of her ceramic sculptures are intentionally left partially unfired, allowing them to absorb water and naturally release it through evaporation—an ancestral technique used to cool air in arid climates. Concerned with rising global temperatures, Castillo seeks to rethink modes of production by offering alternatives rooted in local and readily available materials—reviving traditional, often overlooked techniques disrupted by industrialization. For Castillo, stillness and attunement to the natural world open a path to reconnecting with the essence of life.

Eugenia Castillo

FACILITATORS

Jasmine Cardenas

Jasmine Cardenas

CANADA

Jasmine Cardenas (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans sculptural painting, collage, ceramics, and installation. Her practice is rooted in an experimental approach to materiality, where she has incorporated a range of elements including vibrant textured paints, upcycled materials, and annatto-dyed textiles, to create both real and imagined spaces. These spaces are shaped by the tactile qualities of the materials, which draw from her Canadian-Ecuadorian heritage, familial stories, traditions, lived experiences, and the nuances of her domestic environment.

Recently, Cardenas has turned her focus to ceramics, embracing sustainability in both materials and methods of art making. She holds a BFA from OCAD University (2017) and currently serves as the International Networking Assistant in the International Programs & Collaborations Office. In 2022, she founded Casa Studio, a small-batch ceramics studio in Hamilton, ON, where she creates functional sculptures that marry form and purpose. Whether working with tinted clays, crafting organic forms, or producing large-scale wall installations, her work is defined by a tactile approach to clay collaging and a dedication to blending art with utility. Beyond creating art, Casa Studio is committed to fostering accessible art opportunities within their local community. Cardenas is currently based in Hamilton, ON.

Jennie Suddick

CANADA

Jennie Suddick (she/her) is a Maltese-Canadian artist, educator, and researcher whose multidisciplinary work engages community collaboration, cultural heritage, and decolonial perspectives.

Her projects include participatory workshops, visual media, publications, and curriculum development. She is Manager of International Programs and Collaboration at OCAD University, where she advances global partnerships and experiential learning initiatives. At the University of Ottawa, she is completing a PhD in Education examining creativity and non-formal art education in the Bahamas through intercultural and decolonial frameworks.

Recently, she undertook a residency with The Island School in the Bahamas, connecting art and ecology through place-based teaching and research. She also serves as the Primary Researcher for Good Enough Transformation, an international project reimagining sustainable, community-driven cultural practices.

Her work has been presented internationally across North America, Europe, and Asia in exhibitions, educational contexts, and research forums.

 
Jennie Suddick