MILE Camp Concert: Musique du Moment @ Bell House
2025-08-10 19:00 (America/Toronto) | Bell House, 167 Route 132 Ouest, Percé, QC, G0C 2L0, Canada
(Le français suit)
As part of this year’s MILE Camp, a free public concert will be held at the historic Bell House in Percé.
On Sunday, August 10th, at 7:00 PM (EDT), camp facilitator and multi-Emmy-winning improvising pianist D.D. Jackson will perform in a duo with singer Zoé Jean-Deslauriers. Currently based in New Jersey, Jackson is a celebrated improviser and composer with numerous awards and nominations on both sides of the border for his work on jazz albums and television scores.
Zoé Jean-Deslauriers is a graduate of McGill University’s Jazz Performance program. The singer and songwriter divides her time between Montreal and the Gaspésie.
Also performing will be Montreal harpist Sarah Pagé. A phenomenal solo performer renowned for her skill in going beyond the conventional tonal palette of the harp, Pagé has also worked in collaboration with musicians spanning several genres, including Lhasa De Sela, Nadah El Shazly, Esmerine, the Barr Brothers, and Land of Kush.
Click here to view the full artist bios!
As with all of our public MILE Camp concerts, this event is free and open to all!

Le dimanche 10 août, à 19h00, à l’historique Bell House (167 Route 132 Ouest à Percé), D.D. Jackson, animateur du Camp Coin-du-Banc en folie et pianiste improvisateur plusieurs fois primé aux Emmy Awards, se produira en duo avec la chanteuse Zoé Jean-Deslauriers.
Actuellement installé dans le New Jersey, D.D. Jackson est un célèbre improvisateur et compositeur qui a reçu de nombreux prix et nominations des deux côtés de la frontière pour son travail sur des albums de jazz et des musiques de télévision.
Zoé Jean-Deslauriers est diplômé du programme d’interprétation jazz de l’Université McGill. La chanteuse et auteure-compositrice partage son temps entre Montréal et la Gaspésie.
La harpiste montréalaise Sarah Pagé se produira également ce soir-là. Interprète solo phénoménale reconnue pour son habileté à aller au-delà de la palette tonale conventionnelle de la harpe, Sarah Pagé a également travaillé en collaboration avec des musiciens de plusieurs genres, dont Lhasa De Sela, Nadah El Shazly, Esmerine, les Barr Brothers et Land of Kush.
Cliquez ici pour voir les biographies complètes des artistes !
Comme tous les concerts publics du camp Coin-du-Banc en folie, cet événement est gratuit et ouvert à tous !

MILE Camp Concert: D. D. Jackson Solo Piano Improvisation
2025-08-11 20:00 | Corner of the Beach Cultural Museum, 294 route 132 est, Coin-du-Banc, Quebec, Canada
(Le français suit)
On Monday, August 11th, at 8:00 PM, audiences will have a unique opportunity to see an intimate improvised solo piano performance by D.D. Jackson at the Musée culturel de Coin-du-Banc / Corner of the Beach Cultural Museum (294 route 132 East in Coin-du-Banc).
Jackson, who has played with such jazz luminaries as Little Jimmy Scott, Laila Biali, Sammy Jackson, David Murray, Dewey Redman, Oliver Lake, James Carter, Milford Graves, Andrew Cyrille, Jack DeJohnette, Hamid Drake, Larnell Lewis, Pheeroan Aklaff, Billy Bang, William Parker, Ugonna Okegwo, James Newton, Jane Bunnett, Mino Cinelu, Mor Thiam, and Kahil el’Zabar, will have space to demonstrate the individual skills that make him a gifted and sought-after collaborator by some of the biggest names in improvised music.
As with all of our public MILE Camp concerts, this event is free and open to all!

Le lundi 11 août, à 20 h, le public aura l’occasion unique d’assister à un spectacle intime de piano solo improvisé par D.D. Jackson au Musée culturel de Coin-du-Banc / Corner of the Beach Cultural Museum (294, route 132 Est à Coin-du-Banc).
Jackson, qui a joué avec des sommités du jazz telles que Little Jimmy Scott, Laila Biali, Sammy Jackson, David Murray, Dewey Redman, Oliver Lake, James Carter, Milford Graves, Andrew Cyrille, Jack DeJohnette, Hamid Drake, Larnell Lewis, Pheeroan Aklaff, Billy Bang, William Parker, Ugonna Okegwo, James Newton, Jane Bunnett, Mino Cinelu, Mor Thiam et Kahil el’Zabar, aura l’occasion de démontrer les compétences individuelles qui font de lui un collaborateur doué et recherché par certains des plus grands noms de la musique improvisée.
Comme tous les concerts publics du camp Coin-du-Banc en folie, cet événement est gratuit et ouvert à tous !

MILE Camp Concert: D.D. Jackson + MILE Camp Participants
2025-08-15 16:00 | Corner of the Beach Cultural Museum, 294 route 132 est, Coin-du-Banc, Quebec, Canada
(Le français suit)
On Friday, August 15th, at 4:00 PM, D.D. Jackson will be joined by MILE Camp participants at the Musée culturel de Coin-du-Banc / Corner of the Beach Cultural Museum (294 route 132 East in Coin-du-Banc) for our third and final MILE Camp concert of the year! This performance—a Grand Finale group improvisation—will reflect the collaborative learning and musical exploration that MILE Camp participants have engaged in over the course of their weeklong retreat.
Come and see a renowned bandleader work with a cohesive unit of gifted improvisers who have come together in the beautiful setting of Coin-du-Banc for a week of close contact and shared experiences!
As with all of our public MILE Camp concerts, this event is free and open to all!

Le vendredi 15 août, à 16h00, D.D. Jackson sera rejoint par les participants du camp Coin-du-Banc en folie au Musée culturel de Coin-du-Banc / Corner of the Beach Cultural Museum (294 route 132 Est à Coin-du-Banc) pour notre troisième et dernier concert de l’année ! Cette performance — une grande finale d’improvisation de groupe — reflétera l’apprentissage collaboratif et l’exploration musicale auxquels se sont livrés les participants de Coin-du-Banc en folie au cours de leur retraite d’une semaine.
Venez voir un chef d’orchestre renommé travailler avec une unité cohérente d’improvisateurs doués qui se sont réunis dans le cadre magnifique de Coin-du-Banc pour une semaine de contact étroit et d’expériences partagées !
Comme tous les concerts publics du Camp Coin-du-Banc en folie, cet événement est gratuit et ouvert à tous !

Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium 2025: "Dance with the Music: Movement in the Improvised Arts"
2025-09-11 13:00 - 2025-09-13 11:00 | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
The 2025 Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium will take place in the ImprovLab at the University of Guelph from September 11-13, 2025. Presented by the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) and curated by its Director, Dr. Eric Fillion, this year’s colloquium is titled “Dance with the Music: Movement in the Improvised Arts.”
Focused on the interplay of improvised music and dance, this edition of the Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium provides attendees with a great opportunity to engage with world-class academics, dancers, and musicians from Canada and the US, including Heather Cornell, Patricia Nicholson, Julie Richard, and many more. Discussions, performances, artist interventions, and films will all be showcased in IICSI’s state-of-the-art ImprovLab research and performance space.
The colloquium program will also highlight two special sessions by US-based artists Ravish Momin, Val Jeanty, and Ivvy, as part of their week-long residency at the ImprovLab, which will culminate with a performance at the Guelph Jazz Festival. The first of these sessions, by Momin and Jeanty, will feature a discussion and examples of their unique take on global music, an approach that is characterized by the notable absence of traditional instruments and a vision of cultures as dynamic and continuously adaptive. A two-part session, it will address both Haitian culture and Mumbai street bands. The second session will see Ivvy speaking about the aesthetics of FlexDance, demonstrating this artform’s interdependence with music while reflecting on the communities that developed around it as an outgrowth of Black urban/working class culture in Brooklyn.
This catered event is free and open to all, with RSVP via Eventbrite.

For more about this year’s colloquium, including artist bios and headshots, please visit the colloquium page.

Thinking Spaces: Lucy Rupert, Lisa Hirmer, and Christina Kingsbury "Interdisciplinary Improvisation & Ultrasonic Moth Songs"
2025-10-07 12:00 - 13:30 | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Please join us on Tuesday, October 7 at 12:00 PM (ET) for Thinking Spaces: “Interdisciplinary Improvisation & Ultrasonic Moth Songs” with Lucy Rupert, Lisa Hirmer, and Christina Kingsbury.

This presentation will take place in person at ImprovLab, MCKN 108 at the University of Guelph. As always, our Thinking Spaces events are free and open to all!
More About this Workshop:
In August 2024, dancer Lucy Rupert and musician Ben Finley, along with artists Christina Kingsbury and Lisa Hirmer, collaborated on the interdisciplinary performance Ultra-sonic Moth Songs. Audiences present on that magical summer evening experienced improvised music and movement among the moths at the Moth Garden! Join us as Lucy, Christina, and Lisa reflect on the environmentally inspired multi-disciplinary performance, and the role of improvisation in creating their evocative work.
More About the Presenters:
Lucy Rupert is a dancer, choreographer, art-science researcher, and artistic director of Blue Ceiling dance (founded 2004), through which she has created and produced over three dozen works of contemporary dance and multidisciplinary performance. For the last decade, Lucy has researched and explored the intimate connection between scientific and artistic processes through interviews, artistic creations, and collaborations with scientists.
“heartless”, Lucy’s most recent solo production delving into the moral philosophy of robots, was honoured with three Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations, including Outstanding performance by an individual and Outstanding original choreogprahy.
Lucy’s work has been presented by dance: made in Canada/fait au Canada festival, the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Dusk Dances, Guelph Dance Festival, the Stuttgart International Solo Tanz-Theatre Festival and in unconventional spaces throughout Ontario.
Lucy has performed with noted companies such as Fujiwara Dance Inventions (2010-present), Theatre Rusticle (2001-2017), Nova Dance, Theatre Passe Muraille, Puppetmongers Theatre, Circus Orange, Chartier Danse, Anandam Dance, Sashar Zarif Dance, Free Flow Dance Theatre Company (1995-1999), and many other independent choreographers and creators.
With a Joint Honours BA in Dance and Music from the University of Waterloo, an MA in History from the University of Toronto, Lucy is a lifelong learner, currently studying philosophy through Oxford University’s Continuing Education Department.
Lucy is a mom, a birdwatcher, a citizen scientist, a singer-songwriter and a writer on creative process and dance history. She lives in Toronto with her husband, her son, and a feral cat, in a neighbourhood full of coyotes and old trees.
Lisa Hirmer is an interdisciplinary artist who works in visual media, especially photography; social practice; community collaboration, and sometimes writing. Her work is focussed on collective relationships both in human communities and in human relationships with the more-than-human world. A lot of her recent work wrestles with what it means to be living inside the climate emergency and on the edge of planetary collapse. Her work finds home both in traditional gallery contexts and an expanded field of other public and semi-public spaces and is always created with a keen awareness that multiple realities exist alongside one another.
She has shown her work across Canada and internationally including at Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Guelph, University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Cambridge Art Galleries, Art Gallery of Mississauga, Tom Thomson Gallery, Art Windsor-Essex, Doris McCarthy Gallery, Peninsula Arts, CAFKA, Queens Museum, and Flux Factory, among others. She has done artist residencies with Arts House Melbourne, the Santa Fe Art Institute, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World, KIAC and Camargo Foundation, and was the 2022 Waterfront Toronto Artist in Residence. She has received numerous grants including from the Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts and has a Master of Architecture from the University of Waterloo.
Christina Kingsbury’s (she/her) interdisciplinary art practice is inspired by histories of care and explores themes of place, ecology and inter-species relationships. Her work takes the form of performance, installation and social practice. Christina collaborates regularly with poets, ecologists, artists, choreographers and the public-including ecological public – to create relational works that offer a quiet and radical challenge to the commodification of life. Her work is rooted (often literally) in the Grand River watershed and treaty lands of the Mississauga’s of the Credit and part of her practice works through relationships with land as a settler person. Her solo and collaborative work has been shown as public interventions and in curated exhibitions both locally and internationally.

IICSI 2025 Improviser-in-Residence Marilyn Crispell in Concert at the ImprovLab
2025-10-18 19:00 - 21:00 | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
IICSI is thrilled to announce that a free night of performances by renowned pianist Marilyn Crispell will take place in ImprovLab on Saturday, October 18th.
These performances will be the culmination of a week of workshops and collaborative sessions Crispell will lead as IICSI’s 2025 Improviser-in-Residence.
In her first performance of the evening, at 7 PM, Crispell will collaborate with Guelph’s new and as-yet-unnamed Creative Music Orchestra. Having gathered a few times in recent months to explore the compositions and ideas of some of its many members, the orchestra is beyond excited to work with Marilyn Crispell. For this performance, the orchestra members will be:
Connor Bennett – saxophones
Matt Brubeck – cello
Matt Endahl – piano, fender rhodes
Jonathan Kay – saxophones, esraj
Kayla Milmine – soprano saxophone
Patrick O’Reilly – guitar
Heather Saumer – trombone
Joe Sorbara – drums, percussion
Tyler Wagler – bass
Claire Whitehead – violin
Em Wright – objects
Mark Zurawinski – drums, percussion
The second set, at 8 PM, will see Crispell perform in a trio with Joe Sorbara and Jonathan Kay. Sorbara and Kay’s duo project, The Rest, invokes the emergence of compelling sound worlds that draw upon memory in different ways: intriguing and transformative sounds, noises, spaces, places, images, and affects are made present in the moment alongside intentionally cultivated memories including the musics of Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Marilyn Crispell, and Jimmy Lyons, in addition to original pieces by Kay and Sorbara themselves. All of this means that Kay and Sorbara are as likely to be exploring a sound constellation tripped over in a moment of free improvisation as they are a pre-composed melody, groove, or playful rhythmic puzzle.
Anyone wishing to see what Crispell is working on during her time in residency is free to listen in on her trio workshop session with Sorbara and Kay from 1-3 PM on Tuesday, October 14th. Crispell will also give an open improvisation workshop for community members and students from 1-3 PM on Thursday, October 16th. Please reach out to IICSI Project Manager Julia Busatto if you would like to participate!
Marilyn Crispell has been a composer and performer of contemporary improvised music since 1978. For ten years, she was a member of the Anthony Braxton Quartet and the Reggie Workman Ensemble. She has performed and recorded extensively as a soloist and with players on the American and international jazz scenes. She has worked with dancers, poets, filmmakers, and visual artists. She also teaches workshops in improvisation. She has been the recipient of three New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust composition commission, and a 2025 NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship award.
Internationally celebrated for her skill as an improvising pianist, Marilyn Crispell is not to be missed. In the words of The New York Times’ Jon Pareles, “Hearing Marilyn Crispell play solo piano is like monitoring an active volcano. She is one of a very few pianists who rise to the challenge of free jazz.”

IMPR Student Colloquium: Mike Hansen—"The First Experience: A Noise…"
2025-10-21 15:00 - 17:00 | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Mike Hansen will present his IMPR PhD Student Colloquium at 3 PM in ImprovLab on October 21. This hybrid presentation is titled “The First Experience: A Noise…” and will be accessible via Zoom:

Topic: Mike Hansen Colloquium
https://zoom.us/j/98711610640?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 987 1161 0640
Passcode: [REDACTED]

This paper will examine a common first point of exposure to sound poetry for children, by which an epistemological understanding of sound and noise is created in a performative setting. This occurs when a parent or guardian reads a children’s picture board book to a toddler, thereby developing an ontology of learning.
This paper will argue that the improvised performative poetic presentation—or sound poetry—of these children’s texts functions as an oral tool for learning, comprehension, and agency building.
This paper will examine how noises are presented in various picture books, such as Dr. Seuss’ Mr. Brown Can Moo! The paper’s primary focus is the noise-to-sound paradigm developed through the improvisational performance of children’s texts like The Noisy Book, by famed children’s author and poet Margaret Wise-Brown (best known for Goodnight Moon). These seminal texts are about the relationship of noise, improvisation and poetry in the ears of toddlers. The inclusion of onomatopoeic words creates the flow of written noises, and their presented function—via improvisational, performative actions—emphasizes comprehension. This paper will dissect noise and the context in which it is perceived in toddler’s poetic literature, where its purpose is to be orally performed. These board books are sonic-poetic presentations that form the recipient’s thinking while also developing agency in the presenter. These texts move past read poems or stories to onomatopoeic presentations, creating an ontology of performative acts which stress actions of understanding and definition, building the foundation of an epistemology towards future thinking. This is the first experience of language and improvisation for toddlers, and possibly for the presenter or performer as well.
Mike Hansen is a sound artist, visual artist and experimental musician who uses noise through acts of improvisation as a tool to create social constructs. He is a PhD student in Critical Studies in Improvisation (IMPR) at the University of Guelph. His research seeks to develop an understanding of when noise becomes a sound, both through how it is defined and its evolution. He completed his Masters of Fine Arts at York University in 2008 and has been exhibiting paintings, sculptures and installations since 1984. For 22 years, he hosted a radio program of experimental and improvised music in Toronto. He has published a number of papers on noise and experimental turntablism.

Sharon D. Engbrecht: "World-Building: Improvisation and Narrativity" Public Lecture
2025-10-27 10:00 - 11:00 | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
We are pleased to announce that IICSI Postdoctoral Fellow Sharon D. Engbrecht will be delivering a public lecture in ImprovLab at 10 AM on October 27. This event is free and open to all!
Dr. Engbrecht’s lecture will explore the dynamic between improvisation and narrativity. Both share elements of world-building or of negotiating how the world around us is perceived, but world-building is bound by unspoken rules, agreements, and expectations—does the same go for improvisation? What are the limits of co-creation? How might aspects of narrative theory challenge the way we think about improvisation?
Having recently finished their PhD at the University of British Columbia in English Literature, Sharon D. Engbrecht is the 2025-2026 Postdoctoral Fellow at the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI). Their research into narratives of gender and sexuality investigates broader questions of embodiment, dwelling, and queer love. Their forthcoming articles include the theorization of “difficulty” in the post-secondary educational context and the “gloriously ugly” in Marian Engel’s No Clouds of Glory (Sarah Bastard’s Notebook).

Thinking Spaces: Steve Sladkowski—"'What Can I Get Away With Here?': Improvisation in Punk Rock Performance and Community Making"
2025-11-18 12:00 - 13:30 | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
IICSI is pleased to present a Thinking Spaces presentation by Steve Sladkowski—guitarist for renowned punk band PUP, and U of G alumnus—in ImprovLab at 12 PM on Tuesday, November 18th! As with all of our Thinking Spaces events, this presentation is free and open to all.
Here’s how Steve describes his talk, and himself:
“Over the past 15 years of touring the world in a loud and sweaty punk rock band, I’ve learned a lot about improvising in musical and physical space by asking the question “What can I get away with here?” Some of the lessons gleaned from repeatedly asking this question are profound; some of the lessons are very, very silly. Through a lively and open-ended discussion with a healthy dose of Q+A, I’d like to offer insight into the practical uses of improvisation as it relates to onstage performance, to music venues as safe spaces, to the art of songwriting and composition, and the many other parts of my lived experience as a touring musician in the age of streaming and social media.”
Steve Sladkowski is a guitarist, improviser, composer, and writer best-known for his lead guitar work in the Juno Award-winning and two-time Polaris Prize-shortlisted Toronto punk rock band PUP. He has performed and improvised in 26 countries since graduating from the University of Guelph’s SOFAM in 2010. When not playing the guitar, he can be found reading, cooking, or cheering on the Blue Jays and Raptors. He resides in Toronto with his wife, dog, and cat and remains tremendously uncomfortable writing bios.

Un-Muting Sonic Restitutions: An Afternoon of Afrosonic Explorations and Improvisations with Satch Hoyt
2025-11-22 15:00 - 17:00 | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
IICSI is thrilled to share an exciting and informative afternoon of conversation and an open improv jam session with internationally-acclaimed visual artist and musician, Satch Hoyt! Curated by former IICSI postdoctoral research fellow jashen edwards and featuring IMPR students, this event will offer a glimpse into the ways art and music can be a vehicle for social-political inquiry into injustices sustained by forced migration and xenophobic policies. Join us at ImprovLab from 3-5 PM on Saturday, November 22nd for this free event!
For his Canadian tour, Hoyt will discuss his project: Un-muting Sonic Restitutions, in which he collaborates with national galleries and museums across the globe, including the ROM, unearthing their African musical instrument collections and breathing new life into the wood, metal, beads and cowries that have laid dormant for so long. Hoyt will also share thoughts on the making of his new album, Un-Muting Beyond Misspelt Borders.
At ImprovLab, Hoyt will be joined by a core septet consisting of Daniel Fischlin, Matt Brubeck, Reagan Mitchell, David Lee, Mike Hansen, Hayden Mesnick, and jashen edwards.
Hoyt is a Jamaican-British Berlin-based visual artist and musician. A believer in ritual and retention, his diverse and multifaceted body of work – whether sculpture, sound installation, painting, musical performance, or musical recording – is united in its investigation of the “Eternal Afro-Sonic Signifier” and its movement across and amid the cultures, peoples, places, and times of the African Diaspora. Hoyt is an intimate observer of the sites of convergence where the Diaspora comes together to sing, shout, and be, reflecting itself to itself. Employing the shared tool kit to connect, express, and commiserate across centuries and oceans, Hoyt taps into aural and oral echoes as well as into those retained in the historical and material record (Rujeko Hockley, for the catalog Prospect 4: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp, 2017).
This event is co-presented with the College of Arts Interdisciplinary Program and the Art Gallery of Guelph!

"Tracing the Life of Violence"— A talk by Dr. Sharon D. Engbrecht, followed by an open discussion
2025-12-08 19:00 - 20:30 | Guelph Public Library, 100 Norfolk St., Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Be part of Guelph’s “16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence” as IICSI 2025-26 Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Sharon D. Engbrecht explores systemic violence in Katherena Vermette’s “The Break.”

As part of Guelph’s iteration of the “16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence,” Dr. Sharon D. Engbrecht will give a talk tracing lines of systemic violence in Katherena Vermette’s “The Break.” Copies of the book can be picked up at the Main Library’s circulation desk starting November 5, 2025. Copies are limited, and a library card is required to check these items out. Enjoy light refreshments and snacks!
The talk will be followed by an open discussion about the novel’s themes and intersections of violence, as well as agency and responsibility in the wake of assault and intergenerational trauma.
The event will be held in the Program Room on the second floor of the Library’s Main Branch (100 Norfolk St.).
Katherena Vermette: is a Métis writer from Treaty One territory, the heart of the Métis nation, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Her first book, “North End Love Songs” (The Muses Company), won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. Her NFB short documentary, “this river,” won the Coup de Coeur at the Montreal First Peoples Festival and a Canadian Screen Award. Her first novel, “The Break,” is the winner of three Manitoba Book Awards and the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. It was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and CBC Canada Reads.
“The Break”: The novel opens by describing “the break,” a series of barren lots in a working-class neighbourhood in Winnipeg. In the winter, there’s hydro lines that buzz “quiet enough that you can ignore it.” The “buzz” acts as a metaphor for various forms of violence in the novel, including gender-based violence as something “you can just ignore.” It’s “just white noise,” the narrator tells readers, “and some people can ignore things like that. Some people can hear it but just get used to it.” Drawing attention to the “white noise” of gender-based violence allows us to reconsider how it plays out in our larger communities and what it means to take a stance to stop it. This activism, at once very personal and communal, is a small way we as individuals can take a stand and be a part of ending gender-based violence in all its forms.
Sharon D. Engbrecht: is a postdoctoral researcher at the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (University of Guelph). Their research delves into how narratives by women authors challenge the systems of power that perpetuate gender-based violence and discrimination. They hail from the Canadian prairies and recently completed their PhD at the University of British Columbia.
By participating in this program, you acknowledge and accept the Guelph Public Library’s Code of Conduct.
If you have any questions, please contact Library Programmer Lauren at lcontini@guelphpl.ca.
Alternative formats are available as per the Accessibility per Ontarians Act by contacting Library Communications at 519-824-6220.

Life After the PhD: What is a Postdoc?
2026-01-28 13:00 - 14:30 | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Are you a graduate student wondering what your post-PhD pathway might look like? Join Dr. Sharon D. Engbrecht (IICSI 2025-2026 Postdoctoral Fellow), Dr. An Kosurko (Musagetes and MITACS Postdoctoral Fellow), and Dr. Jordan Zalis (SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow) for a discussion of postdoctoral fellowships!
These three researchers will discuss the various pathways they took as they continued their research, how they navigated funding and application processes, and how they grounded their research projects in improvisation, community engagement, and social responsibility! This talk will be of tremendous value for grad students who are curious about the range of opportunities open to them as they complete their degrees. As with all our talks, this event is free!

Sharon D. Engbrecht, PhD English Literature, University of British Columbia (they/them)
IICSI Postdoctoral Fellow, Improvising Futures SSHRC Partnership Grant: Improvising Identity
Sharon’s research in improvisation focuses on narratives of community and identity making. Their research is particularly focused on improvising intimacies by analyzing cultural narratives of gender and sexuality. Their postdoc project is about community-making and engagement, in part working with feminist-influenced organizations that actively seek to end gender-based violence and in part with researchers approaching improvisation from multiple streams of inquiry and disciplines of practice. Their work on intimacies and community-making is one piece of their larger project looking at the multiple registers of dwelling as a theoretical and phenomenological concept.

An Kosurko, PhD Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland (she/her/they/them)
Musagetes & IICSI Postdoctoral Fellow supported through Mitacs: Improvisation, Dementia Care, & Aging
An Kosurko is jointly hosted by Sociology & Anthropology at U of Guelph and IICSI in partnership with the Musagetes Foundation. Her research combines ethnomethodology, multimodal conversation analysis, and arts-based, community-engaged methods to study social inclusion, creativity, technology, and care. Her current project, Improvising with Dementia, brings together people living with dementia, caregivers, artists, and researchers to explore everyday spontaneity in caring relationships.

Jordan Zalis, PhD Ethnomusicology, Memorial University of Newfoundland (he/him)
SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at IICSI: What Does Basketball Sound Like?
Jordan Zalis is an artist and ethnomusicologist whose work examines the powers of sound in a variety of social contexts. His doctoral research built on five years of ethnographic fieldwork with the Toronto Raptors Basketball Club, analyzing how professional basketball has become increasingly commercialized and spectacle-oriented, raising urgent questions about corporate control of transnational sports culture. In response, his postdoctoral project examines public basketball courts as sites of grassroots cultural expression, investigating how basketball’s improvisatory practices transcend social and cultural difference. By studying informal norms and improvised communities emerging on public courts, he explores mechanisms through which small-scale affinity groups can build broader solidarity in everyday life.

Thinking Spaces: Alex Chesney and Dr. Nathan TeBokkel—Storied Social Practice: Improvisation in Farming and Food
2026-02-04 13:30 - 15:00 | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Growing and making food are ancient practices yet also scientifically advanced, necessary for everyday living yet often inaccessible but to experts, interdisciplinary yet highly specialized. Considering the role of improvisation in farming and cooking, especially in our chosen subfields of beekeeping and dietetics, fruitfully foregrounds these tensions. With improvisation as our watchword, we bring to bear a syncretic mix of lived experience and literary criticism to develop a concept of storied social practice, which will allow us to attend to social relations, embodiment, sensory perception, and historicity, without sacrificing, as so often seems conventional in the long critical post-enlightenment, individual agency, the mind, cognition, and contemporaneity. Along the way we engage with our own stories and social practices as well as those of philosophers like Sylvia Winter and Ludwig Wittgenstein, literary theorists like Anne-Lise François and Lenora Hanson, and food and farming events like eighteenth-century agricultural improvement, the contemporary Right to Repair movement, and Leah Penniman’s Soul Fire Farm.
Alex Chesney is a dietitian and farmer living and working on her family’s fruit and vegetable farm in Southwestern Ontario. Alex’s dietetic practice and farming work go hand in hand; rooted in food and agriculture education and communication, she creates spaces for people to experience their food at its source, and teaches them about agricultural production, food preparation, and nutrition. She manages pick-your-own fruits and vegetables, on-farm workshops and tours, recipe development, communications (social media, newsletters, blog posts), and daily produce-subscription delivery (paired with nutrition tips, recipes, and techniques for food storage and preservation). Alex is also the current Chair of the Berry Growers of Ontario and is proud to help represent and promote the thriving Ontario berry industry through research and marketing efforts.
Dr. Nathan TeBokkel is a Banting postdoctoral fellow at Western. He’s writing a book, Working Feeling, on labour history and lived experience, and he has a book in press at Cambridge, Whistling at the Plough, on agricultural capitalism and romanticism. Nathan’s also training to be a master beekeeper, managing 160 hives on his family’s melon farm, and researching requeening. His recent publications include an essay on food labels and technocratic populism in New Literary History.

Thinking Spaces: Kate Story and Ryan Kerr—Death in Reverse: Performance in Precarious Times
2026-03-25 14:30 - 16:00 | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Artists Kate Story and Ryan Kerr will share what it means to create meaningful work within conditions of precarity, and on the unusual, often improvised ways artists find to stay connected with audiences. They will share experiences from curating a contemporary theatre piece marked by setbacks: limited funding, collaborative challenges, shifting resources – while also finding unexpected forms of support through local politics, partnerships, and community networks. Reflecting on “Project Baroness” (https://ttok.ca/death–in–reverse-project-baroness/), they will also consider festival and DIY theatre, arts and “non-arts’’ collaborations, residency models, and the fragile balance between fundraising and public funding that shapes small-scale performance ecosystems. “As Death in Reverse made its way toward the stage, our work continually evoked echoes of DADA-era New York: periods of conflict, displacement, authoritarian tightening, censorship, and the suppression of movements for racial, gender, and LGBTQ2IA+ justice. Artists may have been worn down by their circumstances, yet they continued to create. This conversation invites us to sit with those parallels—and with the quiet insistence of art that persists.”
Ryan Kerr is the founding artistic director of The Theatre on King, a radical black-box space that, soon after being established, became the hub for new and risk-taking performance in Nogojiwanong/Peterborough Ontario. At TTOK, Kerr oversaw countless original performances as outside eye, lighting designer, director, and mentor, featuring a wide range of artists – emerging to established, including theatre artists, musicians, writers, dance artists, comedy, and multidisciplinary artists. With Kate Story he co-ran the Precarious Festivals, four multi-disciplinary, multi-artist, multi-week festivals featuring regional artists in collaboration with non-arts groups and initiatives. Kerr is the winner of the Arts Catalyst Award (Peterborough Arts Awards).

Kate Story is a genderqueer writer and performing artist originally from Newfoundland, now living and working as an uninvited guest in Nogojiwanong/Peterborough, Ontario. Winner of the Ontario Arts Foundation’s K.M. Hunter Artist Award for theatre, Kate is a dramaturge/director, writer, theatre designer, and performer. Her one-person shows have been presented in Peterborough, Toronto, and St. John’s, and her climate change story “Animate” was adapted for an international radio drama and virtual reality theatre performance, performed and broadcast across Europe and as part of MUTEK 2023 in Montréal. They have published 6 novels, including Governor General’s Literary Award finalist Urchin. She is currently working on a new novel.

IBPOC Artists' Network Tour: From Words to Action 2025/2026—Sashar Zarif Dance Theatre and Coco Collective
2026-03-26 19:30 - 21:30 | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Make your way to ImprovLab on March 26th for a double-bill presentation of spectacular live dance and music! Coco Collective and Sashar Zarif Dance Theatre will visit Guelph for one night only to perform at the ImprovLab.
Movement, voice, and percussion harmoniously come together for these individually and culturally expressive dance works.
“Calabash,” by Coco Collective, is a dance and live percussion journey exploring how African-diasporic communities cultivate everyday social bonds. This light-hearted narrative follows a woman’s labor of love in local food sovereignty and nurturing community connections.
In “Grandmother’s Drum,” by Sashar Zarif Dance Theatre, dance and voice fold into each other, becoming a single river of presence. Within its silence and its pulse, the past leans forward; the present opens; the body remembers what the mind forgets.
This performance is co-presented by IICSI, Guelph Dance, and the IBPOC Artists’ Network Tour, in collaboration with Wind in the Leaves Collective.
You can grab your tickets here!

Mini Film Festival / Mini festival de film
2026-04-01 14:30 - 21:00 | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Make your way to ImprovLab on April 1st, for a film festival curated by MA students in French and Francophone Studies at the University of Guelph! The students will present a selection of fiction and documentary films, spanning shorts and feature-length options, all of which are in French with English subtitles.
This free event will feature two screenings (afternoon and evening). The afternoon screening will run from 2:30 PM to 5 PM, with the evening screening running from 6:30 PM to 9 PM.
The afternoon program will feature the following documentary films:

From here, elsewhere (Chadi Bennani, 2023)
Your call is important to us (Romy Boutin St-Pierre and Joe Nadeau, 2023)
There’s a star (Julien Cadieux, 2023)

The evening program will highlight works of cinematic fiction:

Rosie (Gail Maurice, 2018)
You’re sleeping, Nicole (Stéphane Lafleur, 2014)

Reserve your free spot on EventBrite!

Cacophonie | choreographies of choice with Ms. Georgia Simms
2026-04-10 10:00 - 12:00 | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
We’ll see you in ImprovLab on April 10th at 10 AM, when Ms. Georgia Simms (she/her) will lead this creative, interactive workshop that invites participants to engage in movement research framed by attention, shape, and momentum. Language, music, and the energy of the ensemble will create an atmosphere for experimentation, response, and reflection. This creative workshop is part of the Cacophonie series, curated by IICSI Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Sharon D. Engbrecht!
We invite everyone who is interested in participating to join the creative workshops. We aim to make these events as accessible as possible, and they are open to everyone regardless of age, ability, ethnicity, religion, language, sexual orientation, gender identity, political beliefs, or status. Folks with children are also welcome to bring them along and their participation will not be part of the study.
To confirm participation and/or for more information, including about consent forms, please email sharon.engbrecht@uoguelph.ca.
If you decide to join us spontaneously, please do. Doors will be open 30 minutes before each event. There will be coffee, tea, and light snacks provided.
Ms. Georgia Simms (she/her) is a PhD student in the Critical Studies in Improvisation program at the University of Guelph. She is also an artist-mother who dances, performs, choreographs, facilitates, and organizes. Her current work investigates ‘ecstatic survival’, emotions, play, and relational repair through the blending of modern and post-modern sensibilities in solo, collective, and site-specific improvised movement composition
Dr. Sharon Engbrecht (they/them) comes from a background in theatre and visual arts, narrative theory, and critical studies in gender and sexuality. They have a knack for event planning and facilitating group events focused on storytelling and improvisation. Their research investigates questions of embodiment, identity, and relationality.

Cacophonie | Bridge to Terabithia: A Somatic Exploration of Childhood Self—A Creative Workshop with Mark LeRoy
2026-04-16 10:00 - 12:00 | ImprovLab, MacKinnon Room 108, 87 Trent Lane, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 1Y4, Canada
Join us at ImprovLab for a workshop by Mark LeRoy, PhD student in Critical Studies in Improvisation, as part of Dr. Sharon D. Engbrecht’s “Cacophonie” series!
For this event, prospective participants should read Bridge to Terabithia. Copies are available through the Guelph Public Library. If you are unable to find a copy, but would like to participate in the workshop, please e-mail sharon.engbrecht@uoguelph.ca. A limited number will be available through The Bookshelf at no cost to participants!
Through exploration and play guided by sensation, image, behaviour, and affect, we will explore how parts of us emerge within Terabithia, as we collectively hold space for embodied knowing and self- and group-coherence.
Terabithia becomes our imagination’s site of exploration and experimentation, where we are invited to lay down our certainties to wonder and explore the beauty of our fragile highs.
While reading Bridge to Terabithia prior to attending, you may consider:

How might ritual support your temporal encounter of reading Bridge to Terabithia?
As you immerse yourself in Jesse’s and Leslie’s world, how does your body emerge as a co-narrator?
How might we extend curiosity towards what our 10-year-old selves might be experiencing or want to share?
The name of your own magical land.

Mark LeRoy (he/him) is a PhD Student in Critical Studies in Improvisation at the University of Guelph, researching how the liminal spaces of improvisation and negative capability, emerging from postmemory, might function as a rite of passage to embodied knowing. As a Registered Social Worker and Psychotherapist, Mark is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Internal Family Systems Therapist, supporting those affected by the silencing narrative of trauma.
Sharon Engbrecht (they/them) comes from a background in theatre, visual arts, narrative theory, and critical studies in gender and sexuality. They have a knack for event planning and facilitating group events focused on storytelling and improvisation. Their research invest igates questions of embodiment, identity, and relationality.
