Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis

Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis (CBP) (est. 2022) is a multidisciplinary research hub and creative atelier housed within the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information. Currently stewarded by founding director, Dr. SA Smythe, it is a space dedicated to black imaginative practices and Afro-diasporic aesthetics of (re)invention. The CBP is concerned with the poetics of relation connecting Black art, study, labour, and liberation. We explore what theories and practices of black poiēsis [po-EE-sis] teach us about how thinkers, makers, and activists from various lifeworlds and traditions manifest technologies of possibility and technē related to black study / Black Studies. We ask: what needs to be adapted, unmade, or transformed for the world we want? And how do we develop tools to communicate and enact those metamorphoses? newsletter (2.24) || (sign-up here)

Our mission is informed by these guiding principles: improvisation; an “ethics of pace;” black internationalist feminism; trans- aesthetics (i.e., transgender / trans nonbinary, translation, transnationalism); care and curation; freedom dreaming; Indigenous sovereignty (incl. Land Back); collective liberation for all globally dispossessed and oppressed people. We align with The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI of the BDS movement), the courageous global student movement (locally OccupyUofT) in complete solidarity for self-determination of the people of Palestine.

ONGOING activities & collaborationS

a multimedia series for slow engagement w/ black cultural production & community-led ‘maker-thinker’ sessions. from a Gwendolyn Brooks poem.

Open Aesthetic Assemblies, an intimate Black-Indigenous monthly workshop series (by invitation) that centres performance, sound, and joyous possibility through storytelling and aesthetic play.

**Calling the Conjurers**, a call-and-response invitation, an offer to tarry in the expansive entanglements of black life and technologies for living. Held at It’sOK Studios in Tkaronto and virtually, 23-26 May 2024.

a virtual/Tkaronto-based open-access summer school & microlab vehicle supporting community-resourcing projects (from **Summer** **2025**)

**Black.Queer. Everything.** with co-PIs Anika Simpson & Moya Bailey. Cultivating opportunities for innovative research & collaborative community projects by Black queer & trans youth (18-25).

**Crossings** is an annual lecture series that foregrounds the liberatory work of trans life & entangled principles from abolition, internationalism & disability justice. Sponsored by Bonham Centre at UofT.

**mannish waters atelier** is Smythe’s personal studiolab, a site of their transmedia practice & autopoietic experiments

a living archival platform for worldmaking projects seeded with anticolonial & abolitionist practices and revolutionary poetics co-curated by Vanessa Eileen Thompson (Queens) & SA Smythe

**Letters of Calling**, a mutual aid project developing accessible freedom library & media repository. It hosts open letter-writing sessions for detained or incarcerated migrants & other political prisoners.

The Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis space supports Black & Indigenous performance workshops, community gatherings, film screenings, and “work-in-progress” research seminars. We co-host open writing sessions for students, faculty, and like-minded community; co-curates performances, art exhibitions, and an annual Black Studies & Information lecture series. We also host and facilitate workshops on: writing, political education, tech skill-sharing and guided meditation; community-oriented arts programming; resource distribution; and other initiatives and gatherings that our collaborators continue to dream or invite.

Get in touch to learn more & to get involved!