‘Members 4 Members’ is a casual Pecha-Kucha style event for members of DesignTO’s Membership Program. Artists and designers Jasmine Vanstone, Lia Maston, elsewhere Collective, Alan Webb, and Oddside Arts share their inspiring creative work with Toronto’s design community.

With each speaker presenting 20 slides for 20 seconds each, these face-paced presentations combine inspiring narratives with visual engagement, fostering community dialogue and design appreciation. Set in the Design Fabrication Zone of Toronto Metropolitan University, the event also offers the opportunity to meet the speakers and other DesignTO members.

6:30pm Doors open
7:00pm Talk starts
7:00pm elsewhere Collective
7:10pm Lia Maston
7:20pm Jasmine Vanstone
7:30pm Alan Webb (LeuWebb Projects)
7:40pm Nico Taylor & Queen Kukoyi (Oddside Arts)

Members 4 Members is organized by DesignTO and supported by Design Fabrication Zone of Toronto Metropolitan University.

Speakers

elsewhere Collective weaves endeavours in painting, installation, film, music, and architecture to interrogate the overlaps of image, emotion, narrative, and space. Materializing poetic reflections on built, perceived, and politicized landscapes, each attempt becomes a fleeting fusion of many moving parts.

Lia Maston is an actress, screenwriter and architect. She co-founded the architectural practice Microclimat in Montreal, and founded Firma in Toronto. Lia’s influences include Italian film, life, 12-steps recovery programs, Quebec, and Gothic cathedrals.

Jasmine Vanstone is a Jamaican-Canadian multidisciplinary artist, facilitator, and administrator who inspires and amplifies marginalized voices through community engagement, arts education, and public art. Through her artistic practice, she experiments primarily in collage, drawing, paper crafts, and murals to share visual reflections on identity, wellness, and the natural environment. With vibrant lyrical abstraction and the power of mentorship, Jasmine has earned awards and features at prominent events such as Nuit Blanche and KUUMBA. Her passion to inspire has led her to spaces that align with her mission such as VIBE Arts, North York Arts, and JAYU.

LeuWebb Projects is the creative collaboration between advocates, artists, architects, and educators Christine Leu and Alan Webb. Exploring relationships across plurality and unity, complexity and simplicity, their art process invites participation in collectively reshaping the public realm. Since 2011, LeuWebb Projects has created a multitude of site-specific artworks across the globe, ranging from ephemeral, technology-driven installations to robust and permanent city fixtures. Combining their expertise with their shared core interests, LeuWebb Projects operates at the intersection of art and design, imagining how the two can tangibly evoke past, present, and future narratives for a richer experience of place.

Oddside Arts is a grassroots cultural arts not-for-profit and creative technology artist collective, merging art, technology, and wellness through Black speculative design. Our work centres on prioritizing mental wellness and reimagining spaces for those identifying as part of Afrodiasporic and Indigenous communities, especially women, gender-expansive, and LGBTQ+ folks. We foster an environment for theorizing, creating, and contributing to the development of an equitable future. At Oddside Arts, we utilize art as a gateway for critical discussions on accessibility, equity, coalition building, and demystifying the public art process, empowering a cultural community of artists to gain access.