DESCRIPTION

Foreign Encounters: Redefining Diversity  is an interactive campaign featuring real-life stories and images of Toronto youth exploring life in one of the world’s most diverse cities.

What does “diversity” really mean to Toronto’s young people? Ryerson University students share their personal encounters with diversity to reveal funny, touching, sad, and often awkward insights into navigating life in a diverse metropolitan city. Artists of Madeleine Co. transform select stories into an evocative photographic series in which students re-enact their experiences. Foreign Encounters challenges tired and conventional diversity campaigns seen in tourism and in public policy. There is never a one-size-fits-all definition of diversity: the closest we can come to understanding its complexity is through the varied, personal stories of the people who experience it every day. The Foreign Encounters photography series has been exhibited internationally in the United States and Europe. Learn more about the project and read the stories at: www.foreignencounters.ca.

Research with the Diversity Institute: Madeleine Co. collaborated with the Diversity Institute, a Ryerson University research centre, to study the current climate of diversity from the youth perspective.

This project is generously supported by the Photowings Insights grant.

EXHIBITION HISTORY

Ashoka U Exchange, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, March 2014

Ryerson University, Toronto,  November 2013 – March, 2014

PRESS

Patterson, Mackenzie. “Exploring diversity on campus.” The Eye Opener. 14 January 2014