Date & time
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Workshops & seminars
Share this event:
Crafting Commons
Material | Making | Meditate
Cost
This event is free.
Website
Where
J.W. McConnell Building
1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
4TH SPACE
Accessible location
Yes - See details
Ongoing series, Now and Here / Here and Now, reflects on climate hope through meditative stitching and reclaimed materials, drawing attention to the power of small, intentional acts in addressing global environmental challenges. 2025; Pramila Choudhary
Join Public Scholar & Doctoral Candidate Pramila Choudhary (Department of Geography, Urban and Environmental Studies, Concordia University), alongside her collaborators and community partners, for an engaging spotlight event. Crafting Commons brings together makers, researchers, artists, and community members to explore how seasonal rhythms shape material practices and how slowness, care, and constraint can become generative forces in making and imagining shared futures.
Through conversations, artistic interventions, and hands-on making, this event creates a shared space to reflect on the relationships between materials, methods, and meaning. Artists, makers, researchers, and community members are invited to consider how practices shaped by scarcity, abundance, and stewardship continue to influence ways of working across art, craft, research, and everyday life.
See schedule below:
| Schedule | |
|---|---|
| 10:00am - 1:00pm | Listening | Panel Discussion Grounded in listening, reflection, and place-based knowledge, the discussion examines how inherited practices continue to shape contemporary approaches to making, sustainability, and care across contexts. |
| 1:00pm - 1:30pm | Lunch Break |
| 1:30pm - 2:30pm | Artist Expo Walk-through |
| 2:30pm - 5:00pm | Experiential Making Session Participants are invited into tactile, process-based encounters with materials, fostering embodied reflection on making, care, and seasonal rhythms. The session emphasizes learning through doing and shared experience within a community setting. |
How can you participate? Join us in person, or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting. You can also watch live on YouTube.
Have questions? Send them to info.4@concordia.ca
Speakers
PhD Candidate and Public Scholar, Concordia University, Canada/India | Moderator
Sustainability, Decolonization, and Design, The Creative School, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada
Research Chair in Art and Education for Sustainable and Just Futures, Concordia University, Canada
Assistant Professor, Religions and Cultures, Concordia University, Canada/India
Clothing and object designer; Co-Director, atelier b, Tiohtià:ke / Montréal, Canada
Fashion designer, researcher, community organizer; Co-founder, Growing A.R.C., Canada
Doctoral Researcher (Textile Craft and Sustainability), Nottingham Trent University (UK)/India | Moderator
Textile designer and researcher (National Institute of Design, NID, India)
Craft and social design specialist (National Institute of Design, NID, India)
Visual artist and folklore researcher (India)
Doctoral Researcher (History of Design), University of Brighton (UK)/India
Organized by
Pramila Choudhary is an artist-researcher, educator and Public Scholar at Concordia University. Her work focuses on sustainable textiles, circular practices, and community-led knowledge, bridging material culture, labour, gender, and sustainability across India and Canada through collaborative, craft-based approaches.
Nadia Bunyan is a fashion designer, researcher, and community organizer, and co-founder of the nonprofit Growing A.R.C. She is pursuing a Master’s degree at Concordia University, focusing on sustainable fashion and the integration of food and textile crops in community projects.
Megha Chauhan is a PhD researcher at Nottingham Trent University (UK), exploring intersections of fashion, culture, and community-driven engagement, with a focus on creative outreach, storytelling, and collaborative cultural practices.
Sowparnika Balaswaminathan is an Assistant Professor in Religions & Cultures at Concordia University. Her research spans heritage and museums, art and craft, South Asia, caste, postcoloniality, ethics, aesthetics, labour, and gender and sexuality.
Aliénor Dufetel is a third-year BFA student in Fibres & Material Practices at Concordia University. Her practice explores geomorphology, deep time, and the sublime through fibre sculpture, abstraction, and handwoven textured maps, working at the intersection of environmental sciences and art.