A new workshop organized by CSLP student affiliates Rawda Harb and Guillaume Jabbour invites participants to explore the power of listening as a form of solidarity, reflection, and collective awareness.
Titled Soundwalking as Resistance, the one-session workshop will take place on May 7, beginning at the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance (CSLP) at Concordia University. Register now.
Combining shared meals, guided listening, and a collective walk through the city, the event introduces participants to soundwalking—a practice that emphasizes active, embodied listening to one’s surroundings. Moving together from Concordia to the McGill campus and back, participants will engage with the everyday soundscape of Montreal, from traffic and voices to quieter, often unnoticed moments in between.
The workshop is grounded in both artistic practice and social engagement. As Jabbour explains through his work, soundwalking and deep listening can foster meaningful connections across communities and generations, creating space for reflection through shared sensory experience.
At the same time, the event foregrounds pressing global realities. The walk is framed as a gesture of solidarity with those in Gaza who must navigate daily challenges simply to remain connected—seeking signal, electricity, and contact with the outside world.
Harb emphasizes the importance of acknowledging absence as part of this reflection:
“Many Palestinian students who have been accepted to Canadian universities are currently unable to leave Gaza and join their academic communities here in Montreal. Their absence is deeply felt. This workshop is a space to reflect on that absence and to transform it into awareness and action.”
The workshop also invites participants to consider how sound intersects with memory, place, and social dynamics, including sites shaped by recent student activism and movements for justice.
Designed to be accessible and immersive, Soundwalking as Resistance brings together research-creation, community engagement, and critical reflection. The evening begins with a collective vegetarian meal, followed by an introduction to soundwalking, the guided walk itself, and a closing discussion.
Harb, a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with Université Laval and the RAVI Project, brings expertise in migration, resilience, and participatory research. Jabbour, a PhD student in Communication Studies, focuses on sound, ethnography, and community-based artistic practices. Together, they create a space that bridges scholarship, art, and lived experience.
Participants are encouraged to register in advance to support event planning and ensure sufficient space and materials for all.
May 7 Event Schedule
- 5:30 pm -- Meet at CSLP
(GA building, behind the Faubourg 1211 Saint-Mathieu St. Montreal, QC, H3H 2S2) - 5:30-6:30 -- Collective Light Vegetarian Meal and Introduction to Soundwalking
- 6:30 - 7:30 -- Soundwalk - Round Trip from the CSLP to the McGill campus
- 7:30 - 8:30pm -- Discussion
The initiative is sponsored and hosted by the CSLP through its EmpowerGrad programming, and co-sponsored by the Recherche Action Vivre-ensemble Islam (RAVI Project) at Université Laval, led by CSLP member Abdelwahed Mekki-Berrada, and the Canadian Practitioners Network for the Prevention of Extremist Violence (CPN-PREV), directed by CSLP member Ghayda Hassan, as well as the Resisting Colonizations initiative.