Invited by Maskwacis Cultural College Microlearning Series and is open to the public. In the first 60-minute session, participants will be introduced to the interdisciplinary concept of futures literacies along with different philosophical approaches to thinking and modeling complex futures in and for troubled times. We will explore the ways that futures imaginaries continue to be colonized by contemporary narratives of impossibility, and explore pathways for critical resistant to status quo futures through imaginative practice. In this session, we will engage with a selection of Indigenous narratives that model futures in radically different ways. Via hands-on and participatory creative imagining prompts, participants will explore their own sensing of the future and how this kind of reflective practice can help increase resilience in the face of uncertainty. Participants will leave this session with a strong understanding of futures literacies as a concept along with methods for critique and analysis of contemporary narratives of the future. https://www.mccedu.ca/events/microlearning-series-cultivating-the-futures-imaginary-session-1

Arts-based research methodologies are increasingly used by social science researchers to extend traditional inquiry and representation across the life of a project. Although there is no exhaustive list of media used by arts-based researchers, traditional media such as painting, drawing, dance, and theatre have tended to dominate. In our technology-saturated world, digital tools and technologies are becoming more entangled with human being and knowing and provide an array of creative approaches to research inquiry and representation. Often associated with quantitative approaches to data, digital tools and new media artforms are prevalent in arts-based educational research. Digital arts-based research can help problematize the binary between quantitative and qualitative approaches to data and can be used to take up data itself as an artistic and expressive medium.