Futures: Sensory/Affective/Imaginative/Land-based Learning

This course, designed by Dr. Nicole Klenk, introduces students to relational approaches to environmental problem-solving, including participatory, deliberative, and narrative processes. A central focus of the course is learning to take an aesthetic stance toward knowledge, ethics, and environmental decision-making.

In this three-part curricular program developed with the Doris McCarthy Gallery, students used a SAIL (Sensory/Affective/Imaginative/Land-based Learning) framework to put into practice these ideas through engagement with the exhibition Futures.

October 6, 2025 | 2 - 4 pm
Exhibition Tour
The DMG team led a tour of Futures with a focus on how Perera considers relationships to the land through her work, the current reality and imagined impacts of climate change, and ideas of adaptation and mutation.

October 20, 2025 | 1 - 2 pm
Close-Looking Exercise
Students returned to the DMG to complete a close-looking exercise considering an individual work, responding to prompts centred around change.

November 3, 2025 | 2 – 4 pm
Response Activity
Students participated in a response activity led by Futures Educator-in-Residence Deepikah RB. Framed through the lens of her practice, which interweaves nature, kinship, and hope to reconsider anthropocentric narratives amid ecological crises, this hands-on workshop explored more-than-human relationships, inviting students to contribute an object to a collectively assembled community artwork, observing how meaning shifts relationally. 

Deepikah RB is an award-winning Indian interdisciplinary artist practicing in T’karonto (Toronto), Canada. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from OCAD University (2024) and is pursuing a PhD in Environmental Studies at York University. Deepikah’s work highlights collaboration beyond humans, involving algae and bioplastics, focusing on nonhuman agency, regenerative processes, and multispecies kinship. Deepikah has exhibited at Artist Project 2025 and Geary Art Crawl (2024) and represented Canada at Salon Acme during Art Week 2025 in CDMX, Mexico. Deepikah’s work appears in CBC Arts, Hyperallergic, and Stir World.