Artivism, disruption and climate action 

Using art as a means for social change, artivists (artist activists) can change the world. 

Join us for what promises to be a fascinating conversation about the role of art as activism and climate disruption. Hear from an inspirational panel of artists that includes Kl. Peruzzo Andrade, Damien Gillis, and Laurna Germscheid. Facilitated by Dr. Bruno de Oliveira Jayme, this discussion with renowned artists, filmmakers, journalists and creators will examine the role of “artivism” in today’s world. 

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About the Panelists:

Kl. Peruzzo Andrade

Peruzzo is a Cáa-Poré/Cafuzo film-maker, photographer and father based in Canada and Brazil. With a Masters of Social Dimensions of Health, Peruzzo believes that film-making is a practice of critical connections between identity, land-based knowledge. Peruzzo grew up between the city and the rural land of his grandparents- deeply embedded in his family's land-based knowledge and ways of being. In his ongoing learning, he hopes he can be a tool of solidarity in his film work and serve community-led and land-based knowledge mobilization. Peruzzo is the co-director of UATÊ STORIED LEARNING with current collaborations including: CBC Indigenous, APTN, Telus Storyhive, BC Knowledge Network, and Canada Council for the Arts. He is a jury member of the Banff International Mountain Film Festival (2023). Past collaborations include CBC Indigenous, VICELAND: Rise (Episode in Krenak Nation/Brazil), Cacao Road: Rain Owl Productions, University of Victoria, CRFAIR (Victoria B.C.), and Past Juror of Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival.

Damien Gillis 

Damien is a BC-based media producer, journalist, and activist. He co-directed and produced the feature doc Fractured Land with CBC's Documentary Channel, which broadcast around the world and won Best BC Film and the Canadian Audience Award at the 2015 Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF). He has directed and produced numerous short films — relating to water, salmon, forests, energy issues, and social justice — which have screened at festivals in Canada and globally. He co-created Sanctuary, an immersive dome projection experience about ancient forests, which has appeared at VIFF, the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, UBC's Museum of Anthropology, and other museums and galleries. As a journalist, he co-founded the online journal, The Common Sense Canadian, with the late Hall of Fame broadcaster Rafe Mair, covering environmental and resource politics in Canada for a decade. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Tyee, and The Narwhal.

Laurna Germscheid

Laurna Germscheid is a self-taught pen and ink artist living in Toronto, Canada. Although hand-drawn custom portraits make up most of her commissioned works, her print and design work centres on climate activism and bird-safe building advocacy. She is the co-creator of Birdsafe UofT, implementing FLAP Canada’s bird-safe campus program at UofT’s St. George campus where much of her art is featured on posters, window art, infographics, animations, and promotional materials. 

She is currently working on her second print in a series exploring nature-based climate solutions. Recognizing the complexities of the climate crises, she finds hope in the solutions that already exist within nature and hopes to inspire people to champion these in their daily lives. 

Bruno de Oliveira Jayme (moderator)

Bruno de Oliveira Jayme is a queer activist and award-winning scholar working on the edge of “what’s next?”. With such avant-garde teaching and research philosophy, his work aims to benefit seven generations to follow because his practices are anti-oppressive, decolonial, community-based, and action-oriented. Dr. de Oliveira Jayme says he cannot imagine social change without the arts because the arts surface stories that have been untold, under-told, wrongly told, and suppressed through colonization. Dr. de Oliveira Jayme is a visual artist and art educator with 25 years of dedication to creativity, and commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion. He is currently an Assistant Professor in Art Education at the University of Manitoba and the coordinator of the Master of Education in Arts, Community, and Education, where he teaches courses on community art, visual thinking, visual anthropology, and arts-based research. Driven by a commitment to social and environmental justice through the arts, his work has a global reach, including research projects in Canada, India, South Africa, Jordan, and Brazil. He holds a Social Science and Humanities Research Council Grant titled: Museum Hacking, with the objective to challenge museum Eurocentric narratives. Dr. de Oliveira Jayme has a vast track of academic publications on community art, museum education and arts and activism for social change and he is the co-author of the book: The Nature of Transformation–Environmental Adult Education.