I’m incredibly honoured to be joining my friend and colleague timothy martin in presenting at this years School of Public Pedagogies Seminar Series!
We’ll be talking about our research interests in preserving and transmitting activist memory and leading a fun mapping activity!
From the conference program …
This seminar will feature scholarly discussion and provocation from two scholars based in Treaty 13
territory, commonly referred to as Toronto, Canada, whose work has come to intersect in surprising
and meaningful ways. The session will commence with timothy martin’s discussion of his forthcoming
book, The Toronto Homeless Memorial: Organizing Public Remembrance (University of Toronto Press).
In this brief overview, martin will emphasize the role of grassroots memorialization as cultivating a
community of memory. Following the work of Iwona Irwin-Zarecka (1994), we examine the ways
collective memory forms, disappears, and rematerializes when challenged or extended. Thus,
communities of memory are always “shifting…boundaries” (Irwin-Zarecka, 1994, p. 48). What martin’s
work emphasizes is the role of aesthetic objects and site specific configurations that help to stabilize
and render durable the work of collective remembrance.
Andrew Lochhead is a research-creation scholar whose work examines the role of critical walking
practices in storying and interpreting urban memory landscapes. His work engages diverse publics
through participatory, movement-based events. These experiences have led him to develop a hybrid
research methodology and creative practice called scenographic chorography, which combines
walking extra-theatrical intervention with the Classical discipline of chorography, or “place-writing”.
Such affective and embodied approaches, Lochhead contends, strengthen relationships between
people and the past, and make imagining collective and reparative futures easier (Springgay and
Truman, 2018; Macpherson, 2019; Parry, 2025). In the summer of 2024, Lochhead organized
Monumental: Fifty years of Creative Memory Activism, a walking tour for Heritage Toronto, aimed at
unveiling contested memoryscapes and collective forms of memory resistance in the city. For this
project, he interviewed martin, who was completing a dissertation on the Toronto Homeless Memorial
at the time, along with one of the central organizers of the monthly memorial. Lochhead will introduce
the ideas behind this walking tour of Toronto’s counter-monuments, sharing some of the maps and
ephemera that were produced.
Ultimately, this presentation will move to questions that seek to unpack the linkages between local
collectives, geographically unique communities of memory, and the global flows of memory. We ask,
how do these local instances of interruptive memory work connect to and between communities of
memory on a global scale? To engage in this discussion, we plan to enlist local examples of
commemorative monuments, counter-monuments, and insurgent practices of grassroots memory work
from the audience. Given the global nature of the Public Pedagogy Institute, we anticipate being able
to collectively map the connective tissue between communities of memory represented at our seminar.
timothy martin
timothy martin is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. He is
currently studying and sharing the role of the activist-as-educator through oral history interviews and
archival research in state and community based archives. In his research he connects with organizers
who have spent decades advocating for the rights of unhoused and precariously housed citizens
across Canada.
Andrew Lochhead
Andrew Lochhead, PhD, Toronto Metropolitan University, is a research-creation scholar whose work
examines the role of critical walking practices in storying and interpreting urban memory landscapes.
His work engages diverse publics through participatory, movement-based events.
References
Irwin-Zarecka, I. (1994). Frames of remembrance: The dynamics of collective memory. Transaction
Publishers.
Macpherson, H. (2016). Walking methods in landscape research: moving bodies, spaces of disclosure
and rapport. Landscape Research, 41(4), 425–432.
Parry, H. (2025). Introducing heritage scenography. In Cass, N., Powell, A., & Wakefield, S. (Eds.), The
Routledge handbook of heritage and creative practice (pp. 162-176) Routledge.
Springgay, S., & Truman, S. E. (2018). Walking methodologies in a more-than-human world:
WalkingLab. Routledge.
IMPORTANT DATE/TIME INFO:
If you are tuning in from North America
November 10 and starts at 18h EST or 23h BST
If you are in Europe it begins November 11 at 00 CET
If you are in Australia where the seminar is being held its November 11 at 10 AEST/9 AEDT
Reg Link: https://www.trybooking.com/au/event/1649058?
Reg Cost: $70AUD to attend all seminars in the series or $30AUD for 1
MORE SERIES INFO: https://www.publicpedagogies.org/events/school-of-public-pedagogies-2026/
Hope to see you there!
