In 2023, amid social and environmental crises and a barrage of bad news, Madeleine Orr conceived the Future of Canada Show to create a platform for positivity and a counter-narrative which centers joy, wellbeing and healing.
Orr, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education whose research examines the impacts of climate change on sport, invited artists from every province and territory to imagine Canada in 2080 in a scenario where ‘we get everything right’.
“Between September 2023 and March 2024, my team and I traveled from Corner Brook in Newfoundland to Whitehorse in the Yukon, to visit schools and engage with more than 1300 students in discussions relating to climate and nature, quality of life, interpersonal relationships and equitable institutions,” says Orr, who was named a Future of Canada Fellow by McMaster University in 2023 and used funding from that fellowship to pursue this project.
“Students had the choice of expressing their positive visions of the future through drawing, sketching, painting or poetry.”
The collection, which Orr describes as ‘bright, bold and optimistic’, is now on display at the Papermill Theatre and Gallery in Toronto through September 22, when it will move to Hamilton’s Waller Lobby, in L.R. Wilson Hall, until October 7.
“This (free) exhibit was curated to inspire and inform, and invite visitors into a conversation about what could be,” says Orr, who founded The Sport Ecology Group, an international consortium of academics who drive climate action in the sport sector through research and public education initiatives, and recently wrote a book on how climate change is changing sport.
“I’m very excited for people to see it.”
Listen to Orr explain the project on Spotify.