(IN-PERSON - REGISTRATION REQUIRED)
Work, labour, jobs, employment, drudgery, effort, chores, obligations, tasks, service… There is no way around it, we all work, in one or many forms, day in and day out. But what do we really mean when we talk about work? Why do we frequently (though not exclusively) speak of work with some level of dissatisfaction? What transforms work into something rewarding and fulfilling? What kind of workers do we want to be?
Join Kalyna Somchynsky and your fellow workers for a friendly cup of coffee and facilitated conversation (with a surprise twist!) where together we will endeavor to envision equitable and sustainable futures of work.
The discussion is open to anyone willing and eager to unpack our collective relationships with work.
Kalyna Somchynsky is Historian of Art and Visual Culture, Researcher, and Library Worker based in Edmonton, Alberta on Treaty 6 Territory. She completed her Master of Arts in the History of Art, Design, and Visual Culture at the University of Alberta in 2020 and has since worked on various educational, editorial, and community-based projects. Her research interests include questions of gender and politics in the Ukrainian Canadian community, how artists address the body, labour, and conflict within their work, and finding the extraordinary in ordinary aesthetic experiences. She is dedicated to interviewing and the power of conversation as a research methodology which she first employed in her thesis on contemporary feminist art in Ukraine where she conducted interviews with artists, arts professionals, and activists over the summer of 2019. Subsequently, she led the oral history research project Local Narratives: The Lives, Legacies, and Locales of Edmonton’s Ukrainian Canadian Community at MacEwan University’s Ukrainian Resource and Development Centre (URDC) and has co-produced three short documentaries on renowned Ukrainian community members in collaboration with URDC and the Alberta Local and International Education Association (ALIEA). Her work is guided by her commitment to relationship building and belief in the value of the stories we all have to share.