Journalism, Image Arts, and Creative Industries students showcase diversity
Students in journalism, image arts, and creative industries explore and forge new narratives in year-end projects and showcases. Diversity in all its forms, be it race, age, gender or perspectives, was capitalized on by students as a way to spark new conversations and tell important stories. The results are in-depth features, short films, and musical performances that demonstrate the vital force of culture to change the world.
Representative journalistic narratives
The [ ] Review of Journalism (external link) is entirely produced by final-year undergraduate and masters students in the journalism program. This year, the diverse masthead wrote stories reflective of their own lived experiences, while also shedding light on new narratives, said Julia Duchesne, the magazine’s managing editor of print.
Julia Duchesne, the managing editor of print for the 2021 issue of the Review. Courtesy of the Review
[The stories] reflect the variety of our interests, backgrounds, and beats.
“Our team brought a lot of different life experiences to the table, and our stories reflect that diversity,” Duchesne said. “Our school still has a long way to go in supporting marginalized students but there are fourteen incredible stories in this issue, and many of them couldn’t have been written by anyone else. They reflect the variety of our interests, backgrounds, and beats.”
Duchesne explains that the Review aims to challenge and critique existing Western-centric narratives in Canadian journalism that often only perpetuate the status quo. This year, in an investigative feature for the Review called 'A Truer North' (external link) , she called attention to the issue of white voices dominating the news industry in the Canadian territories and how local journalists are working to create more accurate representation in local news stories.
“People who are from the north bring different, deeper perspectives to their coverage, which is important both for newcomers and for locals,” she said. “I wanted to understand more about the barriers to northerners, especially Indigenous northerners, getting into and staying in journalism. Since it's partly a problem of institutional whiteness, I think I as a white settler journalist have a duty to cover that."
A map showing a few of the communities in the Canadian territories
"Institutional racism in newsrooms takes the form of a lack of diverse voices,” explains Sarah A. Samuel, social media/visuals editor of the Review. Canadian journalists like to pride themselves for being at the vanguard of inclusion and diversity, says Samuel, but finds examples today of censorship and biased reporting related to coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict. She believes there is much more work to be done.
Sarah A. Samuel, the newsletter and social media/visuals editor for the Review. Courtesy of the Review
Diversity on screen
The Ryerson University Film Festival (external link) (RUFF) features thesis films created entirely by final year students from the School of Image Arts. The students curate their entire film from start to finish, including all aspects of filming, post-production, and scriptwriting.
Each film has a unique storyline and fits into a distinctive genre, such as sci-fi or romance, to appeal to a variety of audiences. The students' backgrounds also informed the wide range of films created this year, like the film Freefall, a short Latinx film exploring toxic masculinity and difficult family relationships, written and directed by Andy Villanueva, or Uprooted, a documentary showing how three young people are changing the way we think about food in Toronto, directed by Daniel Hackborn.
With the pandemic, RUFF has shifted the entire film festival to a virtual format. The team is using an online platform to allow the films to be screened by a global audience for the first time ever.
“Despite the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, we were devoted to making RUFF happen. A lot of resilience, adaptation, and passion has gone into creating our films and planning this festival,” sponsorship lead Kirsten Brass said. “This virtual platform will reach a vast, global audience in a way RUFF has never been able to before. There is nothing that a little creativity couldn’t fix.”
The festival is set to take place between July 16 and 18, 2021, and will showcase over a dozen thesis films.
Students in the image arts program preparing to create their thesis films. Courtesy of RUFF Instagram
Courtesy of RUFF Instagram
A kaleidoscope of creativity
From live musical performances to a virtual art gallery, the Creative Industries Showcase (external link) gave students an opportunity to present their creative work to classmates and program faculty in real-time. The showcase, organized by the Creative Industries Course Union, exhibits a variety of visual art, vocal, instrumental, spoken word performances, and presentations submitted by students and alumni in the program.
The student performances and faculty keynotes, which discussed creativity during COVID-19, touched on topics that included race, gender, and intersectionality, among others. Alexa Hansel, president of the Creative Industries Course Union, said it was a priority for her team to have a showcase that reflected the diversity and different identities of students in the program.
“The Creative Industries program has become increasingly more diverse as the years have progressed. By showing our efforts to support diverse communities year-round, not just at Showcase, was important for us,” she said. “We understand that not all students have felt well represented by the CICU in years past, and we certainly wanted to correct those feelings and make sure students felt safe to submit any type of art, performance, or presentation they wished.”
Looking towards inclusive futures
The students behind [ ] Review of Journalism (external link) , RUFF (external link) and the Creative Industries Showcase 2021 (external link) have made apparent their dedication to diversifying their creative practices in ways that are inclusive and that embrace a variety of narratives. Through their year-end projects, these students have displayed their passions for reflecting the diversity of their creative fields while also bringing light to their lived experiences.
The Creative School at Ryerson University
Entering its eighth decade, The Creative School is a global centre of media and creative invention. As a disrupter in innovative education, The Creative School is dedicated to developing creators with authentic voices who engage directly with creative industries around the world.
With 23 undergraduate and graduate programs that are shaping the future of their fields and tight-knit partnerships around the world, The Creative School offers more opportunities to educate the next generation of creative leaders than anywhere else.
An earlier version of this article was published prior to the faculty's rebrand and was edited to change all occurences of "FCAD" to be "The Creative School".
