Urban Narratives

What does the city tell us about our communities and our lives? Toronto Star columnist and Coach House Press author Shawn Micallef, Track Toronto music specialist Chloe Doesburg and award-winning NFB producer Gerry Flahive shed light on the complex nature of Toronto's appeal in a scintillating conversation that will be highlighted by stunning visuals.

Using a photographic slide-show, Micallef, the writer of Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto and Full Frontal TO, will walk us through the neighbourhoods, buildings and people of the city.

Flahive, the award-winning producer of the web-documentaries High Rise and co-producer with the New York Times of A Short History of the High Rise, will examine the meaning of the giant buildings that dominate the cityscapes of Toronto and countless other metropolises.

Doesburg is a key member of Track Toronto, which collects and maps songs about Toronto, allowing listeners to experience the city through music, and music through the city. Doesburg will present some of the site-specific songs that they've placed throughout Toronto—some going back 150 years. Track Toronto's website is www.listentotrack.ca and they are on twitter @tracktoronto.

Host:
Amy Lavender Harris, is the author of Imagining Toronto (Mansfield Press, 2010), which was shortlisted for the Gabrielle Roy Prize in Canadian literary criticism and won the 2011 Heritage Toronto Award of Merit. Amy is a contributing editor with Spacing Magazine, where she writes a regular column on the urban imagination. She has contributed essays to many other publications, and speaks regularly to popular and scholarly audiences about urban culture and identity. Her next book, Acts of Salvage, explores what the contemporary city compels us to cling to or discard.