Diverse Pasts and Near Futures is a youth program launched in December 2023, supported by Scotiabank, to increase accessibility to architectural education and museum spaces for youth—where Black, Indigenous, and POC narratives are often underrepresented.

Young people occupy and shape space as much as adults, and we believe it’s important to provide them with the tools to navigate and understand their own built environment from a young age. Introducing design and the links between community and identity can help strengthen self-esteem, confidence, and a passion for learning. This program draws on the celebration of our diverse backgrounds to foster a generation of future designers and thinkers.

This program includes workshops, public conversations, events and aims to create long term collaborations with community organisations and schools. All activities developed under the Diverse Pasts and Near Futures program are offered free of charge, under certain conditions. We encourage groups to reach out to host a program with us, either in our space, or yours in the local Montréal region. We can also provide financial help for transportation to facilitate visits to the museum, or to compensate for groups who would like to partake in our Young Public workshops not listed on this page.

For more information, to book a workshop or to discuss a collaboration, please contact Alexandra Lyn, or call 514 939 7001x 1365.

This program is concretization of the last two years of actions taken to building an affirmative relationship with community and school groups in collaboration with our Land Acknowledgement Working Group, and Vanessa Owusu-Piameng, Black Communities Programmer, CCA.

Architecture challenge 2025
3 February to 4 April 2025
Through a participatory design contest offered to students in the CSSDM, where youth are invited to conceive a space or architectural project on a site near their school that can foster the diverse cultures and communities of their neighbourhoods. Whether ephemeral or longstanding, this contest allows students to explore design and gathering through a collaborative project.

Workshop—Grown from the concrete: Hip Hop and Urban Space (Ages 12 to 17)
What stories of spaces and places are told through hip hop culture? How do the four pillars of hip hop relate to architecture? This workshop allows participants to discover the evolution and legacy of hip hop and urban space that was originated by Black and Latino communities through: listening to rap music, analyzing lyrics, and drawing maps in graffiti.

Workshop—Reimagining Community Architecture (All ages)
How can youth learn to imagine a new community space through speculative and creative explorations? How can history inform our decisions so that it can better respond to the needs and desires of the neighbourhood’s residents? Using the NCC and Little Burgundy as a case study, this workshop invites children to imagine an active and inclusive community space in their neighbourhood.

Workshop—My Block (Ages 12 to 17)
The goal of this workshop is to debunk erroneous narratives about black communities and to develop more accurate understandings of their realities by listening to teenagers’ perspectives on their own neighbourhood experiences. The activity seeks to promote a greater sensitivity to important experiences derived from community living through mapping, writing, and artistic expression.

Please contact public@cca.qc.ca for more information or to book your visit.

August 2024: assinajaq and the CCA host the film festival Tillitarniit—home, body, land. Outdoor Inuit games and film screenings on the façade of the CCA presented in Park Baile as part of the fourth edition.

June 2024: Presentation on Afrofuturism and reimagining community architecture at the Little Burgundy and Jazz festival, organized by Nigra Iuventa.

May 2024: Multidisciplinary youth workshop for ages 5-14 on community architecture facilitated with Club Énergie, at CEDA in Little Burgundy.

April 2024: McGill University architecture studio Memory & Future on the revival of the Negro Community Centre reviewed by panelists from the CCA and the Centre for Canadians of African Descent.

January-April 2024: Ten-week series of spatial workshops empowers teens ages 14-17 to reflect on and impact the future of a new community-centred space in Little Burgundy. Participants discovered the rich legacy of the Negro Community Centre (NCC) and developed their own architectural projects envisioning a new community space.

In parallel, CCA Young Public offered the workshop Reimagine Community Architecture to youth groups and non profit organisations on the topic of architecture designed for (and by) community.

2023–2024: Facilitating public programs for all ages, developed by Ange Loft in relation to her installation, Visibly Iroquoian. The workshop, Carrying Patterns: Making Visible an Iroquoian Montréal invites participants to engage with the layered history of the land upon which the city has been built and to familiarize themselves with Iroquoian Ancestral Architectural Aesthetic, iconography, and pattern work.

Summer 2023: Slow Mo Storytelling zine workshop with indigenous programmer Niki Mulder.

Spring 2023: My Block workshop, unpacking black and brown urban experiences and mapping community through the eyes of adolescents, delivered to Youth in Motion by Vanessa Owusu-Piameng.

Summer 2022: The CCA hosts the film festival Tillitarniit—Many Hands, which comprises outdoor Inuit games, performances, and film screenings on the façade of the CCA presented in Park Baile as part of the third edition. This festival is curated by visual artist and filmmaker asinnajaq.