Learn more about Megan HERE at their website, or follow them on Instagram!

“Megan Arnold (she/they) is a Filipinx-Canadian artist, currently based on Treaty 3 Territory.  They are an artist who wants to make you laugh and cry and cringe. She makes affective performances, videos, pop songs, and drawings that collapse the divisions between humour/pathos, amateurism/mastery, play/labour, and art/entertainment. Megan uses humour as a coping mechanism to deal with anxiety in the face of an impending apocalypse. Much of their practice is rooted in cabaret and bar entertainment, which is the great irony of their life as someone who likes to go to bed at 9pm. Current research interests include performance studies, humour studies, queer theory, and divination.”

On October 6th, 2024 Megan Arnold presented a full-day performance art workshop, encouraging participants to respond to the creative prompt APOCALYPSE through a queer lens. This workshop took place as part of the 2024 Ontario Culture Days festival.

Participants learned to create something quickly, without the pressures of preciousness, perfectionism, or imposter syndrome, and shared their creations within a group. 

The first part of the workshop involved context around Megan’s work, improvisation games, and lots of chit-chat about what apocalypse meant to everyone in a queer context. We talked about apocalypse in terms of genocide, colonization, disability justice, transphobia, nature, rebirth, art, music, and collective care. 

The second part of the workshop involved creative exercises, collaborative mega-collaging, storytelling, getting real, getting silly, and putting it all together to make a scrappy ensemble performance. Applause was generous and genuine. 

I was so grateful to Megan for facilitating such an impactful, vulnerable, silly day of boundless creativity for us all. It was truly exceptional to gather with other queer folks with intersectional lived experiences and talk about collective care, our own personal strengths, landback, and vegan marshmallows as vehicles for building a queer utopia post-apocalypse. 

Thanks to Art Not Shame for partnering with us and providing this accessible venue. 
Thank you to Wyndham Art Supplies for donating art supplies.