The Arts of Empowerment: Brilliancy and Resiliency Conference 2025

April 11th 2025

Dwayne Morgan (photo by Dewey Chang).

We have always been a light in the world, keynote speaker Dwayne Morgan OOnt, known as “The Godfather” of Canadian Spoken Word poetry told Black students attending the third annual 2025 Brilliancy and Resiliency Conference, held at UTS this April. “The hope is that you leave here confident in your light, confident in your brilliance, because your brilliance will always cause fear in other people. It has always been this way, generation after generation after generation... you have to find ways to navigate these people who want to see you be dim and dare to shine, dare to be bright, because they expect you to believe that you are supposed to be dim. But that has never been us.”

A Canadian multi-award winning spoken word artist, poet and motivational speaker, Dwayne is a leading light. A two-time Canadian National Poetry Slam Champion and an appointee to the Order of Ontario, he has published 14 books and nine albums, and performed for and shared the stage with figures like Barack Obama, Alicia Keys and Drake.

His inspirational keynote, interspersed with his visceral, transcendent poems about Black potential and experience, launched a day of hand-on workshops on the theme Celebrating the Arts, Centering Wellness at the Conference of Independent Schools of Ontario (CIS)-supported conference, attended by 110 Black-identifying students and 18 staff from CIS member schools across the Greater Toronto Area.

After the keynote UTS M3 (grade 9) student Yeab, M4 (grade 10) Soleila and Director of Music Lyris Pat filled the Withrow Auditorium with the sounds of the Black National Anthem, bringing everyone together in chorus as they started this day of learning and community on a high note.

Participants take part in a steel pan drumming workshop led by Earl La Pierre and Rudo Forteau. (Photo by Dewey Chang,)

During the morning and afternoon, the students took part in hands-on arts workshops designed to get them actively engaged with the arts and each other, from Caribbean dancing, steelpan drumming and collage-making to spoken word (with Dwayne), and directing and producing.

In the workshops, students came face-to-face with Black community leaders who are all role models of excellence in their own right. When Sudz Sutherland P ’21, ’25 shared his film clips with the producing and directing workshop he was leading, something clicked for Yasmin, a grade 10 Hillfield Strathallan College student from Hamilton. “It was really cool, because I have watched some of those films,” she said. “I was like, oh my god, he directed those! And then he taught us about how that came to be. He not only told us what he was doing, but how that connected to his culture and how he's embracing it.”

Tamla Matthews leading an inspiring dance workshop for students. (Photo by Dewey Chang,)

Participants conquered fears and made new friends. “I was really scared to try the dancing workshop,” said Temi, also a grade 10 student from Hillfield Strathallan College, who took the Caribbean dance workshop with Tamla Matthews, a dancer, artist, director, entrepreneur and educator and the founder and Director of the Roots and Branches Dance Company. “I did not think I would enjoy that. As soon as we started, we went up on that stage, and it was so much fun. I loved how she let us make our own dances. Collectively as a group, we created a dance together. And after we had some time to get to know the other Black students.”

Students tried arts beyond the realm of their experience. “I never thought that I'd have the opportunity to play a steelpan drum,” said UTS S6 (grade 12) Georgio, who attended the steelpan drumming workshop with musicians Earl La Pierre and Rudo Forteau and was also one of the organizers of the conference. “Even though I don't really want to pursue that, I think it's really cool… I don't think I would really know for sure if it was something that I want to do, if I didn't actually do it. I feel like that something that applies to a lot of different areas in life, like you need to actually put yourself in those spaces and put yourself through those experiences for you to know for yourself that that's something that you want to do, and so as to not let any barriers hold you back, or any of your thoughts.”

Students make collages in a workshop led by Bushra Junaid. (Photo by Dewey Chang,)

Upstairs in the arts classrooms, students unleashed their creativity in a collage-making workshop with Bushra Junaid, a Toronto-based artist, curator and arts administrator.

Visiting staff took part in a panel discussion to help centre the experience of Black students and parents at independent schools with UTS students M3 (grade 9) Yeab and S5 (grade 11) Diara and Jennifer Holness P ’21, ’25, moderated by Dr. Carl James, professor and the Jean Augustine Chair in Education, Community and Diaspora at York University.

S5 (grade 11) Diara and M3 (grade 9) Yeab took part in a panel discussion for visiting staff. (Photo by Dewey Chang,)

At the of the day, everyone convened together again in the Withrow Auditorium for a wellness panel on arts and vulnerability led by social worker Ejemen Iyayi with Tamla Matthews, S6 Georgio, M4 (grade 10) Safeyyah and UTS English Teacher Nkechinyem Oduh. “There’s that saying, work twice as hard to get half as far...” Nkechinyem said. “You start a race and run your fastest, and still have people ahead of you, no matter how hard you run, no matter how out of breath you are, and it creates this feeling of, what am I doing here? Why am I running this race with these people? I'm never going to get there.”

She described running the race with others who are only half as far, who are all out of breath and really tired and saying maybe they shouldn’t be in this race in the first place, that their goals should be different than other people or that they even should run the other way. “When you're in a predominantly non-Black population of a school, a business, a career or an industry, you have to run that race, you don't have a choice… You have to either support yourself, find people who are outside of the race, or take time, take a break, sit down, catch your breath and talk to the people next to you.”

The community created by this event stays with students. “When I see the students come together – because I know my students don't get an opportunity to see other Black students often – and just to see them come to this environment, and the amazed look they have from just seeing so many Black students,” said Antoinette Morgan, director of student wellbeing at Bayview Glen School in Toronto. “That’s what stays with me ‒ the community and the inclusivity, and that's what the students are telling me too.”

Students attend a spoken word workshop with Dwayne Morgan. (Photo by Dewey Chang,)

Brilliancy and Resiliency is the annual conference of the Black Student Affinity Network, an initiative created by Black students at independent schools. The conference was launched three years ago by Daniel Lumsden, a math teacher at St. Michael's College School, which hosted the conference for its first two years.

For this year’s event, students and staff on the UTS Black Equity Committee planned the entire roster of activities, working diligently behind the scenes since September 2024, epitomizing the poetic words of keynote speaker Dwayne Morgan.

“We are all the active participants in the race to fulfill our destiny.
So when the baton comes, take it and run.
Because failure isn't a crime but aiming too low is.
Because if you reach for the top of the tree, you might never get off the ground
But if you shoot for the stars, you might, at the very least, get to the top of that tree.”

- Dwayne Morgan