This is the Toronto Theory / irid / Michelle Jia newsletter. You’re receiving this because you’ve attended one of Michelle’s events before.

What are you doing the evening of May 27th?

My friends and co-conspirators have booked out Isabel Bader Theatre for “The Great Conversation,” a lecture reimagining the history of technology as a history of ideas, communities, lineages and relationships. The speaker is Matthew Jordan of Toronto Theory 2 (!) and tickets are going fast. irid helped shape the content and creative direction of this event and it’s going to be lovely.

We’re also going to have publication booths in the lobby — including the just-launched Toronto-based Orbital Studies and books from Stripe Press.

For tickets, click here: https://thegreatconversation.ca/

Updates on irid

I’ve been lucky enough to have had a ton of incredible conversations lately with Torontonians and beyond about the future of design and human problem-solving. There are some one-off talks and workshops that I’ll share in the coming days, but the big news is that I am working on the teacher application for the first set of irid courses.

What that means is: if you’re the kind of person who wants to grow their own thinking and work through creating a course, we want to support you. My vision is that through making the best possible environment for teachers — classroom, pedagogical support and critique, a sense of intellectual community — we’ll be able to create something that naturally attracts learners of all stripes.

So what I’ll say for now is, think about whether you might want to teach a course. Two questions that will be on the teacher application are:

Why do you want to teach?

&

What questions do you hope to answer through this?

You’ll see the teacher application itself launched by May 27th and acceptances will be rolling through the summer with a pilot start for the fall, probably late September.

Toronto Theory 2.5 and beyond

Thank you to those who came out to TT2.5! It was intellectually satisfying for me to share more of the world of TT with you.

As I’ve shared with some of you, I am envisioning a three-part series, so Toronto Theory 3, whenever it happens, will be the closing of this trilogy.

Please stay tuned for this and more, and if you have strong opinions about the Toronto Theory series, please let me know!

Thanks again for tuning in to our weird experiments. I feel your love for this city, for its past, present and future, and I’m right there with you.

With gratitude,
Michelle