Workshops
At the Creative Community Impact Association (CCIA), our workshops bring socially engaged adults together to explore creative practice, build community, and inspire gentle advocacy. Each session is designed to be inclusive, accessible, and values-driven, providing participants with the space, tools, and connections to make meaningful change in their communities.
Currently, we offer in-person workshops in the Halifax Regional Municipality and rural Nova Scotia, alongside virtual workshops that are open to adults living anywhere in Canada. Our online programming allows participants from across the country to take part and connect with a broader community. As CCIA grows, we plan to expand our reach gradually and thoughtfully, ensuring our programs remain accessible, community-centered, and sustainable
All our workshops are categorized into four core streams, reflecting our mission and community values:
Creative Connections
Workshops focused on community-building through arts, dialogue, and storytelling. Participants explore creative practice while connecting with others, sharing experiences, and cultivating belonging in safe and supportive spaces.
Inclusive Arts Practice
Workshops designed for artists, educators, and socially engaged creatives to explore accessibility, equity, and inclusion in the arts. Participants gain practical skills, reflect on inclusive practices, and engage with peers in mission-aligned training and creative exercises.
EcoArts Labs
Creative explorations that address environmental awareness and eco-innovation. Participants engage in multidisciplinary arts activities while considering how creativity can support sustainability, ecological literacy, and positive environmental action.
Pride Pedagogy
2SLGBTQIA+ centered workshops exploring identity, culture, and social change through arts-based learning. Facilitated by queer arts professionals, these sessions provide a safe, affirming space for discussion, creative practice, and connection for socially engaged adults. Allies are welcome to join respectfully and support inclusive dialogue, while the focus remains on 2SLGBTQIA+ voices and experiences.
Our workshops are warm, approachable, and inclusive, offered free or for a small fee to make them accessible to people from all walks of life. Each session is a chance to learn, create, and connect while contributing to a values-driven community.
What's Next:
Community in Colour: Exploring Connection Through Watercolours
To register: Please email boxoffice@astortheatre.ns.ca
Registration is being handled directly by the Astor Theatre
Facilitator: Jacquelyn Miccolis
Date/Time: Saturday, May 23rd, 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Location: Astor Theatre & Arts Centre,
Address: 219 Main St, Liverpool, NS B0T 1K0
Suitable for: Adults | Price: Free | Registration required
Workshop Description:
What does community mean to you? How do art and connection intersect?
Join us for a playful, hands-on watercolour workshop for adults designed to spark conversation, creativity, and connection. Together, participants will begin with a guided group activity to explore the meaning of community.
No art experience is required, and all supplies are provided. Participants will learn simple watercolour techniques to create their own artwork. This workshop is ideal for artists, educators, and community members, and for anyone seeking a creative, welcoming space to reflect, connect, and make art.
Radical Queer Joy Artivism - Virtual Workshop
Facilitator: Karlee Campbell
Date/Time: Saturday, May 23rd, 7:30 PM - 8:30 PM AST | 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM EST
Location: Virtual Workshop (Google Meet)
Suitable for: Adults | Price: Free | Registration required
What if joy isn’t just celebration, but resistance?
Radical Queer Joy Artivism is a vibrant, affirming virtual gathering designed for 2SLGBTQIA+ folks who believe creativity can be both playful and powerful. In a world that often asks queer communities to focus on struggle, this workshop invites us to centre joy as a quiet, and sometimes bold, act of rebellion.
We’ll begin by setting the tone with a curated queer joy playlist, welcoming participants into a warm, low-pressure space grounded in safety, creativity, and connection. No performance required. No artistic experience necessary. Just curiosity and openness.
Together, we’ll explore questions like: When we celebrate queer joy, is it simply for fun, or can it be a radical act? Participants will be invited to share a line of poetry, a thought, or even just a feeling in response. Reflection is encouraged, but always optional.
The heart of the workshop is a collective creative moment: Each participant will craft a tiny Six-Word Artivist Manifesto, a powerful micro-declaration of queer joy, resistance, belonging, or becoming. We’ll reveal our manifestos together on camera, creating a shared, celebratory moment of visibility and solidarity. For those who prefer anonymity, we’ll invite participants to hold their manifesto in front of their face for a group snapshot, a playful archive of collective joy.
We’ll close by reflecting on what it felt like to witness one another’s words and by offering encouragement to carry radical queer joy into everyday life, in subtle, sustainable ways.
Expect:
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music, connection, gentle discussion, creative expression
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Bring: scrap paper, a marker, and your full, joyful self
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Leave with: a manifesto, and a reminder that your joy matters
Past Events:
Special Event | Film Screening & Talk | National Canadian Film Day Festival
Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie
Date/Time: Wednesday, April 15th, 7:30 PM - 10:00 PM (Doors Open at 7:00 PM)
Location: Patagonia Halifax, 1496 Lower Water St #408, Halifax, NS B3J 1R9
Suitable for: Adults | Price: Free | Registration required
Join us for a fun and friendly evening of film, conversation, and community. After the
screening, Charlotte Genge of EnsembleCo will lead a discussion on environmental
leadership, circular systems, and the creative approaches that help communities protect
Canada’s natural landscapes.
Phenology Wheel Workshop: A Circular Economy Creative Lab | In partnership with EnsembleCo
Phenology Wheel Workshop: A Circular Economy Creative Lab
In Partnership with EnsembleCo and generous support of Trident Booksellers & Cafe
Facilitator: Charlotte Genge
Date & Time: Wednesday, April 10th | 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Location: Trident Booksellers & Cafe, 1256 Hollis Street, Halifax NS B3J 1T6
Suitable for: Adults | Price: Free | Capacity: Sold Out
During this two-hour creative lab, participants will reimagine the traditional Phenology
Wheel as a tool for exploring the life cycle of materials within a circular economy.
Blending scientific observation with artistic experimentation, this workshop invites
participants to rethink waste as a resource and to consider how everyday design choices connect to larger environmental systems.
By the end of the session, participants leave with a completed circular systems artwork and a creative framework for thinking more expansively about sustainability. No prior art experience is required. All tools and sustainable materials are provided.
Writing for Accessibility in the Arts | In partnership with Visual Arts Nova Scotia
Instructor: Jacquelyn Miccolis
Date/Time: Wednesday, Feb 25th , 2 :00 PM - 3:30 PM AST
Location: Virtual Workshop (Zoom)
Suitable for: Artists & Arts Organizations
Price: $15 (2 people from the same organization $25) | Capacity: Sold Out
This mini workshop (+ Q&A) supports artists and arts organizations in making
their art and communications more accessible to diverse audiences.
Participants will learn how to:
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Write effective alt text,
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Create accessible image captions,
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Develop accessible exhibition and promotional materials, while honouring artistic intent
Imagining a Better World: Creating & Connecting | Free Workshop
Facilitator: Meghan Weber | Assistant: Jacquelyn Miccolis
Date/Time: Sat. Jan 10th, 2026 | 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Location: Open Book Coffee
Address: 3660 Strawberry Hill St. | Kjipuktuk (Halifax)
Suitable for: Adults | Price: Free | Capacity: Sold Out
This workshop invites participants to create and connect while looking both inward
and outward as we consider what a kinder and more just world could look like.
The session begins with a brief guided Loving-Kindness meditation and continues
withhands-on vision board making. Through creative practice, we explore how rest,
self-compassion, and slowing down can act as forms of resistance that challenge
capitalism, hustle culture, and the expectation to constantly produce.
Rooted in a gentle and accessible social justice lens, this workshop offers space to reflect on how personal well-being is connected to collective care. This workshop is ideal for adults interested in creativity, social awareness, and personal reflection.
No art experience is needed, and all supplies are provided.
Photographer: Meghan Weber | These images were taken during the workshop and highlight key moments from the session.
Queer Art as Pedagogy: Creative Practice for Justice and Community | Free Virtual Workshop
Facilitator: Karlee Campbell (Ontario)
Date/Time: Thurs. Dec 4th | 7:00 - 8:00 PM AST (6:00 - 7:00 PM ET)
Location: Virtual Workshop (Google Meet)
Suitable for: Adults | Price: Free
This virtual workshop invites artists, educators, cultural workers, and creative,
mission-driven people from across Canada to explore poetry as a tool for learning,
connection, and collective imagination.
Together, we’ll approach art not just as self-expression, but as a way of thinking,
reflecting, and growing in community. It is a practice that can help us envision a more
just, caring, and inclusive worlds.
Rooted in the belief that art can be both personal and connected to the world around us, we’ll use poetry, world-building,
and gentle writing prompts to explore how queer creativity can open space for care, justice, and collective transformation.
Who This Is For
This workshop centres 2SLGBTQIA+ voices and experiences.
We welcomes allies who want to learn, imagine, and create in community.
Accessibility & Participation Notes
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Free to attend
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Live auto-captions available
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You are welcome to keep your camera on or off
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Gentle, 2SLGBTQIA+ affirming space
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No prior poetry experience is required
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Participate in any way that feels right for you
To honour participant privacy, we did not capture group photos. This photo shows our facilitator prior to the start of the session.
Community in Colours: Exploring Connections | Free Workshop | In partnership with Halifax Public Libraries
Facilitator: Jacquelyn Miccolis
Date/time: Sat. Nov 1st | 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location: Bedford Public Library
Address: 15 Dartmouth Road, Bedford, NS B4A 3X6
Suitable for: Adults | Price: Free | Capacity: Sold Out
What does community mean to you?How do art and connection intersect?
Join multidisciplinary artist and Creative Community Impact Association
founder, Jacquelyn Miccolis, for a reflective, discussion-based workshop that
uses hands-on watercolor exercises as a tool for exploring ideas about community,
connection, and creativity.
This workshop is ideal for artists, educators, and socially-engaged creatives,
though all adults are welcome. No art experience needed, supplies provided.
These images were taken during the workshop and highlight key moments from the session.
