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Urban,
Cultural,
Creative
Impact

+

Social Change

Driven by community, curiosity, cultural impact & social change, Alycia’s bold visions and informed urban planning & design meet with thoughtful execution. Let’s build something meaningful together :)

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  • Short Bio : Alycia Shanika, MScPl (she/they) is an urban-cultural planner, artist-designer-researcher, and impact director whose work investigates how urban and cultural life is shaped, governed, and sustained in cities. She builds projects that bridge storytelling and design with systems change, advancing pathways for more affordable, accessible, and community-led infrastructure.

    They are the creator-author-publisher of their bestselling publication, Future Diasporas: Culture, Art, Identity, Space and founding director of Collective Futures.

    Urban-Cultural Planning Practice : Alycia co-designs alternative models like community land trusts and co-operatives and works with community-based organizations to sustain infrastructure long term. Alycia thoughtfully engages community members and translates community knowledge and ecosystem research into educational tools and stories.

    She offers advisory, strategic planning, analysis, engagement, knowledge mobilization, and visualization services— ranging across cultural infrastructure strategy, spatial design, cultural policy, partnership development, organizational governance & alternative models, community engagement, and visioning. See their service offerings.

    Multidisciplinary Artist-Researcher Practice : Alycia’s mixed-media practice fills space with colour, comfort, cultural symbology, and seeds for growth. Her curiosity about worldly wonders, architecture, and nature-based, human-centred solutions guides their body of work, which ranges across spatial design, visual arts, cultural production & storytelling, particularly documentary.

    Blending Practices: Alycia blends their urban planning and artistic practices through cultural production, using creative media like documentary storytelling & journalism, interactive digital mapping, and publications to engage community members and meaningfully capture and disseminate community knowledge.

    She dedicates her time to building, pursuing funded projects, and freelancing through Collective Futures (CoFu), where she mentors students and works with collaborators across disciplines. Their garden of knowledge & ideas continues growing every day.

  • Alycia Shanika is the co-founder of Collective Futures (CoFu), where she collaborates with creative change-makers working across cultural, social, & spatial practices to co-design purpose-driven community infrastructure.

    CoFu works to mobilize their community to design more equitable, resilient & responsive systems for our communities, cultures, and generations after us.

    A community builder at heart, Alycia brings together CoFu members to co-create meaningful public programs, such as workshop series, mixed-media installations, and open gathering spaces.

    In partnership with the School of Cities at the University of Toronto, CoFu currently has four U of T students from architecture, urban studies, business, and sociology placed with the collective to co-design a youth-led alternative models and governance strategy for Collective Futures. Led by founder Alycia, the students are currently doing the groundwork to formalize how the Collective should be governed. The recommendation is a workers/artist co-operative.

    Through CoFu, Alycia is currently organizing a workshop series in partnership with the Tapestry Community Capital. She has taught workshops at DesignTO and delivered speaking engagements with partners including ArtsBuild Ontario, Engage Design Build, and others.

  • Recently featured at DesignTO 2026, Alycia recently led CoFu’s large-scale 9-day public program titled ‘Assembly: A Holding Space for Culture’, which was held at ‘meanwhile space’, It’s Ok Studios, and collectively created by a 20+ person team of exhibiting artists, designers, performers, workshop leads, fundraisers, program partners, and space holders.

  • Future Diasporas celebrates the stories of racialized diasporic artists as they reconcile with their past, negotiate the present amid Tkaronto/Toronto’s unaffordable urban landscape, and make space for just and flourishing futures.

    In this issue : Conversations and artwork by eight racialized diasporic artists. Stories about diasporic identities, ancestral histories, commemorative art practices, migratory patterns, and displacement. The artists also share stories about their experiences in Toronto—from facing institutional racism and tokenism, to precarious gigs, and displacement from community cultural spaces such as 888 Dupont, 187 Augusta, and Hearth. These stories disentangle the shifting challenges, needs, desires and future possibilities of cultural spaces in this unaffordable landscape

    Author-Creator-Publisher : Alycia Shanika
    Contributing Artists : Bianca Weeko Martin, Cathleen Calica, Hima Batavia, Jana Ghalayini, Miru Yogarajah, Philip Leonard Ocampo, Tamara “Solem” Al-Issa, & Waard Ward

    Toronto, Ontario, 7.5" x 9.65", 162 pages

    The 162-page publication is available at Issues Magazine Store, Art Metropole, the Spacing Store, It’s Ok Studios library, the 221A library, and several locations across the country.

  • Alycia was a volunteer board director and Network Mobilization Lead at the Community and Cultural Spaces Trust (CCST) until February 2026. In 2025, they secured the first-ever acquisition for a cultural land trust in Canada. The two units are a pottery studio and a papermaking studio in a former Artscape building- Artscape Youngplace.

    She has also worked with organizations like the School of Cities at UofT, Capsules Artist Resources, the Cultural Policy Hub at OCADU, CP Planning, Monumental, 8 80 Cities, Artscape, and co-founded VanArtLink.

  • Alycia offers consulting services in cultural infrastructure strategy, spatial design, cultural policy, partnership development, organizational governance & alternative models, community engagement, and visioning. Services range across:

    • Advisory: policy, strategy, cultural infrastructure, spatial design, alternative governance, partnerships, team building, EDI, community land trusts

    • Analysis: Need assessments, gaps/data analysis, surveys

    • Community engagement: workshops, visioning, town halls

    • Resources: publications, strategic plans, toolkits

    • Visualizations: data viz, architectural design, mapping

    • Partnership development: network & stakeholder mapping, relationship building & connecting

    She is open to artistic collaborations, especially those that are grounded in social-cultural impact and systems change, across the following areas:

    • Spatial design: curation, sourcing + styling, spatial placement, installation

    • Visual arts: ceramics, sculpture, paintings, weavings, film photography

    • Cultural production & storytelling: video documentation, publications, interactive installations

    Alycia is also available for speaking engagements and workshop bookings.

Urban-Cultural Planner

Artist-Researcher

Founding Director
& Documentary
Storyteller

Systems Designer & Strategist

Community Builder

Educator & Co-learner

Change-maker

Collaborator

Futurist

GET A QUOTE
Yellow poster featuring a stylized portrait of Alycia Shanika and a description of her work as an urban-cultural planner, artist-designer, and community builder.
A woman with curly hair smiling while sitting on a bench surrounded by pink flowers in an urban park at sunset.
A young woman with curly dark hair, smiling with cross arms, stands in a grand, ornate hallway with chandeliers and decorative lighting.
People attending an art exhibit, standing in front of colorful paintings with vibrant and abstract designs. One woman is speaking to the group, holding a microphone, with a table of vases and flowers nearby. Others are listening or taking photos.
A woman stands in front of a small audience inside a creative studio space with large windows, colorful textiles, and eclectic decor. She appears to be giving a presentation or demonstration, holding a string of objects. The audience is engaged, with
A colorful poster titled 'Future Diasporas' on an easel, featuring illustrations of diverse people, city buildings, and decorative vases.
A woman standing in front of a projection screen giving a presentation about future diaspora, culture, and art. The screen displays an illustrated poster with people, buildings, and colorful artwork.
Woman with glasses and tattoos sitting at a table with a notebook, pen, and cables, smiling and engaged in a discussion while a video is projected on the wall behind her.
A woman with glasses, tattoos, and curly hair sitting at a table in front of a screen showing people embracing.
Two women are looking at a photo album on a small table inside a room with wooden flooring. One woman is kneeling while the other is standing, both focused on the album. A ladder is leaning against the wall near a door.
A woman with glasses and tattoos standing in a well-decorated living room, holding a bowl in her left hand, with her right hand gesturing. The room has a dining area with a wooden table and pink chairs, a window with sheer curtains, artwork on the wa
Group of six people standing in front of a historic red brick building with large windows and a sign that says 'YOUNGPLACE'
Group of nine people standing on stage with purple lighting, black curtains, and a small world music banner in the background.
Two young women smiling and embracing each other at a party. One is sitting with a cage on her lap, while the other is standing beside her. Other people are in the background.
Group of women sitting on the floor, engaged in a craft activity involving wooden frames and strings, with a hammock in the background.
A group of diverse women seated at a table in a bright, modern conference room with large windows. One woman stands at the front smiling, wearing glasses, a brown sweater, and a denim apron, possibly leading a discussion or presentation.
A person holds a book titled 'Future Diasporas' by Alycia Shanika, with a colorful, watercolor-style cover in a room with a wooden table, chairs, a bouquet of flowers, and artwork on the walls.
Three women sitting at a table, one reading a phone, with a colorful painting in the background. The table has a vase with flowers, candles, a water bottle, and a used plate.
A woman with curly dark hair, wearing a colorful striped dress, stands in front of bookshelves at a bookstore, holding a book titled 'Future Diasporas.'
A woman with glasses and tattoos on her arms, wearing earrings and a white apron, is sitting on the floor in a cluttered room. She is smiling at the camera, with some pottery and a sponge in her hands, and a pottery wheel in front of her. There is a
A woman with glasses and colorful earrings is pottery making on a spinning wheel, shaping clay with her hands, wearing a beige apron that says 'Clément' and using a sponge.
A woman in an orange dress smiling on stage, surrounded by red balloons and vintage chairs, in a dimly lit room with string lights.
Two women smiling at a celebration or party, with red balloons in the background, sitting on an ornate carpet surrounded by chairs and plants.
Two women are hugging each other warmly, one holding a microphone and a clipboard, both smiling happily. They are dressed in colorful traditional and modern outfits, standing against a wall with artistic decorations.
Two women with name tags sitting at a table, smiling and engaged in conversation with others during a professional meeting or networking event.
A woman with curly hair and glasses writing on a pink sticky note, with yellow sticky notes on a gray brick wall in the background.
Young woman with curly dark hair, sunglasses on her head, smiling and winking at the camera, sitting on a grassy park with trees and buildings in the background.
A woman smiling and running outdoors at night, holding a phone in her right hand, with streetlights illuminating the cobblestone street behind her.
A woman with long curly black hair, wearing a black sleeveless top, sitting at a table in a restaurant or cafe. She is smiling and looking at the camera, with a potted plant and a small decorative object on the table. The background includes a white
A woman sitting cross-legged on a patterned rug in a bright room, smiling at the camera. She has curly dark hair and is wearing a pale yellow long-sleeve top, striped pajama pants, and matching striped socks. Behind her is a large green plant with lo
A woman with curly dark hair, wearing a light green top, smiling in a room with a plant in the background.
Two women speaking at a conference with a large screen behind them that displays the word 'IMAGINE' and colorful abstract artwork.
Two women with dark curly hair and glasses are standing on a stage in front of a large screen, one woman is speaking into a microphone while the other listens. The background shows a blurry image of people and trees with the word 'IMAGINE' visible at
Group of young adults sitting on the floor and engaging in conversation at a casual social event in a large indoor space with a food stand and decorative wall art in the background.
A group of people sitting on the floor and bean bags, engaged in a discussion. A woman with curly dark hair and glasses is holding a notebook and a pen. The notebook has handwritten notes on it. The background shows more people sitting and talking in
A young woman with wavy brown hair smiling outdoors among green trees, wearing a black jacket with yellow and green accents.
Group of diverse young people and a man holding a decorated cake, standing on a staircase inside a modern building with glass walls and a high ceiling, celebrating an event.
Three people standing on a stage in front of a screen and banners. One woman is speaking into a microphone, another woman is looking at her, and a man is raising his hand. The screen displays names of speakers. One banner is from the United Way, and
Two women speaking at a podium during a presentation with banners for United Way and School of Cities in the background.
Two women speaking at a presentation, one holding a microphone, with banners behind them promoting the University of Toronto and School of Cities.

Contact

Alycia :)

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