KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Kim Katrin Milan

A daughter of the diaspora, Arawak, West African, Indian and Dutch, hailing from Trinidad and living currently in Toronto. Kim is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, activist, consultant, facilitator and educator.

Kim completed her artist residency under d’bi Young at the AnitAfrika Theatre and also was a student of the Buddies In Bad Times Young Creator’s Unit, touring internationally with her one womyn play, “Hands In My Cunt” a biomythographical account of my resistance and experience of sexual violence.

In 2009 she was the Youthline Award Winner for “Outstanding Contribution To Community Empowerment”. In 2010 she was named one of YSEC’s 100 Young Changemakers while also being recognized in Canada’s Northern Lights Exhibition: Celebrating African Canadian Stories. In 2011, Kim was recognized as one of 12 of the City Of Toronto’s Cultural Champions among such brilliant activists as Lillian Allen. In 2012 she was recognized as one of Go Magazine’s 100 Women We Love, sharing the list with the likes of Ellen Degeneres and Wanda Sykes. In 2013, she was most recently honoured as one of the featured Game Changers of The Insight Project along with folks like Che Kothari, Brandon Hay & Kristen Wong Tam.

Kim has spoken on panels and conferences nationally as well as facilitated radical community dialogues including Queer As Black Folk hosted by The Black Daddies Club and was the keynote speaker at Dartmouth Pride, The 2011 Unity Conference and Queering Black History Month.

Her writing and voice have been featured in the Toronto Star, The National Post, The Huffington Post, George Brown University textbooks as well as Autostraddle.

Supporting the creation of community arts and allocation of resources, Kim sit on the boards of Artreach, Shadeism and the Toronto Arts Council Community Arts Council and most recently the Rhubarb selection committee. She also regularly curates and co-curates exhibits and events including Insatiable Sisters at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre.

Kim was a core member of the nationally touring Lesbian Blues group, a collective of Black Queer Folks committed to decolonization through creative political performance as well as T-Dot Renaissance, a wave of cultural and artistic collaborations for this generation of emerging artists of colour.

She is the co-founder and current Executive Director of The People Project. 8 years in the making; they are a movement of queer and trans folks of color and our allies, committed to individual and community empowerment through alternative education, art activism and collaboration.

Through her work at The People Project, Kim has consulted and supported organizations the world over including Brown Boi Project, The Harmony Movement, The Grassroots Youth Collaborative, Stolen From Africa as well as the Toronto District School Board and The City Of Toronto Cultural Arts Division. In this work she have developed and co-developed over 50 distinct resources and tools as well as delivered hundreds of workshops around race, gender, power, privilege, consent, creation, food and entrepreneurship.

Kim am the Coordinator of Brave New Girls, a radical healing retreats and a series of traveling skillshares for Femme Identified Folks of Colour & Indigeneous Folks.

She is also one of the owners of The Glad Day Bookshop, the world’s oldest LGBTQ Bookstore opened in 1970 with 21 other enormous individuals like Gein Wong, Micheal Erickson & El Farouk Khaki.

In over a decade of community organizing, she’s worked across the intersections of oppression in food justice, HIV activism as well as race & gender justice. She’s also a yoga teacher teaching through the Brown Girl’s Yoga collective.