Kael Reid
Kael has a PhD in Education from the University of Toronto. During their doctoral research, they investigated how songs they composed and recorded from interviews conducted they with 2SLGBTQI+ families opened up dialogue with equity-seeking youth about gender, sexuality, embodiment, and relationships. From this research, they developed a curriculum resource for classroom teachers.
Currently, Kael is a Postdoctoral Fellow and instructor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University where they teach in Children Childhood and Youth Studies and work on two arts-based research projects with newcomer and refugee young people. These projects examine how community music programs, songwriting, recording, performance, and other creative activities enable newcomer and refugee youth to develop and extend their expressive skills, build connections and collaborative networks, and experience personal empowerment and wellbeing. As part of this research, Kael uses an innovative, participatory method they developed called, “collaborative ethnographic songwriting.” A robust method for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating research data through music, collaborative ethnographic songwriting supports equity-seeking people to compose, record, and document their stories in song.
Kael also combines musical activism with public pedagogy by facilitating workshops, giving concerts, and delivering musical keynote addresses for universities and colleges, secondary schools, conferences, and community service organizations. They perform at live music venues, music and Pride festivals, youth and arts conferences, universities, public schools, union meetings, and in people’s living rooms and back yards.
pronouns: they/she