By
Angelina Da Silva, Sheryl Ordonez and Muhammad Ansar
Second year TRP students Angelina Da Silva, Sheryl Ordonez and Muhammad Ansar organised and hosted “TRPEx: Innovation in Action” Conference in August 2025.
Read about their experiences below in our latest TRP conference blog!
What was the event?
“TRPEx: Innovation in Action was a one-day, in-person conference at the University of Toronto’s historic Hart House that brought science and art together to spark bold ideas in healthcare on August 30th, 2025. This intergenerational conference consisted of three components:
The discussion: We hosted three thought-provoking panel discussions and one keynote which included a diverse range of 11 experts who either engaged with arts-based research or operated at the intersection of arts and science in medicine and care, research methods as well as education and communication.
The exhibition: In place of traditional research posters, we showcased an art exhibition, to present works that reflected our theme - merging science and art to advance healthcare innovation.
The networking: This segment was designed to foster meaningful conversations and spark collaborations while giving attendees an opportunity to explore unconventional career paths and build lasting relationships at the intersection of science, art, and healthcare.
Bridging the gap between the arts and sciences
The aim of the conference was to bridge the gap between the arts and sciences by creating a shared space for intergenerational and interdisciplinary dialogue. It was designed to bring together a diverse audience, including high school students, university students, community members, researchers, artists, and representatives from various organizations.
By welcoming participants from different backgrounds and stages of life, the event fostered meaningful conversations, knowledge exchange, and collaboration across disciplines, with a particular focus on how creativity and scientific inquiry can intersect to advance innovation in healthcare.
We were united by a shared passion for connecting art and science and aimed to challenge traditional boundaries and inspire new ways of thinking about health and research. Our collective experience in performance and visual arts, communication, academic research, community organizing and non-profit leadership shaped the conference’s inclusive and dynamic approach. We worked to reimagine what is possible at the intersection of creativity and health, creating an event that was both intellectually engaging and creatively inspiring.
Unexpected engagement
Through TRP, we have learned and experienced that great ideas ignite when collaboration through interdisciplinary spaces are formed. TRPEx was developed to be a meeting place to explore the merging of arts and science to innovate in healthcare. What we did not expect was eager engagement and partnerships from within and outside the University of Toronto community and a multi-generational audience (100+ attendees).
Our audience spanned from highschoolers, university students, clinicians, to fields experts with decades of experience in arts, research, and healthcare. In our main room, we had the privilege of shaping discussions with 11 speakers and panelists, as well as three moderators including our very own Janine Noorloos(TRP alumna and instructor). After each panel, many audience members shared meaningful insights, particularly highlighting ways the discussion surprised and impacted them.
In another room, we hosted the Art Exhibition which displayed 36 innovative works by 26 artists and two live performers. We had visual artworks such as paintings, videos, digital pieces, as well as written works, improv performances, and hanging structures. Our artists included patients, clinicians, individuals from our very own TRP community, graduate students from the U of T Biomedical Communications Program, U of T undergraduates, alumni, and faculty members.
Art pieces varied from storytelling, encapsulating health topics and fields, exploring how art can bridge human connection, and using art as a medium to advocate for lived experiences that are often overlooked in healthcare spaces. To further extend opportunities for collaboration, we had five U of T student groups, such as EmpowART, who shared about their initiative that provides volunteer opportunities for U of T students to engage with elderly individuals in nursing homes through art-based workshops. We additionally must thank our amazing volunteers who quickly adapted to the many moving parts of our conference as well as our sponsors and partners who helped bring our vision to reality.
Being shaped as translational research innovators
As we embark on our capstone research projects as 2nd year TRP students, this conference was unexpectedly pivotal in shaping us as translational research innovators. We highlight four insights that we aim to apply in our capstones:
1. Creating space for the unseen and unheard
A recurring theme throughout the conference was the importance of listening beyond what is explicitly said. As keynote speaker Alexis Milligan shared in “Learning to Dance Together Again,” human communication extends far beyond written and numerical forms to include oral, visual, and kinesthetic expression.
While science often prioritizes what is measurable and verbalized, the arts help cultivate essential skills such as active listening, recognizing silence, and attending to emotions, body language, and lived realities that may otherwise remain unspoken. As a result, applying arts-based skills in healthcare can create spaces for the unseen and unheard.
As one of our audience members highlights, they learned "the value of what's not said and understanding things that haven't been voiced out loud, inherently learning to listen to what isn't being said." This has taught us to critically think about how our capstone research design invites meaningful spaces for the voiceless to be truly seen and heard. Attendees described it as both intellectually rigorous and performative, an experience that held attention more powerfully than much larger-scale keynotes.
2. Humanizing care through creativity and relational practice
Another key takeaway was the role of creativity in humanizing care during our Medicine and Care Panel with Emma JM Ates, Dr. Sarah Kim, and Dr. Farooq Naeem. Dr. Kim shared, “The creative aspect is uniquely human. Creativity is where we can find ourselves being seen and heard.” This resonated deeply as discussions emphasized healthcare’s evolution from physician-centered, to patient-centered, and now toward relational-centered care.
This inspired us to consider the relational dimensions of care and how we hope to incorporate this in our capstones. Recognizing health as holistic and care as collaborative, the arts were described as providing the essential “in-between” spaces that exist within relationships, such as between patients, families, providers, and systems.
3. Co-designing research with communities for meaningful change
From our Research Methods panel with Natalie Wood, Dr. Michelle Wyndham-West, Michael Corrin, and Dr. Antje Budde, emerged another key topic with regards to the importance of community-driven and action-based research. Natalie shared that "knowledge is with lived experience," which reminded us that key knowledge holders are the very people in the center. Some of our capstone projects will involve co-design approaches, which is why we appreciated the insight from Dr. Wyndham-West, “co-design participants are the ones who shape the agenda - start with communities, they define the question and the issues."
Inherent in the TRP human-centered approach to healthcare innovation, these insights reaffirmed our commitment to apply participatory methods and co-creation as essential components for impactful translational research.
4. Storytelling as a vehicle for trust, healing, and knowledge translation
Finally, in our Education and Communication Panel, Anto Chan and Dr. Imogen R. Coe highlighted storytelling as a powerful, yet underutilized, tool in healthcare and research.
With healthcare being relational, storytelling allows researchers to move beyond scientific jargon toward more accessible and relational forms of communication with others. One panelist noted that “in the history of medical humanities, storytelling is an ancient practice that we have lost from the barrier of perception.” This insight resonated strongly with us, particularly as our capstone projects involve qualitative research where trust, empathy, and meaning making are central to impact. As an audience member describes, "storytelling [allows us to] practice empathy [which] is essential for innovation."
The intentional intersection of diverse ways of knowing
TRPEx: Innovation in Action reaffirmed for us that innovation in healthcare does not emerge from a single discipline, but from the intentional intersection of diverse ways of knowing. Across panels and discussions, attendees emphasized that art has a legitimate and necessary place in medicine, that empathy and storytelling are foundational to meaningful care, and that innovation requires diverse perspectives, methodologies, and lived experiences. These reflections reinforced a shared recognition that we are all agents of change within healthcare systems, not only as clinicians or researchers, but also as communicators, designers, and community builders.
The overwhelmingly positive response from attendees, community partners, and speakers has generated strong momentum for the future, including requests for a second year of TRPEx and interest in an ongoing workshop series that continues to blend arts and science. As one attendee noted, “The intersection of arts and science is not a new innovation, but it is finally being brought forward as a priority for fundamental change in science and medicine.” TRP Program Director, Dr. Edyta Marcon, echoed this sentiment stating, “I do not have words. You floored us.”
For us as emerging translational researchers, hosting TRPEx has reshaped how we see our own roles and potential impact. Being trusted with the space and support to execute a large-scale, unconventional conference gave us confidence as innovators and future capstone pioneers. It clarified where we hope to go next, toward community-engaged, empathetic, and creatively informed research that protects both patient and practitioner wellbeing. TRPEx did not just inspire us. It changed how we think about innovation, how we approach our work, and how boldly we believe we can contribute to meaningful change in healthcare. In many ways, TRPEx itself became a response to this gap, an intentional conference intervention that demonstrated what is possible when space is created for interdisciplinary exchange."
