About the Co-Lab

The Milkweed Co-Lab draws its name from a keystone species that sustains wildlife and ecosystems in Ontario and across Canada. Milkweed is a genus of perennial flowering plants, a habitat and gracious host that feeds Monarch caterpillars and butterflies, alongside other pollinators, such as bees, flies, beetles, and moths. The gifts of Milkweed are many. It feeds and shelters key pollinators like the Monarch; its stem has been material for cordage and bowstrings made by First Nations; the floss or coma in its seed pods served as tinder for fires; its roots stabilize soil and reduce water runoff, keeping soil and water systems intact; and it sequesters carbon.

The Milkweed Co-Lab is a collective and a lab. We are a group of scholars that are growing together in research and interdisciplinary pursuits. The land is our lab, where we investigate using creative methods to generate new knowledge with other-than-humans, graduate students, visiting scholars, and artists. In the Co-Lab’s more-than-human approach, we explore the vital relationships for a healthy planet that reveal the elements of care, reciprocity, degrowth and posthuman responsibility.

Milkweed signifies what the Co-Lab aims to encompass: