Healing the Boy Within

This immersive project is rooted in art, conversation, and collective healing.

📍 Workman Arts — 32 Lisgar St., Toronto (atrium, 2nd floor)
🗓 February 28, 2025
🕕 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
🎤 Panel discussion included
👥 All are welcome

Healing the Boy Within is a multidisciplinary photo exhibition and panel discussion that explores the emotional lives, mental health, and healing journeys of Black men and masc-identified people.

Through intimate portrait photography and live conversation, this event creates space to examine how Black boys are taught to suppress emotion, how that silence carries into adulthood, and how healing can emerge through vulnerability, care, and community. The work challenges narrow ideas of masculinity and invites audiences to sit with softness, reflection, and emotional truth.

The evening will feature a curated photo exhibition followed by a live panel discussion with Black therapists, mental health advocates, and community workers. Together, they will explore themes including emotional literacy, generational trauma, masculinity, rest, and Black joy. The conversation is designed to be accessible, human, and grounded — offering insight without clinical language, and depth without pressure to disclose.

Healing the Boy Within is not about fixing or diagnosing. It’s about listening, witnessing, and creating space for stories that are often carried quietly. Whether you come to engage deeply, support the work, or simply observe, you are invited to be part of a shared moment of reflection and care.

This event is part of an ongoing multimedia project by Toronto-based photographer and art director Imani Edwards, developed in collaboration with community partners committed to culturally responsive mental health practices.