Above are some pieces of “junk” collected in April 2026 as I travelled from Montreal, Quebec to Los Angeles, California, to present at the American Educational Research Association’s annual conference.

I am not sharing the finished junk journal made during this trip as I usually do because it will be published in an academic short-film format in the near future. Yep! I am happy to share that I am currently making my first short-film, Ephemeral Listening: Junk Journaling as Creative Inquiry in Motion which should see the light in 2027. 

Filming the making of this particular junk journal, mostly with my cellphone, felt especially meaningful because it happened in Los Angeles, my hometown that I left at 17 to pursue my studies and haven’t returned to long-term since. The film will inevitably bring academic, personal, familial, and cultural dimensions into conversation, shaped by the nostalgia of returning “home” to Los Angeles to participate in an academic event.

This post is a little teaser for the collage and film to come. It’s also a space for me to share how this film project came to be and how this practice of attuning to the scraps of academic trips keeps growing and surprising me, generating meaningful relationships and opportunities for (un)learning deeply. 

In one of my AERA sessions this year, I presented alongside Dr. Wendy Barrales (@wocarchive) and Dr. Alex Mejia in our symposium entitled “Archival pedagogy: Moving images as research, resistance, and relational learning”. Thanks to this collaboration, I had the space to think more formally about my conference junk journaling practice as I begin to position it as a critical form of arts-based inquiry that attends to and archives often overlooked, affective, sensorial, moving dimensions of doctoral life. Moreover, seeing how they integrate film and moving images into their scholarship also inspired me to consider how film (a medium that has been part of my personal and professional life for many years) might expand my emerging academic commitments.

A month before leaving for the conference, Wendy shared with me a call for the Video Journal of Education’s first edition. My initial thought was: Hmm…maybe I could make a short film documenting my process of making my conference junk journal. Then, just a week before the trip, I met Dr. Mama Adobea Nii-Owoo, who is starting the Montreal Education Film Festival (MEFF). We clicked instantly as we laughed and geeked out about our filming gear, bubbling projects, and upcoming trip to LA. I organically became part of the festival organizing crew without either of us really needing to say it out loud. Then, just a couple days before my flight, I called my friend and filmmaker Ginger Le Pecheur to share my emerging idea. They listened with so much care and offered guidance that left me feeling seen, supported, and excited for what might unfold. 

These overlapping moments made me feel as though filmmaking is nudging me to create...not by me forcing it, but through relationships, shared passions, and unexpected alignments. 

What does it mean to add another layer of creative experimentation (filmmaking) to my already existent creative practice (collage-making)? How can I film my junk journaling process without disrupting the intuitive, intimate, organic approach I’ve been carefully cultivating? What forms of meaning‑making, intellectual experimentation, and knowledge production are emerging here and that would have remained unreachable had I stayed within text‑based mediums alone? 

These are some of the questions I’m starting with and will continue to explore throughout the making of this short-film. Ultimately, I hope to inspire viewers to consider their own creative practices—and the everyday materials around them—as potential sites of reflection, theorizing, and educational possibility.