Hima Batavia is a writer, artist, and cultural leader based in T'karonto. Her practice is rooted in collectivity, systems change, and liberated futures.
Design Practice
Hima uses rigorous design methods and tools, combined with creative-thinking and facilitation to bring ideas, experiences and systems from vision to reality. She pays critical attention to building brave spaces for vulnerability, designing spaces for meaningful connection and catalyzing empathy using play, movement and conversational techniques. She is committed to using an anti-oppression, equity and Indigenous allyship lens in her practice. She often collaborates with a vast network of artists, facilitators, healers, and speakers to bring experiences to life.
Her design practice draws from her work as the former co-founder of Reset, a community that co-created an annual tech-free multi-day immersion for adults. The Reset experience was rooted in pushing the edges of personal growth and creativity through a designed and curated arc of playful, meditative and vulnerable activities. Over 600 people experienced the profound impact of a Reset.
Hima has also co-produced and programmed conferences and festivals, including the Honest Ed’s Farewell Festival, Feel Good Summit, Spark! Canadian Social Innovation Conference and Cultural Leaders Lab. She was the Program Director for the Centre for Social Innovation’s Agents of Change Accelerator, led an engagement with WoodGreen Community Services to redesign their newcomer services program, and consulted with Staples Studio to design their community architecture and program their community space.
Artistic Practice
Hima is an emerging performance and installation artist. Her artistic practice is exploring themes of womxn's labour, modern narratives of spirituality and healing and their relationship to (de)colonization, death in the age of immortality through an intersectional race, class and gender framework. She is interested in durational performance work, participatory methods, and aesthetics of absurdity and discomfort.
Previous Lives
Hima worked in Global Health for 7 years with large international development agencies leading research and program strategy projects to increase the uptake of life-saving medicines and mobile technology products to strengthen health systems across India and Africa. My clients included, Clinton Health Access Initiative, United Nations Foundation, World Health Organization and The Earth Institute. Hima has published over 15+ reports, white papers and articles in academic journals.