On any given week, Alyssa Vernon might be hauling a 100-pound trolley of collage materials through Kingston, facilitating a library workshop, or deep in research for her Master’s degree. When she says she’s “busy,” she laughs — but there’s intention behind the pace. Teaching, after all, has always been the throughline.
“I’m not in a classroom,” Alyssa says, “but I am teaching all the time.”
A Kingston-based Jamaican and Guyanese collage artist, Alyssa is the founder of the Queer Collage Collective (QCC). This mobile, community-based arts initiative brings collage workshops to libraries, schools, and community spaces across the region. Her work sits at the intersection of art, education, and social justice, a space shaped by her time in Queen’s Concurrent Education program (ConEd).
Like many students, Alyssa entered ConEd at 17 feeling both capable and uncertain. “Everyone my whole life told me I’d be a great teacher,” she explains. Her mother is an elementary school teacher, and teaching felt familiar, even expected. Queen’s appealed for practical reasons (no math requirement, far from home) but the integrated nature of the program ended up being transformative. “I liked that I could do what I wanted in the arts and still work toward teaching,” she says.
That flexibility mattered. Midway through her degree, Alyssa realized she didn’t want to major in English or History at all. With the help of academic advisor Vicky Andrews, she charted a new path that allowed her to major in Gender Studies while completing the prerequisites to still have literature and history as teaching subjects. “She figured out the entire game plan,” Alyssa recalls. “I kept that spreadsheet my whole undergrad.”
Paired with the Social Justice concentration in her final year, those experiences helped Alyssa refine a teaching philosophy grounded in anti-oppression, critical pedagogy, and care. “It helped me work through what it means to be a marginalized teacher in the classroom,” she says — lessons she would later carry into community spaces.
The Queer Collage Collective was born in Alyssa’s fifth year at Queen’s. What first started as a campus club in 2018 (Queen’s Collage Collective) evolved into an independent, mobile collective after graduation. “It’s called a collective for a reason,” she explains. “It’s not just me. It’s collaborative. It’s about co-constructing knowledge.”
That educator’s lens is evident in Alyssa’s workshops. In a recent Kingston Frontenac Public Library session for children, she invited participants to reflect on what makes their neighbourhood and home special before reading Africville together. She slowed the reading down, pausing to notice details in the illustrations, unpack the text, and talk through the history so every child could fully understand what they were engaging with, often tying it back to their neighborhoods and experiences.
Then came the collage — a space to process the story, the history, and the feelings it raised.
Alyssa encouraged the children to take their collages home and use them as conversation starters, sharing what they learned with others. It’s a small but powerful pedagogical move and one that speaks directly to her teacher training.
Adult workshops carry that same sense of accessibility. “People always say, ‘I’m not good at art,’” Alyssa laughs. “And then they make the most incredible collage.” She loves the way collage invites play, reflection, and connection — often rekindling a sense of creativity people haven’t felt since childhood.
Now completing a Master’s degree in Gender Studies, Alyssa’s research explores Black, racialized, queer identities through collage as an anti-colonial pedagogical tool. Her long-term vision is ambitious but clear: a permanent home for the Queer Collage Collective — a dedicated queer community space offering free after-school programming, art therapy, and creative gatherings.
“I have the plan. I have the passion,” she says. “What I need now is the space.”
Alyssa’s career is a powerful reminder that teaching doesn’t always look like rows of desks and whiteboards. Sometimes, it looks like scissors, glue, and a circle of people discovering something new together.
__________________________
If you are located in Kingston, The Queer Collage Collective has upcoming free monthly drop-in sessions at AGNES (made possible through the Community Foundation for Kingston & Area Anonymous Fund).