Michael Lee Poy

Michael Lee Poy is an Afro-Caribbean artist-activist based in Toronto and a registered architect in Trinidad and Tobago. His practice and interests are centered on post-colonial Caribbean design and fabrication in the festival arts – especially Carnival. A graduate of Pratt Institute of Technology in architecture (B. Arch.) and the Yale Graduate School of Architecture, Environmental Design (MED), Michael aims to use interdisciplinarity to augment the innovative, creative, and collaborative process of design. For the past 10 years, Michael has been incubating the Moko Jumbie Mascamp workshops in Trinidad, Cleveland (OH) and Toronto (CAN). The Caribbean derived masquerade (mas) camps are socially conscious design/build and fabrication/studio/lab workshops. They are intergenerational innovation centers that operate like small design incubator/facilitator hubs. Participants learn leadership training, team building, balance, design and basic fabrication. Assistant Professor Lee Poy uses the mascamp methodology as a design tool for pedagogy.
(Photo: Farzaneh Moallef)