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Welcome to the Fall 2019 newsletter from Re•Vision: The Centre for Art & Social Justice at the University of Guelph!

Re•Vision is a social science and arts-informed research centre at the University of Guelph in the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences. Re•Vision has a mandate to use arts-informed and community engaged research methods to foster inclusive communities, well-being, equity, and justice. We investigate the power of the arts, and especially story, to positively influence decision-makers, to build intersectional alliances, and to imagine more just futures.

We will be publishing a newsletter twice a year, with updates on events, workshops, research partnerships, and more.

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"Into the Light: Eugenics and Education in Southern Ontario" is on now until March 1, 2020 at Guelph Museums

Into the Light examines local histories and ongoing legacies of racial “betterment” thinking in Southern Ontario that de-humanized and disappeared those who did not fit the normative middle-class lives of white, able-bodied settlers.

In the early to mid 20^th century, eugenics (race improvement through heredity) was taught in a number of universities throughout Southern Ontario, including Macdonald Institute and the Ontario Agricultural College, two of the three founding colleges that formed the University of Guelph. Educational institutions played a significant role in the eugenics movement by perpetuating destructive ideas that targeted Indigenous, Black, and other racialized populations, poor, and disabled people for segregation in institutions, cultural assimilation and sterilization.

While eugenics sought to eradicate those deemed as “unfit,” this exhibition centres the voices of members of affected communities who continue to work to prevent institutional brutality, oppose colonialism, reject ableism, and foster social justice.

Into the Light is co-curated by Mona Stonefish, Peter Park, Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning, Evadne Kelly, Seika Boye and Sky Stonefish. This exhibition of artistic, sensory, and material expressions of memory aims to bring one of Guelph’s dark secrets, as well as stories of survival, out of the shadows and into the light.

Read CBC's coverage of the exhibit, and Evadne's interview with BLOOM blog.

Opening Reception and Conversation with Co-Curators

On September 27th, researchers, artists, activists, and community members came together for an opening reception of "Into the Light." Dawn Owen, Curator of Guelph Museums, gave the opening remarks, followed by Bodies in Translation knowledge keeper Mona Stonefish, Dr. Carla Rice, and Dr. Evadne Kelly.

On October 26th, the co-curators gave a public conversation about their involvement with the exhibition and their hopes for next steps in eugenics awareness education.

Also opening September 27th was VibraFusionLab: Bridging Practices in Accessibility, Art and Communications, featuring art installations by David Bobier, Lindsay Fisher, Marla Hlady, Ellen Moffat, Gordon Monahan, Alison O’Daniel, and Lynx Sainte-Marie. By making sound tangible through touch, this exhibition aims to change public perceptions of difference and disability.

Image descriptions, clockwise from top left:

1: A photo of the opening wall in the exhibit, with the words "Into the Light" in white writing on a black wall.

2: A wide shot of the interior of the exhibit. Potato stacks are piled on the left and right walls, and photos and documents are on the wall directly ahead.

3: A photo of Mona at a podium, speaking at the opening reception.

4: A photo of Evadne at a podium, speaking at the opening reception.

Introducing Chelsea Jones, our new Re•Vision Research Associate: Arts, Access, and Livelihoods

Dr. Chelsea Temple Jones has joined Re•Vision as our new Research Associate in Access, Art, and Livelihood. Chelsea will be steering three interconnected research projects embedded in the Accessing the Arts, Disability Livelihoods, and Relaxed Performance research grants.

Chelsea is a critical disability studies researcher whose doctoral research, in the area of Communication and Culture (Ryerson and York Universities, 2016), focused on gathering phenomenological reflections on community-based writing processes involving people with non-normative approaches to writing. This work used freewriting as an entry point toward understanding hidden and overlooked communication practices.

Between 2018 and 2019 Chelsea was the Mitacs Postdoctoral Fellow at the Vocally Oriented Investigations of Creative Expression (VOICE) Lab at the University of Regina. Cross-appointed between Social Work and Media, Art and Performance (MAP) at the University of Regina, her community based research took place in a studio for creative expression that connects those with complex vocal disabilities to arts practice and research while critiquing the politically significant and privileged role of "voice" and “giving voice” in disability-based research.

Chelsea is also an award-winning journalist with a focus on writing for disability activism. She currently teaches a course on disability studies research methods at Ryerson University’s School of Disability Studies. She also the co-host and co-producer of a Ryerson-based teaching and learning podcast called “Podagogies: A Learning and Teaching Podcast.”

A photo of Dr. Chelsea Jones. She has shoulder-length blonde hair and wears glasses. She is looking directly at the camera with a slight smile.

Meet our postdoctoral researchers!

Postdocs and their accompanying photos are described clockwise from top-right of the above grid.

Evadne Kelly

Evadne Kelly is a dance artist and scholar with a PhD in Dance Studies, an MA in Anthropology, and an Hon. BA in Women Studies, Equity Studies, and Anthropology. She has presented and published on topics relevant to the fields of anthropology and dance studies with a focus on the political and social dimensions of trans-locally performed dance traditions.

Dr. Kelly continues to work in (and advocate for) diverse areas of research related to dance, movement, and embodiment. Dr. Kelly is currently a Postdoctoral Visitor in the Faculty of Health at York University, working on an inter-faculty project that critically explores the culture of psychomotor skills development in nursing, dance, engineering, and athletic therapy and develops a tool-box for using Smartphone video to mitigate barriers to learning in these domains. Concurrently, she is very excited to be working at the Re•Vision Centre as a Postdoctoral Researcher, working on a "Into the Light" with the Guelph Civic Museum.

Image description: A black and white side-profile portrait of Evadne Kelly. She is on a beach, with her dark hair tied back from her face, blowing in the wind. She faces to the left, smiling and looking into the distance.

Jake Pyne

Jake Pyne is an academic and activist in the trans community in Toronto. Over the past 18 years, Jake has worked on projects to improve trans community access to shelters and emergency services, health care, and family law justice, as well as projects to build support for gender independent kids and trans youth.

Jake's doctoral research was focused on the current generation of trans youth, some of whom are blocking puberty and transitioning young, and his dissertation posed questions about how their futures and forms of life have become thinkable in this time and place. As a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Guelph, Jake is currently studying the intersection of autistic and trans experience and the implications for how humanness is understood.

Image description: A black and white portrait of Jake, looking directly at the camera and resting his face in his hand. Photo credit to Ali Eisner Photography.

Ash McAskill

Ash is an ally and academic in the disability arts and theatre community, and a slow theatre practitioner. Ash has worked with disabled artists across Canada to mobilize against the current ableism that exists in the performing arts. Her dissertation entitled, “The Atypique Approach: Disability Aesthetics and Theatre-Making in Montréal, Québec and Vancouver, British Columbia” explored how neurodiverse artists are changing understandings of disability and theatre practises in Canada. Some of the groups that Ash continues to partner with for research projects includes Les Muses (Montréal, Québec), Les Productions des pieds des mains (Montréal, Québec), and Theatre Terrific (Vancouver, British Columbia). As a community-led researcher, Ash is invested in collaborating and leading projects that emphasize what Mia Mingus calls “access intimacy,” whereby people can walk in spaces knowing their needs have been meaningfully met and loved.

Currently Ash is living between Guelph, Ontario and Montréal, Québec for a 2-year postdoc funded by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec. Her project, “Slow Journeys,” explores slowness as a method to challenge ableism and ageism caused by turbo-capitalism. The central question to her project, which is also affiliated with the SSHRC-funded Bodies in Translation project, is, if speed is the problem, then in what ways is the modulation of this speed or acts of “slowness” a possible solution? Slow Journeys examines whether slowness can be generative for creating a meaningful rhythm in which many human communities can feel welcome. Ash believes in creative and academic pedagogies that honour slowness and tenderness between all human beings.

Image description: A black and white selfie of Ash. She is looking directly at the camera with a straight expression, and she is wearing glasses and a scarf.

Aly Bailey

Aly Bailey is a postdoctoral fellow working under the supervision of Dr. Carla Rice. She recently defended her PhD dissertation titled “Designing and implementing BIAS (Body Image Awareness Seminars): A positive body image program”. This action research project involved working with a diversity of people from the community to co-create a positive body image program to improve body image experiences.

Her postdoctoral program will extend her doctoral work to exploring embodiment experiences and yoga. As a yoga instructor for the last few years she observed and experienced the exclusionary nature of the Western yoga industry. To challenge the dominant stereotypes within yoga, she will co-design a decolonized and inclusive yoga curriculum with non-normatively embodied people – placing bodily differences at the center rather than at the margins.

Image description: A black and white photo of Aly, taken outdoors in natural light. She has blonde hair and blue eyes, and is looking at the camera and smiling. She is wearing a black top with a floral print, and a ring on her necklace.

ABOUT SOME OF OUR PROJECTS

Bodies in Translation

The SSHRC-funded Partnership Grant "Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life," is our flagship research project at Re•Vision.

The researchers, artists, curators, practitioners, and community members on the BIT grant explore the relationship between cultivating activist art and achieving social and political justice. We believe that activist art holds the power to represent these aggrieved communities who are routinely represented as non-vital, a representation that often produces violent and even deadly effects– differently; as artistic, creative, agentive, political, community-connected, and full of vitality.

Co-lead by Dr. Carla Rice (Canada Research Chair in Care, Gender, and Relationships, University of Guelph) and Dr. Eliza Chandler (School of Disability, Ryerson University, and former Artistic Director at Tangled Art + Disability), BIT sets in motion a creative and intellectual wave of leading-edge artistic creation research, technological innovation, and critical inquiry within and beyond Ontario. Blending theories and practices of disability arts, feminist arts, and community arts, this grant explores how, and to what ends, we can cultivate arts that re-figure bodies/minds of difference.

Watch Bodies in Translation's Guiding Principles Video Animation, both in an audio described and non-audio described version (embedded below). You can also view them on the BIT website in both a written document and a stunning graphic poster. Guelph-based artist Devon Kerslake created the poster and directed the animation. These illustrate the principles that ground all BIT partnerships and projects: leading with difference, enacting radical reciprocity, manifesting accessibility, and working in decolonizing and intersectional ways. The principles are responsive, evolving, and collaborative, so we welcome your feedback!

This video is an illustrated animation of the Bodies in Translation (BIT) Guiding Principles for Governance. There's an audio described version of this video at this link.

The Guiding Principles grew out of conversations, value systems and practices that have led us throughout the first few years of the project. We formalized the Guiding Principles in a written document in 2018 and worked with graphic illustrator Devon Kerslake and video maker Nicholas Loess to animate the Principles through illustrative texts and drawings. The soundscape for the video is the from the song "Manitou" by Ziibiwan.

The Guiding Principles document was written by Carla Rice, Eliza Chandler, Lindsay Fisher, Tracy Tidgwell, Nadine Changfoot, Ingrid Mündel, and Susan Dion Fletcher. You can download the full Guiding Principles document here.

Relaxed Performance Research with the British Council Canada

This is the cover of the Relaxed Performance report. The background is black and the text is white. The top-left corner has the British Council logo and the Bodies in Translation logo. The title reads "Relaxed Performance: Exploring Accessibility in the Canadian Theatre Landscape." The main image is a photograph of Erin Ball performing at Cripping the Arts. Erin is balanced by her hips on a bar across the top of the frame of an old hospital wheelchair. Her hands are on the arm rests, she is side profile. Her gaze is forward, towards the audience. Behind her, from her prosthetic legs, two long pegs extend, one straight out and one up in the air, from her bent knee. They are about three feet long each. She has red hair in a side pony tail.

Our Relaxed Performance report is now published! You can read it in full here.

In 2018, Bodies in Translation at Re•Vision partnered with British Council Canada to evaluate the successes, challenges, and future recommendations for Relaxed Performance training programs in the Canadian theatre landscape. The report, written by Andrea LaMarre, Carla Rice, and Kayla Besse, includes a literature scan, experiences and impacts of training, and audience feedback. A short booklet summarizing the report will be released soon.

Relaxed Performance (RP) is an accessibility practice which “invites bodies to be bodies” in theatre spaces, including in their movement and vocalizations. RP also involves technical modifications, which were introduced in RP training sessions across Canada over the past several years.

We have recently re-partnered with the British Council Canada for a second phase of Relaxed Performance research, which involves teaching RP in university curriculum. In the Fall 2019 term, RP facilitators are working with theatre students at York University, and fashion studies students at Ryerson University. In Winter 2019, the University of Guelph choirs will be implementing Relaxed Performance as well.

Invisibility to Inclusion (i2i): Episodic Disabilities in Ontario Workplaces

From Invisibility 2 Inclusion: Episodic Disabilities in Ontario Workplaces (i2i) is a 4-year research project that brings together scholars, researchers, business professionals, employers, NGOs, and arts communities with the aim of improving social, economic and employment opportunities for people with episodic disabilities (EDs) in Ontario workplaces.

Episodic disabilities are long-term conditions that are characterized by periods of good health interrupted by periods of illness and disability. Visit the i2i website to learn more, and to access some tools and resources.

We had our first i2i Digital Storytelling workshop in May 2019, at the School of Disability Studies at Ryerson University. One of our participants, Mari Ramsawakh, entered the TVO Short Docs competition with their digital story “Fluid,” and they won first place! Watch Mari’s story here.

Disability & Livelihoods in Canada

Disability & Livelihoods is a SSHRC-funded case study project led by Dr. Deborah Stienstra. This partnership involves national and local organizations (DisAbled Women's Network of Canada, Canadian Council for Rehabilitation and Work, Lakeside Hope House Guelph, People and Information Network), along with the University of Guelph's Live Work Well Research Centre, Re-Vision: Centre for Arts and Social Justice, and the Community Engaged Scholarship Institute. Researchers contribute to three pilot projects: volunteering, arts and artistry, and young women and pre-employment supports.

Re•Vision's case study examines how federal and provincial laws intersect with artistry as a livelihood, exploring relationships between arts funding and disability-related supports and services. Disabled people continue to respond imaginatively by finding alternatives to paid work to sustain themselves and their families, and we want to highlight the diverse, everyday strategies of people with disabilities.

Image descriptions for above:
1. Researchers on the project (including Ingrid Mündel, left) seated at a conference table in the arboretum. Green foliage is visible through the window behind them.
2. Researchers on the project (including Lindsay Fisher, centre) walking outside together in the arboretum.

Writing New Bodies

"Writing New Bodies: Critical Co-design for 21st Century Digital-born Bibliotherapy" is a research project led by Dr. Astrid Ensslin at the University of Alberta and funded by an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Dr. Carla Rice is a co-investigator.

Writing New Bodies addresses complex issues around body image and media by developing a digital fiction (an interactive, literary-story-game) for a new, media-enhanced form of bibliotherapy—an intervention method that employs directed reading to help with psychological issues. The digital fiction is targeted specifically at body image concerns. It is aimed to encourage emotional and verbal engagement with some of the major challenges facing girls and young women today. These challenges include heteronormative gender relations, ableism, and familial influences on the ways girls "ought to look" (Rice 2014). Importantly, members of the target population are key contributors to and benefactors of the research-creation process.

Re-Storying Autism in Education

"Re-storying Autism in Education: Advancing the Cultures and Practices of Inclusion" uses multimedia storytelling to expand knowledge about autistic students' experiences in public schools. We are cultivating new creative and scholarly outputs with significant policy and practice implications through research activities that pursue a central claim: meaningful inclusion requires the fulsome engagement of autistic perspectives to rethink normalcy and reorient to autism not as a problem to be solved, but as human variation. Filling a gap in educational research, this innovative, multi-site project (Ontario, Manitoba, and the UK) provides research opportunities for autistic individuals to artistically self-represent and author their views about inclusion. PI is Re•Vision affiliate Patty Douglas.

This video was filmed by Erin MacIndoe Sproule in August 2017. It features researchers and participants from the connected "Enacting Autism and Inclusion" project.

Conservation Through Reconciliation Partnership

We are so thrilled to be partnered on this new project with PI Dr. Robin Roth, which investigates the transformation of conservation practice in Canada and supports Indigenous-led conservation in the spirit of reconciliation and decolonization.

The CRP weaves together a wide range of partners including Indigenous thought leaders, organizations, youth and Elders; emerging and established scholars; prominent conservation agencies and organizations; Indigenous communities and Nations; and knowledge mobilization specialists, united in the goal of supporting Indigenous-led conservation in Canada.

Our partnership is supporting a foundational shift away from colonial conservation strategies towards conservation models and practice rooted in Indigenous knowledge systems, designed in accordance with Indigenous law and through relationships established in ethical space.

To stay up-to-date with the project, follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Their website is www.conservation-reconciliation.ca.

Carla Rice wins International Researcher Award

Dr. Carla Rice, Re•Vision’s Founding Director, has been awarded the “Outstanding International Researcher Award” by the British Psychological Society (Qualitative Methods in Psychology section) for 2019! The award was presented by Dr. Sarah Riley in July 2019 at the International Society of Critical Health Psychology (ISCHP) conference in Bratislava, Slovakia. Congratulations Carla!

A black and white photo of Dr. Carla Rice being presented her award by Dr. Sarah Riley. They are standing together and smiling in front of a projector screen.

PhD in Social Practice & Transformational Change

The PhD in Social Practice and Transformational Change combines research-intensive classroom study with experiential and problem-based learning – preparing students for lifelong learning and future career success in private, public and civil society sectors. Re•Vision's Dr. Carla Rice and Dr. Ingrid Mundel are both faculty members for the program, and Re•Vision's Digital Storytelling Facilitator Hannah Fowlie is one of the program's first cohort of students.

The program is grounded by six key pillars:

Intersectional and Decolonizing Approaches and the ‘Unsettling’ Nature of Change
Feminist, Gender, Sexuality and Other Critical Perspectives for Rethinking Difference and the Human
Indigenous Knowledge Systems
Social Justice and Praxis Orientation
Methodological Innovation and Boundary Crossing
Community Engaged Scholarship

Want to participate in a digital storytelling workshop with us?

We are holding an open workshop December 11-13th of this year at the University of Guelph. Anyone is welcome to apply to attend, for the cost of $400 per person. Full details and tickets are available on our Eventbrite page. For any questions or to express interest in participating, please contact Ingrid Mundel at imundel@uoguelph.ca.

Digital Storytelling Workshops

Over the past year, Re•Vision has conducted 24 Digital Storytelling workshops with about 250 participants across the world, with subject matter including Indigenous experiences of medical care and suicide, episodic disabilities at work, Black student histories, aging, and more. Read short descriptions of some of our workshops, below:

Project CREATeS:

Over the past two years, we've been conducting Digital Storytelling workshops in partnership with the Arctic Council's Project CREATeS (Circumpolar Resilience, Engagement, and Action Through Story). Youth from across the circumpolar world came together to share stories of resilience and suicide at workshops held in Canada, Finland and Greenland.

Visit www.projectcreates.com to learn more about the project, view some of the stories that participants created, and watch a short documentary about the making of Project CREATeS, including interviews with participants.

CESI: Research Shop’s 10-year anniversary

Re•Vision collaborated with the Community Engaged Scholarship Institute in the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences on a digital storytelling workshop as part of the 10-year celebration of the Research Shop. The Research Shop is one of five programs through which CESI fulfills its mandate to bring together community and campus skills and resources in order to advance community-identified research goals. CESI works to enable deep collaboration with community groups, honour diverse forms and locations of knowledge, and support meaningful collaborations that increase our shared capacity to create high-impact research.

Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres (OFIFC)

Re•Vision collaborated with the research staff at the Ontario Federation of Indigenous of Indigenous Friendship Centres to create stories about their relationship to the work that they do in community and with one another.

Aging Vitalities

The key goal of this BIT-funded workshop was to give participants the opportunity to create a multimedia video or digital story of their personal experience of aging. The workshop focused on diverse experiences of aging, creativity, and aging with difference. Participants were asked to consider how their current vitality and creativity informed what they do, how them see themselves in the present, and how they imagine future and different selves, or different parts of themselves. They were also asked how their experiences challenged stereotypes of aging, and what they wanted people in their community(ies) to know about their aging/vitality/creative self, and experiences of difference.

Facilitator-in-Training Workshop

Last December, facilitators-in-training learned our digital storytelling method by making stories of their own, which is one of the core elements of our digital storytelling practice. The stories ranged widely in theme and content, but the central writing prompt was “What is something that you’re letting go of, or something that you’re welcoming in?” Renee Dumaresque’s story from this workshop, “Pain(ful) Perception,” was screened at the Montreal Feminist Film Festival, as well as the Oaxaca Film Festival. Congratulations Renee!

Digital Humanities @ Guelph

Every year, the Humanities Interdisciplinary Collaboration Lab (THINC) at the University of Guelph hosts their Digital Humanities Summer Institute. The Re•Vision team facilitated one of the workshops this year, titled “The Work That Stories Do in the World.” In this open workshop, participants of many ages and disciplinary backgrounds created digital stories about a variety of topics, including familial and working relationships, experiences of illness and embodiment, and more. Watch Devin Gaine’s story created in this workshop, “A Poem To Everyone In My Life Who Misgenders Me (And Thinks It’s No Big Deal).”

IndigiMed @ CAMH

In partnership with researchers at the Canadian Association for Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, we facilitated a workshop with Indigenous folks about their experiences and encounters with Western health/care. Participants shared stories of institutional neglect and misunderstanding, but also the beauty of Western medical spaces which welcome traditional medicines, leading to greater spiritual and community wellbeing.

Northern Water Futures

In November 2018, we worked with climate researchers at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, to help them tell their stories of climate change in northern Canada. We look forward to facilitating another workshop with them November 9-10 of this year.

DiStory @ L’Arche

We spent three days this September at L’Arche Toronto, making digital stories with survivors of the Huronia Regional Centre. Participants shared brave accounts of ableist abuse, loneliness and pain that stems from institutionalization, and the strength found through relationships with other survivors.

Students Feeding Change

Meal Exchange’s Racialized Students Caucus, the Community Engaged Scholarship Institute (CESI), and Re•Vision are partnering through the Students Feeding Change project to elevate the voices of racialized students who have experienced food insecurity through a digital storytelling workshop.

This 3-day workshop is on November 22-24 2019 at 10C in Downtown Guelph, and aims to bring together racialized students with lived experience of food insecurity to build skills in video making and gain knowledge of artistic methods for community dialogue, policy action, and challenging dominant narratives. Students will own their own digital story, but there will be an opportunity to opt into sharing these stories, on a larger platform, for educational and advocacy campaigns supported by Meal Exchange and CESI.

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Copyright © 2019 Re•Vision: The Centre for Art & Social Justice, All rights reserved. This newsletter was written by Kayla Besse, Re•Vision's Knowledge Mobilization Coordinator, and edited by Re•Vision's Managing Director, Ingrid Mündel. Thanks to Hannah Fowlie and Tracy Tidgwell for their contributions.

We understand accessibility as an iterative, ongoing process. If you find any part of our online communications inaccessible, or have suggestions for improving access, please email Kayla Besse at kbesse@uoguelph.ca

Want to be added to our email ListServ? Email Kayla Besse at kbesse@uoguelph.ca

Our mailing address is:
103 Blackwood Hall, Trent Lane, University of Guelph,
Guelph, ON, N1G 2W1,
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