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Welcome to the Summer 2021 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 publish a newsletter twice a year, with updates on events, workshops, research partnerships, and more.

We hope everyone is keeping safe and well at home in this pandemic. As you can imagine because of physical distancing, many of our research projects have had to shift online. Thank you to all of our staff and research associates for working together in meaningful and creative ways.

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A LETTER FROM OUR DIRECTORS

Greetings all,

We are excited to send you our summer 2021 update from the Re•Vision Centre for Art and Social Justice. In this newsletter, you will find news and updates about various grant activities, new and upcoming projects, online storytelling workshops, publications, presentations, new faces on the Re•Vision team and more! We have designed, developed, and facilitated 10 online storytelling workshops since our last newsletter on wide-ranging topics from experiences of fluctuating disability in post-secondary workplaces, queer parenting, and decolonizing autism in education, to how it feels to be a first-year student during a pandemic, how the intersections of weight stigma and racism impact bodies and lives, and how to re-imagine fitness in ways that celebrate bodies of difference. We are so excited to share some digital/multimedia stories that were created during these projects! We have published 14 articles in peer-reviewed journals over this period with many more in the works.

This summer, we are thinking a lot about transitions: what it means to be standing at the threshold of a “return” of sorts, while knowing that our lives and ways of working have been irrevocably changed by the past year. We are so happy about being reunited with loved ones after long times apart and are excited and hopeful for what is to come; we are also grappling with feelings of rupture and uncertainty as we navigate a reconfigured world that continues to expose its foundations of inequity, colonial violence, and embedded racism.

While the Re•Vision Centre is remaining remote for the start of the fall term, in some of our research activities and workshops we are beginning to consider hybrid models of working – where we combine in-person and online elements in our activities, bringing together what we have learned about different modes of access during COVID, with our ongoing commitment to forging new pathways for social justice practice and difference-centred community-making.

We are thrilled to be pushing our online arts-based research experiments further with an eCampusOntario grant and a SSHRC Partnership Development grant, Stretching Our Stories, that will extend our work from this year into new partnerships with disabled, Indigenous, and trans and gender non-conforming storytellers to confront the uneven impacts of digital divides and social unrest. We have also decided to reconfigure our Practicing the Social gathering for an online format for early 2022 – and are excited about curating thoughtful, boundary-pushing conversations about the intersection of social justice and arts-based community-making. Finally, eCampusOntario and the U of G Learning Enhancement Fund have funded our Countering Eugenics in Education project, which will develop a new online resource for university instructors whose pedagogy addresses decolonization, anti-racism, ableism, and accessibility in institutions and systems.

Please read on below for more information about these projects and more!

We thank you for being with us on this journey and we can’t wait to see and hear from more of you in the coming year.

With gratitude,

Carla and Ingrid

GRANTS & PROJECTS

Stretching Our Stories: Digital World-making in Troubled Times (SOS)

The SOS development will be guided by two separate grants: SSHRC Partnership Development Grant (Dr. Carla Rice) and an eCampusOntario grant (Dr. Chelsea Jones, Brock University).

Stretching our Stories: Digital World-making in Troubled Times (SOS) is establishing a new online arts- and story-based research program that responds directly to four distinct community-university groups of intellectually and physically disabled, Indigenous, and trans and gender non-conforming (TGNC) storytellers in Ontario and Alberta.

As an intersectional, arts-based social justice partnership, SOS is establishing a cross-provincial online collaborative with 90+ story-makers creating multimedia story-making tools and methodologies that cross digital divides and train highly qualified personnel in collaborative, interdisciplinary, cross-sectorial activism.

Conceived of and led by disabled, Indigenous, and TGNC storytellers confronting the uneven impacts of digital divides and social unrest, SOS expands generative relationships between the Re•Vision Centre for Art and Social Justice at the University of Guelph, Tangled Art + Disability (Toronto), story-makers at Humber College's Community Integration through Education program (Toronto), the WAABAN Indigenous Teacher Education program, York University (Toronto), Women's and Gender Studies at Athabasca University (Edmonton), and the School of Disability Studies at X* University (Toronto).

Read the U of G News announcement from June 21, 2021. More than 60 U of G Researchers and Scholars Awarded Federal Funding.

Participants working together in a Re•Vision Storytelling. Led by Dr. Carla Rice, a professor in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition, U of G’s Re-Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice received a $200,000 SSHRC Partnership Development Grant.

Image description: Viewed from above, 21 people sit in a tight circle on a wooden floor covered with a geometric patterned carpet of beige, red, and brown radiating triangles. One individual is lying on their back with their arms stretched above their head.

*Please note: Ryerson University is in the process of being renamed. In June 2021, protesters toppled the campus statue of Egerton Ryerson, an architect of Canada’s residential school system, which perpetuated colonial violence, cultural genocide and literal genocide against First Nations, Metis, and Indigenous people in this country. Indigenous and non-Indigenous faculty, staff, students, and other community members have petitioned the University to change its name and to substitute “X” in the place of its founding namesake in the meantime. In solidarity with those working toward this important moment, we refer to the institution as “X University.”

Decolonizing Journeys: Learning about Decolonizing through Indigenous Research and Digital Story Work

This collaborative project brings together interdisciplinary educators from university and community-based institutions across Turtle Island. Our research is grounded in Indigenous methodologies and practices, specifically, land-based learning, circle work, storytelling, and relational accountability. Knowledge gathering, story and meaning making will follow seasonal timelines.

Funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant and led by Principal Investigator Kathy Absolon (Anishinaabe), Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University; and co-researchers Julia Jane, MUN; Jennifer Poole, X University; Susan Dion (Lenape/Potawatomi), Associate Vice President, Indigenous Initiatives, York University; and Carla Rice, this project will conduct an exploratory inquiry with participants who have complete the Decolonizing Education Certificate and the facilitators who delivered the training modules of this certificate program.

Impacts from this project are 1) We will increase knowledge of what decolonizing is and how to effectively facilitate decolonizing journeys; 2) There will be an increased capacity of educators to include Indigenous content, and decolonizing curricula and pedagogies; 3) We will increase decolonizing and consciousness raising through Indigegogy while increasing networking opportunities for educators critically engaged in decolonizing work; and 4) Student training will be enhanced through graduate students involvement in Indigenous research methodologies and multimedia technology of digital storytelling and will be involved in all phases of the project. Finally, together these learnings will provide tools of engagement for developing and deepening our decolonizing journeys as facilitators, learners, educators and practitioners.

Countering Eugenics in Education Project

Building upon the Into the Light exhibition, Anishinaabe Elder Mona Stonefish will guide the development of a new online course titled Countering Eugenics in Education. Co-directed by Evadne Kelly and Carla Rice, the project is funded by eCampusOntario and the U of G Learning Enhancement Fund. This course will address learning challenges in decolonization, anti-racism, and accessibility in institutions of higher education.

A series of modules will introduce the histories of Ontario educational institutions producing and disseminating oppressive knowledge, prioritize voices of survivors and activists, and trace histories and ongoing legacies of eugenics to present day inequities. Students will engage in learning opportunities through an accessible, interactive, ebook, in part, as a response to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015) and the Huronia Settlement and Liberal Government Apology (2013) and to foster social justice broadly in higher education. This online learning resource will be available to Ontario universities in early 2022.

Image description: A narrow aisleway of brown archival documents extending from floor to ceiling on both sides.

ReVisioning Fitness Through Non-Normative Embodiment

ReVisioning Fitness is a collaborative effort to question the ingrained aesthetic- and performance-based practices that dominate many movement spaces. In this project, researchers, artists, fitness instructors, and beyond will conceptualize, through group discussions, sharing of personal narratives, and art, how “fitness” and movement can be re-imagined in a way that celebrates difference.

Funded by the SSHRC Insight Development Grant (June 2020 – May 2022), Revisioning Fitness will work towards the creation of an accessibility tool kit, and foster stakeholder connections with non-profit and for-profit fitness organizations. By “cripping,” “queering,” and “thickening” fitness, this work imagines a transformation in the way fitness is conceptualized and practiced.

This project brings together a high caliber, interdisciplinary national research team to generate knowledge and explore new understandings about movement and fitness through centering the experiential insights of nonnormatively embodied people and to explore potential contributions of digital storytelling and a minidocumentary to ongoing conversations about inclusion, accessibility, and difference with fitness and movement. ReVisioning Fitness digital storytelling workshops, facilitated by Meredith Bessey (GRA), Aly Bailey (Co-PI), took place online June 9, 16, 23, and 30, 2021.

Relaxed Performance Curriculum Pilot

In partnership with the British Council Canada and Bodies in Translation, Dr. Chelsea Temple Jones, Dr. Carla Rice, and PhD student and Research Associate Kimberlee Collins will co-develop an illustrated pedagogical toolkit titled “Relaxed Performance Pedagogy: A Snapshot” with illustrator Sonny Bean and graphic designer Jennie Grimard.

The toolkit will introduce Relaxed Performance (RP) to students, educators, and administrators in higher education.

Image description: Digital image of the logos for the British Council and Bodies in Translation in white on a black background with the words Relaxed Performance in yellow.

Artistry Under the Table: D/deaf Disabled Artist Livelihoods in Canada

Image description: A screenshot of the ASL version of the callout for Artistry "Under the Table": Disabled Artists' Livelihoods in Canada. There is a woman of colour signing in ASL wearing a black shirt on a black background so that her hands are very visable.

Artistry Under the Table: D/deaf and Disabled Artist Livelihoods in Canada is one of three projects which are part of a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant-funded project based at the University of Guelph focused on Disabilities and Livelihoods in Canada. The aim of “Artistry Under the Table” is to explore how disabled, D/deaf and mad artists use the arts to represent cultural and political stories, share experiences, engage with emotions, and challenge dominant narratives surrounding difference. Building on recent research in disability, Deaf, and mad art in Canada, this project uses key informant interviews to explore the experiences of disabled, D/deaf and mad artists: how they survive and thrive through their own artistic practices and in relationship to communities of practice in austere times. This project also explores how government policies impact artists’ livelihoods, and how disability arts influences culture.

Over the past year the data generated through in-depth interviews with 21 artists has been used to inform a written submission to a Federal Government Roundtable on promoting the participation of the disability community in Canada’s Arts, Culture and Sport sectors. The research will also be featured in an upcoming article, Critical Access as World-making, in Canadian Art co-authored by Eliza Chandler, Rana El Kadi, Lisa East, Margaret Lam, Niya Abdullahi, Lindsay Fisher, Carla Rice, Chelsea Jones, and Kimberlee Collins.

Additionally, the research has been featured in a special edition of the podcast Disability Saves the World. In the coming year, researchers will focus on consulting with Brock University graduate student Monte Hardy to dive deeper into the nuances of Deaf Studies-informed inquiry with D/deaf artists. Thank you to Kimberlee Collins for this update!

Writing New Bodies: Critical Co-design for 21st Century Digital-born Bibliotherapy

Writing New Bodies is a research project held by Carla Rice at the University of Guelph and is funded by an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. This project addresses the complex issues of body image concerns (distress, self-hatred, anxiety) and envisions a digital, interactive, literary game as an intervention method to encourage emotional and verbal engagement to help with psychological issues.

Visit the Writing New Bodies Website

Letters to Our Bodies

Facilitated by Dr. Ash McAskill, this workshop on June 23, 2021, invited contributors into a two-hour intimate and exploratory creative collaboration. Using creative writing and drawing, participants explored what it meant to be humans with varied experiences in academia and to express the tensions between self-care and the professional affordances they endure every day. Excerpts from the original work of each contributor will be compiled into a proposed manuscript for a journal article.

Practising the Social: Entanglements of Art and Social Justice

Image description: A red background with the words Practicing the Social in white font in a ring around the words Re•Vision Bodies In Translation with yellow, blue, red and green coloured circles in the centre.

Save the date!

Practicing the Social: Entanglements of Art and Social Justice will take place online on January 21st & 22nd, 2022. This two-day gathering will bring together contributors from across Canada, the US, Europe, and New Zealand to showcase the creative possibilities of the entanglements between art and social justice and the methodological challenges, innovations, and tensions that define our social practices. Hosted by Dr. Carla Rice and Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice in partnership with Tangled Art + Disability, Musagetes, Wilfrid Laurier Press, and Creative Users Projects.

Originally scheduled as a two-day gathering in Guelph in June 2020, this event was postponed in response to COVID-19. For our 2022 event, we are creating a dynamic and productive event that will merge an artistic and scholarly program in engaging and accessible ways.

In addition to the online event, we will publish with Wilfrid Laurier Press an ebook and an online, peer-reviewed multimedia publication, which will host artifacts and presenters’ works (sound files, image files, digital stories, etc.) that will animate their presentations.

Stay tuned for the program.

BODIES IN TRANSLATION

Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life (BIT) is Re•Vision's leading project and is a SSHRC Partnership Grant that creates collaborative partnerships between artists, arts organizations, activists, scholars, and educators. We cultivate activist art produced by disabled, D/deaf, fat, Mad, and E/elder people with the goal of expanding understandings of vitality and advancing social justice.

Here is some of BIT's work:

Cripistomologies of Disability Arts Culture: Reflections on Cripping the Arts Symposium

(Cover image: Brownton Abbey, 2019. Michelle Peek Photography courtesy of Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology & Access to Life, Re•Vision: The Centre for Art & Social Justice at the University of Guelph)

Image description: A performer from Brownton Abbey stretches out a large piece of bright pink fabric, which covers their body. The performer is positioned in a forward motion. The wall behind them is a vibrant blue.

Have you seen the 2021 special issue of Studies in Social Justice, co-edited by Eliza Chandler, Katie Aubrecht, Esther Ignagni, and Carla Rice?

Through reflecting on the 2019 Cripping the Arts Symposium, this collection of essays and dispatches reflects on Deaf, mad, and disability arts and culture in Canada from various cripistemological perspectives. Cripistemologies seek to ‘know’ disability from the perspectives of disabled people and disability experience.

This issue positions ‘cripping the arts’ – a project that centres disability and desires its disruptions in creating, programming, and experiencing arts and culture – as a political project, one that is connected to disability studies, rights, and justice. As a collection, these pieces demonstrate how representation through arts and culture is a matter of social justice for how it promotes cripistomologies and influence public understanding of the multiple and intersectional experiences Deafhood, madness, and disability through first-person perspectives.

The audio described version of the Cripping the Arts documentary is here!

The audio described version was made by filmmaker Kavya Yoganathan, described by Kat Germain, and produced by Bodies in Translation in partnership with the Cripping the Arts presenting partners: Creative Users Projects, Tangled Art + Disability, X University School of Disability Studies, British Council Canada, and Harbourfront Centre.

Image description: A woman is ASL signing in a white dress with red flower accents around her collar against a black background.

El Alto

El Alto is here! El Alto Vol 2, ‘d/Deaf and disability arts in the Americas' is the British Council’s review of arts and culture in the Americas. Volume 2 was co-created by our friends and partners at British Council Canada and Tangled Art + Disability along with 17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos, and issue editors Saada El-Akhrass, Sean Lee, Beatriz Miranda. Bodies in Translation is a proud collaborator and contributor. Congratulations everyone!

Image description: Cover of El Alto vol. 2. Image of two dancers on stage. Dancer Fabiola Zérega is sitting on a chair, their arm raised above their head, touching the second dancer. Fabric is draped over the chair flows down to cover the bottom section of the image. The second dancer is standing, bent over and looking towards the camera. The photo is saturated with a blue overlay. At the top of the page, El Alto is typed in large black font, with the text Vol 2 and June 2021 underneath in small white font.

kNow ACCESS - 2021 DIGITAL COLLAGE

The 2021 edition of the Bodies in Translation kNow Access collage has launched! For this year's collage, as we begin to transition out of a global pandemic, we asked our partners, collaborators, and friends to reflect on and share how their thoughts and practices of access have changed over the past year.

Image description: A digital painting by Laura Schworer of people, multi-coloured swirls and a tree. The colours are vibrant. The background of the painting is a shades of red and pink. There is text above the image that reads:

There is a feeling of reflection to send us wings.
If feels like a meadow of faith, that wants to spring.
Its home is the heaven of goodness, to make us strong.
We climb up to the hill of experience, to where we belong.

Disability Saves the World Podcast with Dr. Fady Shanouda

This special podcast episode of Disability Saves the World with Dr. Fady Shanouda is a conference-presentation-style submission to the 2021 Arts in Society conference in Perth, Australia by Carla Rice, Eliza Chandler, Chelsea Temple Jones, Rana El Kadi, Kimberlee Collins, and Fady Shanouda in collaboration with Bodies In Translation.

This episode/presentation addresses both the real-world and online barriers to arts and artistry in Canada for disabled artists and examines creative, pedagogical, and technological interventions that expand access both structurally and epistemologically.

Find this episode and show notes on the Disability Saves the World with Dr. Fady Shanouda website or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Image description: A digital poster with a blue background. The podcast title, "disability saves the world with Dr. Fady Shanouda" is in light orange text in a darker orange banner. In the upper right corner of the poster is an illustrated graphic of the world.

RELAXED PERFORMANCE: EXPLORING ACCESS VIDEO SERIES

Relaxed Performance: Exploring Access is a series of 3 video shorts in which arts practitioners from the UK and Canada explore the principles and practices of Relaxed Performance in the arts. Each video is available in ASL, LSQ, English Closed Captions (CC), French Open Captions (OC), and with extended audio description (AD). They are excellent, accessible, teaching and learning tools for exploring Relaxed Performance. Co-produced by British Council, Tangled Art + Disability, and Bodies in Translation.

The video series includes:
What is a Relaxed Performance?
How do we incorporate Relaxed Performance in digital media?
What are the broader effects of Relaxed Performance on society?

What is a Relaxed Performance? (With Deaf-interpreted ASL)

Image description: This video still pictures a black background with the video title in yellow font: "Relaxed Performance: Exploring Accessibility in Theatre." Below the title are eighteen small video windows in black and white, most feature people’s faces. In the lower right-hand corner is a video window in colour that features an ASL interpreter.

CRIP TIMES - AN INTERVIEW PODCAST SERIES

Crip Times explores intimacy and connection in relationship to disability arts and culture with stellar hosts Yousef Kadoura, Kayla Besse, and Kristina McMullin, and stellar guests Syrus Marcus Ware, Renee Dumaresque, Ben Barry, Cindy Baker, Jeff Thomas, Jess Watkin, Gloria Swain, Shannon Finnegan, Jenna Reid, and Ryan O’Connel.

Crip Times is produced by Bodies in Translation and Tangled Art + Disability, and hosted on Andrew Gurza’s Wheels on the Ground podcast.

Check out these 10 incredible episodes for your listening pleasure!

BIT KNOWLEDGE PLATFORM

Welcome Surface Impression! After a vigorous procurement process to find the right digital media consultancy to help us build the BIT Knowledge Platform, we are thrilled announce our new partnership with Surface Impression!

The BIT Knowledge Platform, a central output of the grant, is an accessible web platform featuring pedagogical approaches to the multi-disciplinary work of Bodies in Translation, our collaborators and partners as well as the work of Disability artists and activists across Ontario and beyond.

Image description: A screenshot of the HOME page of Surface Impression's website. It reads " Digital media concept, design and development for the cultural, charitable and cultural sectors in red lettering. Below this here are four pictures and links to websites they have designed.

ONLINE DIGITAL STORYTELLING WORKSHOPS

During COVID-19, we hosted all of our digital storytelling workshops online. We are excited about the new creative possibilities and storytelling methodologies this new medium offers for engagement and community building.

The following are short descriptions of some of our workshops since our last newsletter:

From Invisibility to Inclusion: Developing and Evaluating Policies and Practices to Facilitate the Inclusion of Workers with Episodic Disabilities in Ontario Workplaces (i2i)

i2i is an ongoing research project bringing together scholars, researchers, business professionals, employers, NGOs, and arts communities. The aim of this project is to improve social, economic and employment opportunities for people with episodic disabilities (EDs) in Ontario workplaces by enhancing employers’ and co-workers’ perceptions and attitudes, facilitating legal and organizational change, and advancing the inclusion of people with episodic disabilities in Ontario workplaces.

On March 6, 13, 20, & 27, 2021, we held an online arts-based multimedia storytelling workshop with post-secondary faculty, staff and student workers who have episodic disabilities. Each participant had the opportunity to create a multimedia story reflecting their unique perspective and experience. Participants stories addressed topics such as disability stigma and discrimination, intersections of racism, sexism and ableism in the workplace, and the impacts of neoliberalism-driven productivity pressures in the academy upon people who experience episodic disability.

Thank you to Elisabeth Harrison for this update and to Lacey Croft for the screen shot from her digital story “My Body Knows.”

Lacey Croft, "My Body Knows"
Image description: This screenshot show various overlaid images: a “Hello, I am…” sticker, the back of a person with long hair speaking into a megaphone in front of a large audience with protest banners, and the words “On Strike” in black all-cap font overlaid horizontally across the image.

Transforming Policy Through Digital Storytelling: Homelessness on the RUF

On May 10, 17, 31 and June 7, we facilitated a series of multimedia storytelling workshops titled “Homelessness on the RUF” as part of the community-engaged project Transforming Policy Through Digital Storytelling.

This project responds to the urgent need for knowledge exchange concerning homelessness in the rapidly growing rural-urban fringe (RUF) in Ontario. By highlighting local knowledge and experience from Dufferin County, ON, this project will share resources and strategies for addressing the specific manifestations of homelessness in communities on rural-urban fringe.

This project is part of an ongoing community collaboration between researchers at the University of Guelph and X University, supportive housing provider Services and Housing in the Province (SHIP) and the Re•Vision Centre for Art and Social Justice at the University of Guelph.

Researchers for this project are Dr. Laura Pin, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Guelph in the Political Science department and Community-Engaged Scholarship Institute; Dr. Tobin Haley, an Assistant Professor at X University in the Department of Sociology; and Mr. Paul Berthelot who is currently studying Criminal Justice and Public Policy at the University of Guelph.

Re•Storying Autism in Education

Image description: A screencapture of the WeVideo editing platform with a still image on the top right, two file folders on the top left, and timeline editing bar across the bottom of the screen. The still image shows an individual with long dark hair piled on their head, large dark sunglasses, a black shirt, and Maori tattoos on their chin. The background shows a view of a town far below.

Led by Dr. Patty Douglas from Brandon University and supported by their new project coordinator Sheryl Peters, Re•Storying Autism uses multimedia storytelling to expand knowledge about autism. Thank you Patty and Sheryl for this following update!

The Re•Storying Autism project has been busy over the last 6 months and are excited to share a few highlights. We are thrilled to have new collaborations decolonizing stories of autism/takiwātanga (Maori word for autism meaning ‘in our own space and time’) and amplifying Indigenous perspectives about autism and embodied difference with autistic people, family members, and those working and caring in education and health care systems.

With Re•Vision and new colleagues from Aotearoa (New Zealand), we held a 3-day online storytelling workshop this past June. The workshop brought together Indigenous and settler participants, researchers and facilitators from Aotearoa and Turtle Island and the UK to make perspective-changing multimedia stories. We are thrilled to be working with Dorothy Taare Smith and Bernadine Wastney (Maori community activists) and Vijaya Dharan and Max Pierret (Massey University). Videos and collaborator bio’s are coming soon to the Re•Storying website.

Re•Storying also has a new collaboration with the Brandon Friendship Centre (Gail Cullen) and Manitoba Metis Federation-Southwest Region (Leah LaPlante). Together, we secured Special Indigenous Mitacs Funding to gather stories about Indigenous people’s experiences of autism at school in the greater Brandon area, the homeland of the Metis, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dene, Dakota and Anishnabek peoples. The initiative emerged out of shared concerns about the mislabeling and exclusion of Indigenous autistic children (e.g., as ‘behaviour problems’) and overrepresentation in special education, as well as the impact on children, families and communities.

Over the next year, we will visit with and interview Indigenous family members, autistic people, educators, knowledge keepers and Elders, hold a storytelling workshop and present at community events in Manitoba such as Indigenous People’s Day and teacher conferences. The aim is to change understanding and practice in schools. We are also querying the language of autism, its cultural relevance, and what other language may be more resonant for the Indigenous communities we are collaborating with. We have welcomed two Metis interns on this initiative, Tyler Huff and Dez Bodnar, to assist with our interviews and storytelling workshop and to share and learn with us!

Stephen Connolly, "Stephen"
Image description: This video still shows a pre-adolescent boy in a t-shirt and jeans sitting on a park bench looking downwards. The words "They say my name when I am wrong." appear at the bottom of the screen.

Rolls and Race

Rolls and Race is a storytelling project, part of the Bodies in Translation grant, that explores participant's relationship to fatness and body from BPoC perspectives.

Sonia Meeria, "Cycling"
Image description: A birds-eye view of a cyclist in a pink shirt riding on a mountain road with a view of lush rolling hills and a rising sun.

Precarious Inclusion: Studying 2SLGBTQ+ Parents' Experiences

Precarious Inclusion is a SSHRC Insight Development grant led by Dr. Julia Gruson-Wood, with Drs. Carla Rice, Gwen Chapman, Jess Haines, and Kate Reid.

This series of workshops (April 3, 10, 17, and 24, 2021) provided an empowering, meaningful process and place for 2SLGBTQI+ parents across Ontario to connect and feel a sense of community. 2SLGBTQIA+ parents were interviewed and asked to share stories about their parenting experiences. These workshops enabled a collaborative video-making process for sharing important stories about inclusion and exclusion.

Joelle Barron & Wynne DeGagné, "We Aren't Here"
Image description: This video still shows a white-top gas stove with a copper kettle on the flame and a bagel cut in half.

Be a Digital Storyteller! First-Year Seminar with Dr. Mavis Morton

In her own First-Year Seminar (FYS), Mavis Morton, director of the FYS program, collaborated with Re•Vision Redlab to teach students how to use Digital Storytelling as a research method.

Students worked collaboratively to design, conduct, and analyze their own research, exploring the experiences of first-year students during the pandemic. They used digital storytelling methodologies, they interviewed students in other FYS courses, and they disseminated their findings by making videos.

CARLA RICE'S NEW WEBSITE

Carla has a new website. Thanks to Lilith Lee for her amazing work!

Image description: A screenshot of Carla’s website with six tabs across the top: “About,” Research,” “Art & Social Justice,” “Writing,” “Teaching,” and “Contact.” The title “Carla Rice” is in black font with a smaller sub-title beneath “Research – Speaker – Author.”

Visit Carla's Website

Transformational Change Methodologies Lab Course
For Advanced Masters and PhD Students

Upcoming Fall 2021, Wednesdays online from 10:00 AM – 12:50 PM

Carla and Ingrid are co-teaching this graduate-level course that will focus on the various interdisciplinary entanglements between creative accessible research methods and social justice. Interdisciplinary in its approach, the course content works across the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences to explore challenges, possibilities, and tensions that emerge at sites of human/ nonhuman/ social/ artful/ spatial/ temporal intersections as entanglements.

First offered in Fall 2020, this second iteration will also focus on four critical spheres in contemporary qualitative research methodologies and accessibility practices for transformational change: 1) decolonizing, Indigenous and anti-oppression research; 2) feminist intersectionality research; 3) post-qualitative and critical theory-informed inquiry; and 4) arts-based/creative research. Students will explore the role of place, space, and memory, of art and community-making, of colonial legacies and Indigenous voices and perspectives, and of love and resistance.

No later than August 15th, 2021, interested U of G graduate students should submit a brief (1-2 paragraph) statement of interest and indicate any previous experience and/or knowledge they have engaging with qualitative research methodologies. Send your statement to Marnie Eves, Administrative Assistant at the Re•Vision Centre for Art and Social Justice at revision@uoguelph.ca.

Image description: A cropped image of the pdf flyer for the course. The title “Transformational Change Methodologies Lab Course Co-taught by Dr. Carla Rice and Dr. Ingrid Mündel” is displayed in white font on a black banner at the top of the document. Text below provides information about eligibility and the course description. A large red block runs vertically on the right side with the word “Course” written in white text.

Digital preservation of BIT and Re•Vision Outputs

The new digital preservation workflows for Re•Vision and BIT are in place. Re•Vision and BIT outputs are being safely stored in multiple places on University of Guelph's managed systems and external hard drives. Retrospective adoption of the workflows will take some time, but we will get there! Thanks to Lilith Lee for all of her behind-the-scenes work for managing our outputs and archives and for sharing her workflow image.

Image description: A diagram of the ReVision “Video Production-Preservation Workflow” starting from “In-House Production” through many stages and ending at the “RedLab server.” Small circles, squares, and irregular shapes are joined by directional arrows, all on a yellow background.

Welcome to the Re•Vision Team

Dr. Jodie Salter has joined the team on a one-year secondment as a Research Associate to help support the development of the BIT Knowledge Platform learning modules and co-organize the Practicing the Social gathering in January 2022. She also holds a position as Writing Specialist with U of G’s Learning & Curriculum Support Team in the McLaughlin Library, where she has worked since 2010. She completed her Ph.D. in 2012, and her research explored the intersectionalities of race, gender, and age, and the ethics of the listener/teller relationships in narratives of trauma and diasporic dislocation.

Photo description: Jodie is seen from her shoulders up in front of a red wall. She has brown eyes and long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail that hangs over her shoulder. She is smiling at the camera and is wearing a black turtleneck sweater under a grey jacket.

Re•Vision Redlab has three new digital storytelling facilitators:

Dr. Julia Gruson-Wood
Calla Evans
Angela Easby

Dr. Julia Gruson-Wood is an interdisciplinary health scholar and postdoctoral fellow of Gender, Family, and Health at the University of Guelph. Her educational background includes Science & Technology Studies, Critical Disability Studies, Medical Anthropology, Cultural Studies and Creative Writing.

Ongoing collaborative projects include research aimed at: transforming autism in education (PI: Patty Douglas); studying the uptake and discourse of neurodiversity (PI: Margaret Gibson), and; understanding how parents’ gender roles and divisions of labour impact family wellbeing (PI: Jess Haines).

Photo description: Head to shoulder picture of Julia, a mid-30s white woman, wearing a grey sweater with a red and a pink stripe. She has brown bangs and eyes. Her hair is in a ponytail, and she is looking at the camera with a closed mouth smile.

Calla Evans (she/her) is a PhD student in Communication and Culture at X & York Universities. Her past research projects sit at the intersection of fat studies and fashion studies. For her MA thesis, she explored how superfat and infinifat people navigate fashion from a social justice perspective. Her current research maps the boundaries of Fat Instagram and explores the activism possibilities of visual social media towards liberation for fat folks and the creation of a unique fat visual culture.

Prior to coming to academia, she was a lifestyle and documentary photographer and supported many non-profit organizations in Toronto through her photography work. Calla is a fat activist working towards making the outdoors and outdoor activities industry more inclusive for fat bodies.

Photo description: Calla is looking directly at the camera. She has white skin with a large mark or scar on the left side of her face, blue eyes and dark blond hair that spills over her shoulders. She is wearing a black and white striped scarf.

Angela Easby - Boozhoo gakina awiya! My name is Angela Easby (she/her), and I am currently a Ph.D. student in the Social Practice and Transformational Change program at the University of Guelph, with Dr. Kim Anderson as my supervisor. I am Métis Anishinaabe on my mom's side, and our family is originally from Treaty 3 territory. Historically they moved around a lot through involvement with the Hudson's Bay Company, and I grew up in central Ontario.

I am passionate about many things including Anishinaabemowin revitalization, Indigenous re-connection to and reclamation of land, and making art. I've also finally gained an interest in gardening and growing food after many years of chronically neglecting houseplants. I live in Nogojiwanong (Peterborough)... Just moved here! I am grateful to be a part of the Re•Vision team.

Photo description: Angela is smiling directly at the camera. She has dark eyes, and her dark hair pulled back. She is wearing a red, blue and white plaid shirt and is standing on a beach with calm waters behind her.

Re•Vision has two new graduate student researchers:

Kim Collins
Meredith Bessey

Kim Collins is a PhD student in Social and Behavioural Health Sciences at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto and a Research Assistant with two ReVision projects. “Relaxed Performance Curriculum pilot” explores RP training across three disciplinary programs at three Ontario universities, and “Artistry Under the Table: Disabled Artists’ Livelihoods in Canada” explores the experiences of disabled, D/deaf and mad artists: how they survive and thrive through their own artistic practices and in relationship to communities of practice in austere times. Her research focuses on emotional and affective responses to climate change, including ecological grief.

Photo description: A black and white selfie of Kim Collins. She has brown hair pulled back into a bun and is smiling while looking directly at the camera.

Meredith Bessey (she/her) is a PhD student in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition at the University of Guelph and a Research Assistant for the ReVisioning Fitness project. She graduated from the MSc program in Applied Human Nutrition at Mount Saint Vincent University in May 2020, and she is a Registered Dietitian.

Her main research interests are fat studies, critical "obesity" studies, weight bias and fatphobia, and weight inclusive approaches to dietetic practice and education. She is interested in looking at these topics using creative, critical, qualitative and arts-based approaches.

Photo description: Meredith has brown shoulder length hair, dark eyes, and brown eyeglasses. She is looking at the camera, wearing a red plaid shirt, and is outdoors standing in front of a lake.

Former Post-docs in New Research Associate Roles

Dr. Aly Bailey, Adjunct Professor, Re•Vision Centre and Family Relations and Human Development, May 2021 – May 2023
Dr. Evadne Kelly, Research Associate, eCampus Ontario and Learning Enhancement Fund (LEF) University of Guelph, August 2021 – August 2022

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Chandler, E., Aubrecht, K., Ignagni, E., & Rice, C. (2021). Cripistemologies of disability arts and culture: Reflections on the Cripping the Arts Symposium. Studies in Social Justice, 15(2), 171-179. https://doi.org/10.26522/ssj.v15i2.2429

Chandler, E., El Kadi, R., East, L. Lam, M., Abdullahi, N., Fisher, L., Rice, C., Jones, C., and Collins, K. (2021). Access as world-making. Canadian Art - Access Issue.

Changfoot, N., Rice, C., Chivers, S., Olsen Williams, A., Connors, A., Barrett, A., Lalonde, G., & Gordon, M. (2021). Revisioning aging: Indigenous, crip and queer renderings. Journal of Aging Studies. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2021.100930

Curley, K., Fowlie, H., Kreps, P., Komangapik R., Mündel, I., Rice, C., Panipak, M., Panipak, S., Puskas, S. A., Stribbell, J., & Uqaituk, G. (Under review). Avaluqanngittuq: Imagining Inuit Futures Through Multi-media/ Digital Storytelling. In Hudson, A., Igloliorte, H. & Lundstrom, J. Qummut qukiria!: Mobilizing Circumpolar Indigenous Cultural Heritage. Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane.

Denborough, D., Douglas, P., & Rice, C. (2021). Re•Storying Autism: An interview with Patty Douglas and Carla Rice. International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work. https://dulwichcentre.com.au/product/restorying-autism-an-interview-with-patty-douglas-and-carla-rice/

Ensslin, A., Rice, C., Riley, S., Wilks, C., Perram, M., Fowlie, H., Munro L., & Bailey, K. A. (2021). Bodies in E-Lit. In Dene Grigar & O'Sullivan, J. (Eds.). Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Company.

Gruson-Wood, J., Rice, C., Haines, J., & Chapman, G. E. (2021). The emotional toll of postfeminist fatherhood. Gender, Work & Organization. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12712

Jones, C. T., Rice, C., Chandler, E. Lam, M. & Lee, K. (2021). Toward TechnoAccess: A narrative literature review of disabled and aging experiences of using technology to access the arts. Technology and Society. 65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2021.101537

Jones, C., Rice, C., Collins, K., & Dion, S. (2021). Relaxed Performance: Exploring University-based Training Across Fashion, Theatre and Choir. A report prepared for the British Council Canada, Toronto, Ontario, pp. 1-60.

Kelly, E., Boye, S., & Rice, C. (2021). Projecting eugenics and performing knowledges. In Blanchette, S., & Brooks, N. (Eds.). Narrative Art and the Politics of Health (pp. 37-62). Anthem Press.

Kelly, E., Manning, D., Boye, S., Rice, C., Owen, D., Shonefish, S., & Stonefish, M. (2021). Elements of a counter-exhibition: Excavating and countering a Canadian history and legacy of eugenics. Journal for the History of Behavioural Sciences. 57(1), 12–33. https://doi.org/10.1002/jhbs.22081

LaMarre, A., Rice, C., & Besse, K. (2021). Letting bodies be bodies: Exploring Relaxed Performance in the Canadian performance landscape. Studies in Social Justice, 15(2), 184-208. https://doi.org/10.26522/ssj.v15i2.2430

Rice, C., Dion, S., & Chandler, E. (2021). Decolonizing disability and activist arts. Disability Studies Quarterly. 41 (2).

Rice, C., Jones, C. T., Chandler, E. Lam, M. & Lee, K. (2021). Toward TechnoAccess: A narrative literature review of disabled and aging experiences of using technology to access the arts. Technology and Society.

Rice, C. Jones, C., Watkin, J., & Besse, K. (2021). Relaxed Performance: An ethnography of pedagogy in praxis. Critical Stages/Scènes critiques. 22. 1-19. http://www.critical-stages.org/22/relaxed-performance-an-ethnography-of-pedagogy-in-praxis/

Rice, C., Riley, S., LaMarre, A., & Bailey, A. (2021). What a body can do: Rethinking body functionality through a feminist materialist disability lens. Body image: An International Journal of Research. 38, 95-105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2021.03.014

Rinaldi, J., Rice, C., Lind, E., & Kotow, C. (accepted, 2021). Mapping the circulation of fat hatred. In Jeanne Gailey & Ariane Prohaska (Eds.) Fat Oppression around the World: Intersectional, Interdisciplinary, and Methodological Innovations. Routledge.

Stonefish, M., Rice, C., Hutton, S., Kelly, E., Boye S. 2019. “Building Solidarity in Celebrating Difference” in ARCH Alert, Vol. 20, Issue 3.

Online Conference Presentations

Luzius-Vanin, C., Tidgwell, T., El Kadi, R., LaRose, T, Bobier, D., Charlton, J, Laganse, C., Maxwell, C., Rice, C., & Ruxton, J. (2021, August 6). The Ethics and Mechanics of Community-based Research during Covid-19: Creating a Digital Platform to Facilitate Older Adults’ Engagement with the Arts. Intersectionality, Capacity, and Adaptation in Disaster Response. Society for the Study of Social Problems Conference. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN.

Shanouda, F., Jones, C., Collins, K., Chandler, E., & Rice, C. (2021, June 16). Arts, TechnoAccess, and Disability Livelihoods in Canada. Sixteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society, University of Western Australia, School of Design, Perth, Australia.

Bailey, A., Rice, C., Gualtieri, M. & Gillett, J. (2021, May 31). Is #YogaForEveryone? The Hegemonic Flexible Body on Yoga Instagram Posts. Leisure’s Power: Oppression and Resistance 16th Canadian Congress on Leisure Research. University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta.

Rice, C., Jones, C., Mündel, I., (2021, May 24). Slow Story-Making in Urgent Times. 17th International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Collaborative Futures in Qualitative Inquiry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.

Wilks, C., Ensslin, A., Rice, C., Riley, S., Perram, M., Fowlie, H., Bailey, A. & Munro, L. (2021, May 24) Open to Construction: Reading and Writing Bodies in Digital Fiction and the Open Web Platform. Electronic Literature Organization. Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.

Rice, C., Mündel, I., Douglas, P., & Jones, C. (2021, April 20). [Co-authors] Stretching Our Stories: Disability Digital Worldmaking in Troubled Times. Society for Disability Studies. Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio USA.

Rice, C., (2021, April 18). [Moderator] Living Online Through the Pandemic: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life. Society for Disability Studies. Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio USA.

Jones, C., Rice, C., Chandler, E., & Lam, M., (2021, April 18). [Co-authors] Toward Technoaccess: Exploring Aging and Disabled Users’ Experiences with Technology to Access the Arts. Society for Disability Studies. Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio USA.

Fisher, L., Lam, M., Rice, C., & Chandler, E., (2021, April 18). [Co-authors] “Nothing About Us Without Us:” Using Human-Centered Design to Improve Disability Access to the Arts. Society for Disability Studies. Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio USA.

El Kadi, R., East, L., Rice, C., & Chandler, E. (2021, April 18). [Co-authors] Art, Access, and the Digital Pivot: Disabled Artists’ Perspectives on Accessing the Arts During Covid-19. Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio USA.

Shanouda, F., Chandler, E., & Rice, C. (2021, April 18). [Co-authors] From Techno-Eugenics to Technoaccess: Disability Arts in Practice. Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio USA.

Rice, C., & Shanouda, F. (2021, April 2). How Technology Opens Up New Opportunities for Artists. Experiencing the Museum: Web and Digital Technologies as Tools for Museum Accessibility. Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia.

Croft, L., Harrison, E., & Rice, C. (2021, March 24). Using the Covid-19 Recovery to Increase Employment of Persons with Disabilities. Realize National Episodic Disabilities and Work Summit, Toronto, ON.

Rice, C. (2021, March 16). “Through Thick and Thin”: Queer women speak back to eating disorder and obesity discourses. Challenging Weight Stigma: An Eating Disorder Health Integration Team Research Conference, Bristol, UK.

Rice, C., Chandler, E., Changfoot, N., (2021, January 29). Rethinking Intersectionality in Complex Body Becomings of New Materialities: What Artistic Creative Accounts Offer Us. Intersectionality as a Methodology and Practice. Women’s and Gender Studies et Recherches Féministes- https://www.wgsrf.com/uploads/2/4/8/8/24888219/wgsrf_2020_conference_call_for_papers.pdf (Conference online) (R)

Rice, C. (2021, January 19). The Complexity of Intersectionality. Gender and Health, Women’s College Hospital, Toronto, Ontario.

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Copyright © 2021 Re•Vision: The Centre for Art & Social Justice. All rights reserved. This newsletter was compiled by Jodie Salter, Research Associate; Marnie Eves, Administrative Assistant; and Ingrid Mündel, Managing Director.

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 Re•Vision at r evision@uoguelph.ca.

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