Community Engaged Archives

Carolyn Deby / sirenscrossing

sirenscrossing is an international, collaborative umbrella for a transdisciplinary site-specific practice. We think of humans as only one node of liveliness in the interweave of the living Earth. Through creating audience experiences in everyday spaces, we deepen into the lived reality of humans (even those in cities) and their sympoietic mesh with nonhumans, landscapes, and Earth systems. sirenscrossing seeks to enliven individual human’s awareness of their spiritual, biological, ecological, social, and technological entanglement in multispecies and hybrid bio/geo/techno processes. All of this has become increasingly urgent, on a planet in crisis. We hope to contribute to a tidal surge of momentum for change. Commissioned artist for Coventry UK City of Culture (2021-2022).

Aquil Virani

Awarded as “Artist of the year” by the Quebec-based artist collective “Les artistes pour la paix,” Aquil Virani’s collaborative art projects combine painting, drawing, filmmaking, writing, graphic design, installation, and participatory art processes and ask important questions about social and environmental justice. In 2021, he was named the first ever national artist-in-residence at the Canadian Museum of Immigration.

Virginia Gail Smith

Virginia is a public and installation artist, currently working in Petawawa, Omàmìwininìwag -Algonquin territory. She is interested in forging a language rooted in her connection with family and the earth. Exploring the marrying of food into art with growing biological forms enveloping foraged local plant life, creating with the context of walking gently. Conversations mingle with the honouring of culture, family and connection to the land in a collaborative public walking tour of sculptures, stories and songs with traditional knowledge keepers Trish Nadjiwon-Meekins, Susan Staves (Schank) in Owen Sound of the Saukiing Anishnaabekiing (SON). She also may use a climate language of cardboard and plastic to initiate dialogue on what is next for us and the earth. Her ancestors reside in England and the Ukraine.

Project SculpShore

Project SculptShore is a Art, Action, and Education initiative launching for its first of many campaigns on World Oceans Day June 8th 2022.

For our first installment we have partnered with local artist at the BernArt Maze in creating a life size baby North Atlantic Right Whale sculpture, modeled after the calf of Snow Cone, the North Atlantic Right Whale featured in the documentary, Last of the Right Whales. This interactive sculpture is fillable and will be used to collect washed-up debris during organized shoreline cleanups across the Maritimes. We will be engaging communities in shoreline cleanups by creating a social media sought-after summer selfie with our baby whale. Changing the narrative of conservation engagement from focusing on the problem to showing people that they are, and can continue to be an integral part of the solution, leaving them educated, empowered, excited to participate in other initiatives.

Tina Pearson

Tina M Pearson is a composer, media artist, performer and facilitator. Her projects invite stretched modes of time, perception and attention, in composition, field recording, performance, and facilitating, and often occur in community-based settings, outdoors, and within/through online platforms. Her work is increasingly focused on linking biospheres, ancestral memory, and technologies, uncovering connections that have been minimized, forgotten, or unimagined. Current projects include “Root Blood Fractal Breath” with Toronto’s ContaQt ensemble; “Displacement and Drift”, a mixed reality machinima and virtual installation; and “Tree Sing”, a long term approach for woman-identified vocalists and dancers to embody languages, sounds and movements directly from trees. Pearson’s work has been commissioned for presentation in concerts, installations, choreography, broadcasts, and video in centres through North America and Europe. She was editor of Canada’s Musicworks magazine, and taught Sound Studies at OCAD University in Toronto. She is director of LASAM Music, a member of the global Avatar Orchestra Metaverse collective, and a certified Deep Listening® practitioner through Pauline Oliveros. Pearson is a first generation Canadian of Nordic / Slavic descent, and lives on the unceded lands of the Lkwungen peoples on Vancouver Island.

Green Kids Inc.

Green Kids Inc. is a live-theatre company dedicated to environmental education through performance! Our mission is to educate children, teachers and families on environmental issues and inspire them to be tomorrow’s leaders by taking positive action towards protecting our environment.

Apocalypse Play / Two Birds Theatre

Two Birds Theatre is developing Apocalypse Play for performance in an urban park. It’s a serious comedy for terrifying times, an intergenerational auto-fictional collaboration about climate anxiety, grief and the legacy of arts activism and motherhood, created and performed by mother/daughter feminist theatre artists Natasha Greenblatt and Kate Lushington. Originally sparked by Natasha’s desire to interrogate her mother Kate’s satirical anti-nuclear performance pieces from the 1980’s (when she herself was born), this history has become especially potent now that Natasha is having her own child. Is it possible to make art and find connection, courage and community in the face of a precarious global future?

Hemispheric Encounters: Ecologies Research Cluster

Hemispheric Encounters: Developing Transborder Research-Creation Practices brings together scholars, artists, activists, and community organizations from across the Americas to explore hemispheric performance as an artistic practice for addressing social and environmental justice. The Ecologies cluster considers site-based performance strategies that address politics of land (and agencies of its more-than human inhabitants), as well as spatial politics of occupying public spaces. We delve into legacies of transnational resource extraction and land politics.

No.9

No.9 is a cultural organization that provides youth with creative educational tools to address Climate Change and to foster dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

Chantal Stormsong Chagnon

Chantal Chagnon is a Cree / Métis Singer, Drummer, Artist, Storyteller, Actor, Educator, Workshop Facilitator, Social Justice Advocate and Activist with roots in Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, Saskatchewan. She shares Traditional Indigenous Songs, Stories, Culture, History, Arts, Indigenous Craftsmanship and Teachings. Chantal has presented in Classrooms from Preschool through University and Professional, Community, and Social Justice Events and Gatherings. Chantal aims to entertain, engage, enlighten, educate, and inspire everyone she meets.

Category: Community Engaged

Carolyn Deby / sirenscrossing

Aquil Virani

Virginia Gail Smith

Project SculpShore

Tina Pearson

Green Kids Inc.

Apocalypse Play / Two Birds Theatre

Hemispheric Encounters: Ecologies Research Cluster

No.9

Chantal Stormsong Chagnon

CAW-WAC

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