Panels
Participants share stories during the workshop presentation There's something I'd like you to know: Relational Theatre Performances in the spirit of witnessing
Thursday, February 11
Street stories: Building knowledge and capacity for change (Michele Pujol Room)
Facilitator: Bernie Pauly (nursing)
Josef Krancevic
Rose Henry
Don Cain
Street Stories is a community-university arts based research project that has brought together people concerned about homelessness to use visual methods to raise awareness and mobilize action to address poverty and homelessness that includes voices of experience. The Street Stories Collective began in July 2009, and brought together people who have experienced and/or have a passion for addressing poverty and homelessness. While some of us had previous photographic or video experience, others had none. More than 300 photos were taken, reviewed and analyzed over six months. From these photos, 80 were selected by the photographers to represent issues and experiences of homelessness in Greater Victoria. Video footage was shot over a period of two weeks during the fall, but we quickly realized that more footage was needed to represent the full impact of the winter months on those experiencing homelessness. Countless hours and sleepless nights later, a nine-minute video was produced that represents key issues and solutions. Street Stories draws on a method called “photovoice.” Photovoice is a participatory approach to creating knowledge that is informed by the experiences of people who have personal knowledge of the issues. Through photovoice, people in the community create, analyze and produce visual images that contain important knowledge of their lives and the forces that shape them. This project was possible with the support of a University of Victoria Internal Research Grant, University of Victoria Office of Community-Based Research, Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness, Colwood Church of the Advent, MediaNet, Our Place Society and Church of St. John the Divine. For questions or more information, please contact Bernie Pauly at bpauly@uvic.ca.
There's something I'd like you to know: Relational Theatre Performances in the spirit of witnessing (Michele Pujol Room - small)
Facilitators: Will Weigler (theatre), Hiroko Noro (pacific and asian studies), Lina de Guevara (Puente Theatre Society), CindyAnn Rose-Redwood (geography)
In harmony with the spirit of the diversity conference, this workshop will foster attendees’ appreciation of the perspectives and experiences of “outsider” (international and Aboriginal) experiences of mainstream Canada by facilitating opportunities to listen and to witness. The workshop is inspired by—and conceptually based upon—Kelly Oliver’s groundbreaking work on “witnessing.” Oliver (2001) challenges the notion of “recognition” based on hierarchical and subject-object oriented human relations. She reconceives contemporary discourses surrounding multiculturalism, diversity and inclusion by approaching difference through the act of witnessing. The concept of Active Listening plays an important role in witnessing. Active Listening involves fully attending to the speaker by suspending one’s judgment while listening and by suspending the tendency to constantly formulate responses to what is being said according to one’s own frame of reference. Hiroko and Will met with Lina de Guevara, Artistic Director of Victoria’s Puente Theatre Society, whose work is founded in multicultural expression and promoting the practice of witnessing. We invited her to collaborate with us in planning and presenting a performance-based workshop involving the spirit and concept of witnessing.
Can Caliban speak? (First Peoples House)
Facilitator: Maxine Matilpi (law)
Beatriz de Alba-Koch (hispanic & italian studies)
Michael Asch (anthropology)
Nick Claxton (education)
Sada Niang (french)
Carmen Rodriguez de France (child and youth care)
As "minority groups" begin to occupy the Ivory Tower, has the basic structure actually changed? Is the university still a site of struggle, a space reserved for the white middle class? This panel will converse about the dangers of tokenism and objectification, different sources of knowledge, the embodied nature of their work, the joys and challenges, and what it means to work together once one accepts diversity within the institution.
Challenges to the heterosexual matrix (Michele Pujol room - large)
Facilitator: Heather Tapley (women's studies)
Barbara Waterfall (Indigenous specialization, social work)
Eli Mannning (graduate student, social work)
Aaron Devor (sociology/graduate studies)
Lyn Davis (studies in policy and practice)
Lisa Poole (graduate student, sociology)
Daley Laing (graduate student, cultural, social and political thought/sociology)
Dann Hoxsey (undergraduate student, sociology
Gender at the intersection of diversities (SUB Upper Lounge)
Facilitator: Kathy Sanford (education)
Darlene Clover (educational psychology and leadership)
Steve Garlick (sociology)
Ana Maria Peredo (business)
This panel will focus on three interdisciplinary researchers’ examination of ways that gender interplays with modes of knowledge and is embodied in artifacts created through the research process. The pioneering research conducted by the panelists involves marginalized women and youth, alternative sexualities, the poor and disadvantaged. Each panelist will discuss their recent research and the gendered lenses they use to explore the educational, sociological and political issues of today’s society.
Project Artemis: Girl-led Participatory Action Research for educational and social justice (Grad Centre Boardroom)
Facilitator: Elicia Loiselle (graduate student, child and youth care)
This workshop is based on Project Artemis, a girl-led Youth Participatory Action Research study based in Victoria, BC. Eight teenage girls collaborated with Elicia Loiselle (MA Candidate, School of Child and Youth Care, UVic) to critically explore their schooling experiences and evaluate the program at Artemis Place, an integrated life skills and academic program for girls who have been underserved in the mainstream school system. The research team used arts-based methods (Photo Voice, collage, and Participatory Video) to explore and analyze emerging themes and mobilize the critical knowledge generated through the research process. In this interactive session we will screen our video documentary, The Artemis Effect: When Girls Talk Back. We will engage participants in discussion and activities that explore the specific use of girl-led PAR to address the structural inequalities in education and the under-representation of girls’ own perspectives in research informing educational policy and practice.
International global mixing: Conversations to build diverse social connections at UVic (Michele Pujol Room - large)
Facilitator: CindyAnn Rose-Redwood (geography)
Mohamed Ghilan (President, Muslim Student Association), Yifan Wang (President, Chinese Student and Scholars Association), Anita Katahoire (President, African Caribbean Students Association), Ram Meyyappan (Treasurer, Indian Student Association), Harloveleen Bains (President, Punjabi Students Association)
International students represent a growing part of the student body attending Canadian higher education institutions. These students contribute to making Canadian colleges and universities culturally and intellectually diverse. The nationality clubs that are created within such educational settings generally serve as a support system for many international students new to a different academic environment. This session offers a forum for a critical discussion on how to get students to engage in diverse social interactions on college campuses. International students from different nationality clubs will come together to discuss themes concerning the club members' perceptions and experiences of diversity at UVic.
Friday, February 12
Intergenerational and intercultural conversations: Elders and youth (First Peoples House)
Facilitators: Maxine Matilpi (law) and Jin-Sun Yoon (child and youth care)
Marie Cooper (Tsartlip Nation)
Sadaf Pourmand (antidote)
Rakiya Larkin
Michiko Midge Ayukawa
Leatrice Lam
Letitia Annamalai
This session offers a rare opportunity for female racialized minority and Indigenous elders and youth to have a frank conversation about their histories and experiences in Canada. Through a conversational format, issues of non-White immigrant/settler and Indigenous relations will be explored from perspectives that have been shaped through political histories of international colonization. These intercultural conversations will take place in a small talking circle of invited elders and youth with participants as witnesses to the conversation. The discussion will open up to the larger circle to encourage and engage more conversation with and among participants to further discuss issues of ethnic identity, colonization, environmental concerns, women’s roles, intersecting identities, and everything else that will emerge from the conversations!
Intersectional research teams: Knowledge production emerging from diverse perspectives (Michele Pujol Room - small)
Facilitator: Sarah Hunt (LeNONET Project)
Natalie Clark (Thompson Rivers University)
Helga Thorson (Germanic and Slavic studies)
Tamara Tobler (graduate student, Germanic and Slavic studies)
This panel discussion will include diverse perspectives on the ways in which intersectional analysis informs approaches to research by turning the lens of intersectionality on researchers themselves. Two researchers working in Aboriginal community contexts will discuss how their multiple roles impact their approaches to research, including ethical issues. Going beyond insider/outsider dichotomies, the presenters will explore the complex relationships that researchers have with the communities and issues explored in their work. Panelists will also discuss research from the perspective of students and faculty who are researching topics that intersect on various personal, political and theoretical levels. Differences in university and community contexts will be explored through conversation between the presenters.
Pushing the boundaries of inclusion: The role of students with intellectual disabilities in the university community (SUB Upper Lounge)
Facilitators: Teresa Dawson (Learning and Teaching Centre/geography) and Jessica Humphrey (STEPS Forward)
Fred Ford (social work)
Carlie Graham (UVic Libraries)
Michael Horie (electrical and computer engineering)
Tamara Hurtado (STEPS Forward Inclusive Post-Secondary Education Society)
Richard Pickard (English)
Why include individuals with intellectual disabilities in an academic institution? How can staff and faculty be supported in such a way as to make this goal feasible? How does going to university change the lives of young adults with intellectual disabilities?
In 2001 a small number of families with sons and daughters with intellectual disabilities in BC came together to change the options available for their adult children after they completed high school. Today, the family-driven non-profit, STEPS Forward, Inclusive Post-Secondary Education Society, is working with government and universities/colleges across the province to ensure opportunities for young adults with intellectual disabilities to further their education, become part of their community, and develop a career path alongside their non-disabled peers. In 2009 the first student with an intellectual disability was acknowledged for completing four years of study at UVic.
Please join us for an interactive panel discussion that will introduce the history and rationale behind inclusive post-secondary education in BC as well as recognize the leadership UVic has taken in promoting the full inclusion of students with intellectual disabilities in the university community. Together with STEPS Forward, UVic staff and faculty will share stories, challenges and advice in how working together can push the boundaries of inclusion just a little further.
Tongues Untied (Michele Pujol Room - large)
Facilitator: Jo-Anne Lee (women's studies)
Alissa Greer (WS 339 student)
Ashley Jacobs (WS 339 student)
Moussa Mougassa, Office of Equity and Human Rights
Leah Staples (WS 339 student)
Every day we pass by violent messages scrawled on walls, written in newspapers and spoken in conversation, yet the majority of us fail to recognize this as violence. Oppressive language and drawings have been normalized in our lives. Many of us think that it is not our issue, that it does not affect us, but in thinking so we become complacent, replicating this kind of violence by allowing it to go unexamined. A Feminist Participatory Action Research project created to address ambient violence has taken on a life of its own; now over two years old, it has evolved into some sort of a movement on campus. You are invited to join the journey in taking action against ambient violence. The mini-doc Tongues Untied is a film showing the research findings about ambient violence and Islamaphobia on the UVic campus. The panel includes three undergraduate student activists dedicated to making the UVic campus a safer, more inclusive environment and a representative from the equity and human rights office. The panel will be facilitated by Dr. Jo-Anne Lee, the women's studies professor who has helped guide the students in their journey. Following the film screening, there will be a discussion around the complexities of ambient violence and why we are all implicated in its existence. Participants will also learn strategies to take action against ambient violent. You are welcome to join an exciting morning of creative activism!
