Highlights from our students, faculty and staff are also included.

You can read ��ܽ����Ƶ’s 2020-21 annual report .

The post ��ܽ����Ƶ releases 2020-21 Annual Report appeared first on ��ܽ����Ƶ.

Highlights from our students, faculty and staff are also included.

You can read ��ܽ����Ƶ’s 2019-20 annual report .

The post ��ܽ����Ƶ releases 2019-20 Annual Report appeared first on ��ܽ����Ƶ.

The project will look at public commemorations of such historical events as the Holocaust, and what public spaces have been designated for commemorations. While its reach will be international, the roots of the project’s activities will be in Poland, where the team has community partners and ongoing research projects. Over three years, they will refine and focus their work with The Zapomniane Foundation, which researches unmarked mass graves of Jews in locations outside death camps such as forests, villages and rural areas.

“Creating successful grant proposals is all about the teams that pull everything together,” explains Solomon Nagler, associate professor of media arts at ��ܽ����Ƶ, and the principal investigator. “For smaller, non-traditional universities, we have many strong voices at ��ܽ����Ƶ and King’s to collectively bring an important conversation into an interdisciplinary, inter-university realm.”

The co-applicants for the grant include Dr. Dorota Glowacka – King’s; Dr. Sarah Clift  –  King’s; Dr. Carla Taunton – ��ܽ����Ƶ; and Angela Henderson – ��ܽ����Ƶ. Dr. Karin Cope – ��ܽ����Ƶ, is a collaborator on the project.

“We’re committed to an inclusive and more radically popular approach to visualizing and spatializing the public memory of these non-sites of memory, and aim to develop a broader research-creation pedagogical framework that can expand across disciplines and contexts,” says Nagler. “We want to examine how the counter monument challenges the idealization of heroes, and invites us to  not only reflect upon the past, but reflect on our interpretation of the past.”

The research will draw on memory/genocide studies and curation methods. The team intends to host a colloquium and shows, plus produce an interdisciplinary curriculum for studio arts and contemporary studies that integrates reflexive, hands-on experiential learning with critical reflection on theories of collective memory and memorialisation. A project website will launch in September to provide broad access to the ongoing interdisciplinary research creation activities, and free webinars throughout the year will feature artists, curators and theorists from across the globe who intersect with the research in memory studies and counter-monument theory.

“What’s unique is we’re assembling an international team to explore how communities engage with what one theorist calls ‘difficult heritage,’ that is, those histories that pose unique political and ethical challenges to remembering,” says Dr. Sarah Clift, assistant professor, contemporary studies, at King’s.

Very often the issue of how to remember traumatic histories is taken up within national frameworks: questions about what we as a community remember, and how we remember, are posed with an eye to national identity, Dr. Clift explains. “So, we have discourses, theories, and histories of how collective memory functions in Germany, in Poland, in Canada. Those frameworks are important, of course, but they are not able to account for how permeable national borders are, and how multifarious the pressures and the opportunities are, that affect projects of national memory.”

The project seeks to ask:

• Can memory-making be a conversation rather than a ‘self’-assertion?
• Can memory-making be a form of contesting dominant memory?
• Can memory-making itself be a form of pedagogy, amongst students of history, art, and technology?
• Can we open up our collective acts of memorialization to different voices?
• Are there lessons that different constituencies can learn, whether inspirational or cautionary, from other countries and communities who have approached the work of memory-making with different frames or investments?

The representatives from both ��ܽ����Ƶ and King’s say they are grateful to SSHRC for the insight grant. They’re also delighted to get the opportunity to work together.

“Sarah and I were chatting over breakfast in Halifax while I was doing work in Poland with the Zapomniane Foundation and we started asking ourselves, ‘How does an artist work in these spaces?’ ” says Nagler. “We starting mapping out the origins of the research proposal right there on a napkin. I really feel like we’ve pulled a dream team together on this proposal, and I’m very happy that we’ll be able to create paid research positions for our students.”

“I am thrilled at the opportunity to partner with my colleagues at ��ܽ����Ƶ; Sol and I have been talking about a partnership of this kind for three years now, and I’m really happy that we’ll be able to explore the themes of collective memory, art, and counter-monumentality in such depth, and in such a multi-dimensional way,” says Dr. Clift. “I can’t wait to get started on the work!”

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��ܽ����Ƶ University announces Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Transatlantic Black Diasporic Art and Community EngagementK’jipuktuk/Halifax (June 16, 2020)

 – Today, ��ܽ����Ƶ University announced Dr. Charmaine A. Nelson as its Tier 1 Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Transatlantic Black Diasporic Art and Community Engagement.

It is ��ܽ����Ƶ’s first CRC Tier 1 award, the highest award that a university can receive from the tri-agency initiative of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

Dr. Nelson, formerly a full professor of art history at McGill University who researches and teaches subjects related to postcolonial and black feminist scholarship, transatlantic slavery studies and black diaspora studies, brings to ��ܽ����Ƶ a passion and scholarly record of addressing histories of social justice to build futures of resilience and resurgence.  Dr. Nelson will use the funded, seven-year (renewable) position to work with ��ܽ����Ƶ to develop the Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery.

“Dr. Nelson is an exceptional researcher and such an excellent choice for ��ܽ����Ƶ’s first Tier 1 Canada Research Chair,” said Andy Fillmore, Member of Parliament for Halifax. “The impact of Dr. Nelson’s work to uncover, preserve, and share the difficult history of Transatlantic Slavery will start here in Halifax—a city that continues to confront systemic racism built on generations of discrimination—and it will ripple across the country and around the world. The Government of Canada is pleased to fund this project through the Tri-Council funding agencies.”

The institute’s infrastructure will be created at ��ܽ����Ƶ’s historic Fountain Campus in downtown Halifax through funding from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and the Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage. As a dynamic, innovative hub for the study of the art, visual cultures, and histories of Canadian Slavery and its legacies, it will be the first such research institute in the nation and only one of a handful in the world that focus on Transatlantic Slavery.

Its creation at ��ܽ����Ƶ is significant given Nova Scotia’s important, yet relatively suppressed, history of slavery. The institute will allow scholars to work alongside cultural practitioners to unearth and respond to relatively unknown histories and contribute to the growing narrative of contemporary Black culture informed by histories of oppression and resilience.

“Black or African-Canadian studies in Canadian academia continue to be largely absent compared to the progress made over decades in the United States for such programs, department and institutes,” said Dr. Nelson. “I am very pleased that creating this infrastructure with ��ܽ����Ƶ will provide a one-of-a-kind destination with the space, resources, and community for scholars, artists and cultural producers to create work related to Canadian Slavery and its legacies. ”

The institute’s other goals include building capacity in the digital humanities to collect, preserve and access primary sources about Canadian Slavery and its legacies; training and mentoring  undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of transatlantic slavery studies, Black diaspora studies, Black Canadian studies and studies of Canadian Slavery, and; educating the lay public about the existence and nature of Canadian Slavery and its ongoing relevance to contemporary lived experience.

��ܽ����Ƶ’s Vice-President (Academic and Research) Dr. Ann-Barbara Graff recognized the importance of the CRC program and today’s announcement.

“This unprecedented award for ��ܽ����Ƶ represents the university’s commitment to its African Nova Scotian community partners and its goal to redress social injustice and promote resilience. Moreover, it recognizes the importance of arts and humanities as a disciplinary space to generate Canada’s creative future,” said Dr. Graff. “The institute’s work will form part of ��ܽ����Ƶ’s academic and public programs that require the expertise of an internationally respected scholar of Dr. Nelson’s calibre. Being able to appoint her in this position reflects our aspirations to be a prestigious research institution as well as Canada’s premier art university.”

A former Fulbright Visiting Research Chair and Visiting Professor at Harvard University, Dr. Nelson has held three previous, significant multi-year SSHRC grants that resulted in scholarly monographs, lectures, international conferences and new university courses. Most recently she was awarded a five-year SSHRC Insight Grant (2020-2025) which will allow her to continue her active research agenda.

To date, Nelson has published seven books as well as various book chapters, journal articles and other publications. She has delivered over 230 lectures, conference papers, and talks across Canada and the USA, and in Denmark, England, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Scotland, Spain, Central America, and the Caribbean. Passionate about reaching lay publics, Nelson prides herself on her public-facing research dissemination. She has deliberately used media platforms that extend beyond the university conducting over 140 media interviews with various national and international media outlets including ABC News, Aljazeera, BBC One, The Boston Globe, Canadian Art, CTV News, Global Television, The Globe and Mail,  The Montreal Gazette, The Toronto Star, and CBC Radio’s Daybreak, The Current, Ontario Today, Sunday Edition and others. She has also published blogs with Huffington Post Canada and articles with The Walrus.

The new CRC said that a critical part of her work will be public engagement and building relationships beyond the traditional scope of academia, with the mission to teach people about the specific nature of Canadian Slavery as well as its far-reaching and complex cultural and artistic histories and related implications.

“The institute will allow average Canadians of all backgrounds to better understand the centuries-long presence of people of African descent in Canada,” said Dr. Nelson. “As well as Canada’s role within the broader transatlantic world as dependent upon the enslavement of 12 million expropriated Africans for the labour to produce an early version of modern capitalism.”

The institute’s work will focus on locating, documenting, collating, and digitizing rare and fragile archival holdings to help amend the existing historical record and make known the collected data for the study of Canadian Slavery and its legacies before these historic records are lost.

The CRC grant will help the institute become a research destination that will create exhibitions, forums, programs, modules, database, and other teaching and learning platforms to educate and train various stakeholders about these histories, including the production of educational outcomes and tools for both child and adult audiences.

The Canada Research Chairs Program is part of a national strategy to make Canada one of world’s top countries in research and development. For more information, visit the Canada Research Chairs website at .

About ��ܽ����Ƶ University

��ܽ����Ƶ University offers a rigorous, interdisciplinary educational experience that is unlike any other art school in the country. For 132 years, our students, faculty and administrators have shared a commitment to progressive thinking and cutting-edge art, craft and design. For more information visit www.nscad.ca/.

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The half-day workshop led by Cope and Henderson is open to all members of the ��ܽ����Ƶ community and will present the results, to date, of an environmental survey they conducted with more than 30 faculty members, staff, technicians and students. The workshop is designed to engage participants, build relationships and actions across divisional and disciplinary lines, and to help to identify next steps for environmental research, teaching and action at ��ܽ����Ƶ.

Cope and Henderson have been collaborating on the research project since the fall of 2018. So far, they have gathered data on a number of environmental research and teaching practices currently underway at ��ܽ����Ƶ, while surveying best practices in arts, craft and design-based research, production and exhibition spaces.

Cope is an Associate Professor, Art History and Contemporary Culture, while Henderson is an instructor in ��ܽ����Ƶ’s Bachelor of Design and Masters programs.

They will present their research to the ��ܽ����Ƶ community on Friday, November 1, from 1:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Art Bar +Projects, 1873 Granville St. Attendees are asked to RSVP to kcope@nscad.ca.

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Highlights from our students, faculty and staff are also included.

You can read ��ܽ����Ƶ’s 2018-19 Annual Report at:

The post ��ܽ����Ƶ releases 2018-19 Annual Report appeared first on ��ܽ����Ƶ.

Embed and Embody is a project of ��ܽ����Ƶ’s Art Factory, in collaboration with Nosiemakers and Nocturne.

“For 11 weeks, 10 youth from the Halifax newcomer community worked with professional artists and ��ܽ����Ƶ students in an investigation of self-expression through material exploration,” said Catherine Allen, Manager, Extended Studies, ��ܽ����Ƶ University.

“Each week the workshops focused on new techniques, including mould making and carving. They also experimented with surface design using spray paint, embroidery and screen printing,” added Leesa Hamilton, ��ܽ����Ƶ faculty member and project coordinator.

ISANS works with newcomers to Canada to help them make connections and build a future in their new home. Teaming up with ��ܽ����Ƶ student facilitators to produce artwork that represents their personal journeys has gone a long way toward helping them feel comfortable in Nova Scotia.

“Empowering youth to find creative ways to share their story and connect with their new communities is important in their settlement and integration process ��ܽ����Ƶ,” said Jennifer Watts, Chief Executive Officer, ISANS. “Art is a common language that speaks to everyone. This project provided a wonderful opportunity for youth to share their stories in an exciting and creative way.”

Embed and Embody is part of Nocturne 2019, further adding to the excitement around the project. Nocturne: Art at Night is a fall festival that brings art and energy to the streets of Halifax between 6 p.m. and midnight, October 16-19. The event is free to attend, and showcases and celebrates the visual arts scene in Nova Scotia.

Embed and Embody begins at 6 pm, Saturday, October 19 at the Anna Leonowens Gallery on Granville Street, Halifax. In addition to the art display, there will also be hands-on art-making opportunities for those in attendance.

The ��ܽ����Ƶ Art Factory and Embed and Embody exhibition are funded in large part by the Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage through the Culture Innovation Fund.

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October 8 – 17, 2019
Opening receptions: Monday 7 October, 5:30 – 7PM

Public Picnic Table Prints
Charley Young, faculty organizer
Gallery 1
Community Picnic: Sat 12 Oct, 12 Noon 

Public Picnic Table Prints is a large-scale, collaborative printmaking project that exists to create a place of exchange between newcomers and other community members. In the Fall of 2018, participants worked together to design, carve, and print, site-specific woodcuts based upon the people and plants found in Glen Community Garden. This project was created as a part of ‘Welcome to this Place’, presented by Mabelle Arts in partnership with Immigrant Service Association of Nova Scotia.

Nova Scotia Art Bank 2019 Purchase
Galleries 2 & 3

Arts Nova Scotia is unveiling the Nova Scotia Art Bank purchases for 2019. Since 1975, the Nova Scotia Art Bank Program has encouraged the development of artistic excellence and stimulated awareness of visual arts and fine craft among Nova Scotians and visitors. This has been accomplished through the acquisition, development, maintenance and display of a working collection of professional Nova Scotian art. Works are added to the collection annually through a peer selection committee, composed of established artists, who review all applications and select works to purchase based on artistic merit.

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Craig Leonard – The Halifax Conference
Book launch and performance

The Halifax Conference presents a transcript of a conference held at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design on October 5–6, 1970, transcribed and adapted by artist Craig Leonard.

Organized by Seth Siegelaub, the Conference was conceived as a means of bringing about a “meeting of artists…[from] diverse art making experiences and art positions…in as general a situation as possible.” Infamously, the conference was held in the college’s boardroom, while students and other interested parties watched the proceedings on a video monitor in a separate space. The result was a conversation that devolved—technologically and ideologically—into a quasi-tragicomic farce, punctuated by remarkable moments of rupture initiated by activist resistance to the Conference from the outside and dissenting voices from within.

Attendees at the Conference included Carl Andre, Joseph Beuys, Ronald Bladen, Daniel Buren, Gene Davis, Jan Dibbets, Al Held, Mario Merz, Robert Morris, Robert Murray, N.E.Thing Co. (Iain and Ingrid Baxter), Richard Serra, Richard Smith, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, and Lawrence Weiner.

Thursday, October 3, 7 p.m.
Fountain Campus D500

Margaret Atwood – Live stream at ��ܽ����Ƶ

Join us for a live stream viewing of Margaert Atwood’s sold out talk, “Author’s Stage: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood”,  that is being held on the same night at the Halifax Central Library.

Saturday, October 5, 1- 3 p.m.

Walking Kepe’k

Honour Mi’kmaq History Month in an on-foot experience of the Turtle Grove, Tufts Cove and Shannon Park areas of North Dartmouth. Walking Kepe’k will introduce participants to these sites and will proceed to a gathering with honoured guests. The intention of Walking Kepe’k is to make visible the history that is around by establishing meaningful dialogue and relationships with the Mi’kmaq community. We are grateful for the assistance and participation of Mi’kmaq Elders, Catherine Martin and Joe Michael, and ��ܽ����Ƶ students, Kassidy Bernard and Mark Sark, and to the Millbrook First Nation, on whose territory we will all gather at the conclusion of the walk. We hope you will join us for this meaningful event.

A charter bus departing from the Fountain Campus is arranged to transport ��ܽ����Ƶ students and attendees to and from the sites in North Dartmouth.

RSVP is required as space is limited.

To request more information, or to reserve a spot on the bus please send an email with “BUS RSVP – WALKING KEPE’K” in the subject line to: ohoganfinlay@nscad.ca

Save the Date

OCT 17: ARTIST TALK, Layne Hinton, 6 PM, Port Campus (P214)
OCT 17: BOOK LAUNCH, Dr. Karin Cope & Anne Simpson, 5-7 PM, Art Bar
OCT 19: PORTFOLIO DAY, 8 AM-4 PM, ��ܽ����Ƶ Campuses + Art Bar
OCT 24: ARTIST TALK, David Harper, 5:30 PM, Art Bar
OCT 25: RESEARCH-CREATION TALK, Jan Peacock 12 PM, Art Bar
NOV 1: RESEARCH-CREATION TALK, May Chung, 12 PM, Art Bar
NOV 1: ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN WORKSHOP, 1:30-5 PM, Art Bar

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