Research Archives - ��ܽ��Ƶ

Community Mobile Media Lab receives Intentional Initiative Award from Research Nova Scotia

Andy Murdoch — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 14:51:01 +0000

Solomon Nagler, filmmaker and professor of Media Arts and Film at ��ܽ��Ƶ, has received the Intentional Initiative Award from to further his work with the Community Mobile Media Lab (CMML).

The CMML is a mobile media production hub, with film production equipment, that can be temporarily set up in Nova Scotian communities. The media lab will house a series of post-production workstations, a mobile sound mixing studio and professional film production equipment.

“I feel very privileged receiving this award,” says Nagler. “I’m really a passionate researcher, but university research can be very inward-looking. So, how do we contribute to not just equitable spaces in the universities, but to our greater community, and how do we share this knowledge and learn from other people outside the university to make our educational institution a better place?

“With this grant, it’s all very outward-looking,” he continues. “It’s about leaving the university, traveling to communities, learning from them, and nurturing filmmakers who didn’t necessarily have a similar opportunity to go to university and register for four years of education. It’s about learning how these process ��ܽ��Ƶes can do a lot for diversification in the film industry, but also diversification in how we teach and how we learn about filmmaking here and abroad.”

This innovative model of co-creation, training and mentorship is one of the many reasons the CMML was granted this award.

CREATING CHANGE WITH MEDIA ACCESSIBILITY��

The award comes as a $220,000 grant from Research Nova Scotia over the course of three years. This will help the CMML to fund projects, hire mentors and acquire more training materials for participants.

In addition to mentors, the CMML will be partnering with its primary community collaborator, Sobaz Benjamin, who is the Founder and Executive Director of I; and with institutional collaborator, Joshua Schwab-Cartas, who is an assistant professor in the Master of Arts Education program at ��ܽ��Ƶ.

“These are two people that I have such an enormous respect for and what they do,” says Nagler. “We all have a vision of art as a means of changing the world for better, and the work they do is going to be integral to anything that we’re going to do in the next three years.”

Nagler sees this funding as an opportunity to combat accessibility within the education sector, which is something he has seen in the last 16 years of his teaching career.

“It’s kind of evident that universities are not the most accessible places for a lot of people,” he says. “Things like cost, accessibility [to equipment], class, and racism; these are some of the obvious reasons that post-secondary education wasn’t in the wheelhouse for some people… and you see that in the population that’s in front of you while teaching. So, there has to be a way to make these spaces and educational process ��ܽ��Ƶ more accessible and more equitable to tell these stories that need to be told.”

CELEBRATING OUR COMMUNITIES

One of the projects Nagler hopes to produce with the CMML is a ‘micro-films festival,’ which will showcase the works of participants and hopefully put budding filmmakers on the map.

“As the folks are producing their films and shooting them, we will then help them produce these works, with the intention that these works will be distributed in festivals here and abroad,” says Nagler. “So, they can start building their portfolios, and once you start building portfolios, you can start applying for funding, which can then be used for university applications.”

For Nagler, hosting these sort of screening events would be a way to celebrate the participants, their labour and the communities that they are a part of.

Right now, Nagler, Benjamin and Schwab-Cartas are putting together the infrastructure to get the CMML up and running. This includes a $75,000 Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) grant that will go towards purchasing the van and equipment for the mobile lab.

“At the heart of it, this is a learning opportunity to see how we can work with communities outside of ��ܽ��Ƶ, nurture the robust creative community of making, and ultimately, do good in the world,” says Nagler.

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��ܽ��Ƶ art education course reimagines community through creative mapping

Andy Murdoch — Thu, 11 May 2023 11:28:13 +0000

Dr. Nicole Lee’s course MAED 6370 Community and Art Education: History, Theory, and Practice asks students in the Master of Art in Art Education (MAAE) program to investigate how community and art education can be brought together through collaboration, experimentation, and social engagement. MAED 6370 is a course in the ‘Community Based Practice’ stream of the MAAE program.��

Lee is an a/r/tographer (artist/researcher/teacher-educator) and curriculum studies scholar who joined ��ܽ��Ƶ in 2022 as Assistant Professor of Art Education in the Division of Art History and Contemporary Culture. Her approach to teaching reflects a/r/tographic commitments toward art, research, and pedagogy. Particularly important to her are notions of collaboration, community, collectivity, and relationality.��

“Many of the MAAE students are new to Halifax—I am, too—and a number of them have been living here for a long time,” Lee says, “which quickly brings the question of ‘how can we live well together?’ to the forefront of discussion.”��

Lee employs Cristina Grasseni’s research-based approach to community mapping in the course. It is a methodology in visual anthropology that spans geographical and digital-media practice.

“Community mapping allows individuals to visualize relational and social data so relationships between people, places, and things can be articulated and represented,” Lee explains. The class was supported by readings in community-based art education, communities of a/r/tographic practice and collaboration, community-based participatory research, ethics, and art education.

This allows individuals to visualize relational and social data so relationships between people, places, and things can be articulated and represented, she explains. The class was supported by readings in community-based art education, communities of a/r/tographic practice and collaboration, community-based participatory research, ethics, and art education.��

“Mapping practices have strong ties with colonialism,” Lee notices.” “It is easy to reject them completely, but perhaps what is profoundly needed is the reclamation of ‘mapping’ so that representations of place can reflect the fullness of the presences who live and thrive there, in the past as well as in the present—the arts can help us here.”��

Each student started their projects on foot. They walked, developed a project on how they conceptualized community, and made a creative map of their community. In doing this work, they were asked to consider who and what were included or excluded and to deliberate on their intentions for these choices.

“In this way, community art education can be an area of collaboration, play, experimentation, and social engagement that opens opportunities for students to discuss larger issues of democracy, equity, anti-racism, and decolonization through personal lenses,” Lee says.

“I’m amazed with the kinds of artful inquiries that students took up. Each person sees the world and conceptualizes ‘community’ so uniquely, and it was remarkable to come together to learn and unlearn what ‘community’ might mean for different people in different contexts.”��

Signy Holm: observing a public park in her neighbourhood��

“Through my own navigation of this park, I came to see that community doesn’t always mean belonging, and we have much work to do when it comes to ensuring that all of our neighbours, both housed and unhoused, humans and more-than-human, can thrive within our communities.”��

“For this Community Mapping project, I chose to create a website to document my experiences and observations within a local Halifax park, which is one of several sites that the HRM has approved as a designated encampment site for those sleeping rough. I titled the website (and subsequent essay)�� What’s in a Park, which essentially contains fragmented images, digital collages, and text excerpts that the viewer can navigate freely. The images and collages contain photographs that I took on my many walks throughout this park, and the text fragments were pulled (anonymously) from a public community Facebook group, where many community members had been expressing and discussing their shared unease when it came to the encampment. Part of my goal when “mapping” Flinn Park was to know more about how the housed community members felt about the encampment while attempting to also humanize those residing within it without directly invading their personal space or speaking “for” them.”��

“The ways in which I chose to convey the images and text excerpts on my website were largely based on the idea of fragmentation and distortion. Through digitally manipulating images of objects and landscapes of the park, and pulling from specific parts of the text, I am attempting to convey not just an alternative perspective on the situation, but to also convey the messiness of it. I walked the park every few days, often taking the time to observe small details for long stretches of time, and using my phone camera to document these walks.”��

: finding community in creative practices

“Learning about a/r/tographic research was exciting, as it framed academically a way to write from the perspective of an artist/researcher/teacher. It helped me see how the nuance that I may endeavour to explore in my art practice could translate to my writing and research too.”

“My project centered on a community of practice, the memorial quilt and a/r/tographic research. I wrote about the act of making a quilt using my mother’s clothing after she died. Her friends rallied around her during her illness, helping her to complete projects that she had intended to make for her three children – a quilt for each of us. After she died, these friends, coined the Wonky Women, helped my sisters and I make a memorial quilt with our mom’s clothing.”��

“I created a peepshow object as part of the project. Held in hand and expanded, the viewer peers through a viewfinder to observe a scene of the memorial quilt being made. It is in this in-between, somewhere in the expansion and contraction of the bellows, and in the ruptures and openings that I find community and a sense of home.”��

: mapping the neighbourhood she lives in��

“I wanted to incorporate specific visual details of this place into the map. My decision to use watercolour comes from the fact that it is the medium I am most comfortable with using currently, and I wanted the challenge of creating this complex composition with it.”��

“In addition to the map-making, I continued this inquiry by taking photos each time I walked the familiar stretch of green space, most often with one awkward hand—the other gripping my dog’s leash. While following the well-trodden path, I used the camera on my phone as a complement to mindful walking. Through this lens, I explored the nuances of textures, reflections, and objects, which compelled me. As the collection of photos started to grow, I began to organize them, choosing which to include or discard, returning to the space to re-photograph particular points of interest from better viewpoints.”��

“The resulting artwork is a collection of illustrated vignettes surrounding and layered upon a map of this particular area. The painted images visually describe my impressions of specific sites and objects that live inside or just on the peripherals of the green space. My intention was to create a feeling through the painted imagery reminiscent of naturalist field guides and botanical illustrations.”��

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��ܽ��Ƶ Professor Jennifer Green’s Flaxmobile project receives support from Research Nova Scotia

Andy Murdoch — Sat, 22 Apr 2023 17:59:57 +0000

Jennifer Green, associate professor, Division of Craft, has received $232,524.52 in funding from (RNS) for her Flaxmobile Project: From Producer to Maker, Closing the Material Security Gap Across Mi’kma’ki.��

Building on a pilot study completed last year, this enables Green to spend the next two years travelling the province in a converted cargo van to demonstrate flax growing from seeding to process ��ܽ��Ƶing with farmers and craftspeople.��

Green’s primary aim for the Flaxmobile project is to create sustainable economies of scale to support a local supply of wool and linen in the province. By entwining growers and makers, she hopes to create solutions that can be carried out in harmony with the land and in collaboration with local communities.��

Her research team, along with farmers and local fibre process ��ܽ��Ƶor , will explore how this plant source for linen could support jobs, create new markets, and improve resilience in regional resource-based industries.��

“This research project supports the economic potential of rural Nova Scotia,” says Stefan Leslie, CEO of Research Nova Scotia. “The Flaxmobile project combines traditional craft practices and agricultural research developments to explore new opportunities for our province’s sustainable bioeconomy.”

Farmers and members of Flaxmobile project at work in fields harvesting flax. Photo by Lola Brown.

Citizen Scientists gathering data on flax growing across Mi’kma’ki

Green and her research team will work with 15 farmers and craftspeople around Nova Scotia from Caledonia on the south shore to the Margaree Valley of Cape Breton. She believes that closer relationships between farmers and craftspeople will become a source of valuable skill and knowledge for collective survival and sustainable futures.��

“For most of the farmers, this is their first time learning how to grow fibre flax. We’re working together every step of the way, from planting through to weeding, harvesting, retting, rippling, breaking, scutching and hackling. The farmers will have an experience of growing flax and collaborating directly with a textile maker, so that they’re able to scale-up production and have a market for their fibres in years to come,” says Green.��

Working with a diverse group of farmers from around the province also enables Green to gather data on soil types, textures, humidity, rainfall, and temperature at each of these locations.��

“It allows me to work alongside farmers as citizen scientists to gather data and re-establish knowledge of flax growing locally, which over the past two generations has been lost.”��

Collaborating with Cape Breton Centre for Craft and Design to lead systems change

In parallel with her fieldwork, Green will partner with researchers Rhonda Ferguson and Bailee Higgins (BFA 2022) at the (CBCCD) to explore how place-based methodologies might address issues of decolonization, equity, diversity, and inclusion in our communities and through our cultural outputs.��

“This grant represents the first collaboration of its kind between ��ܽ��Ƶ and the Cape Breton Centre for Craft and Design, and I am thrilled to be working with them,” says Green.��

Working with the CBCCD team, she will hire student assistants, graphic designers, photographers, and digital illustrators, to apply systems and transition design thinking to develop the craft sector as they explore the capacity for increased raw fibre production.��

“Partnerships of this kind build bridges around the province and are essential if we want to address larger systems change,” she says.��

Dr. Jennifer Green in her Flaxmobile. Photo by Wiebke Schroeder.

Building a critical mass of farmers to create a consistent supply of high-quality materials

One of the issues that craftspeople face is the difficulty in sourcing quality textile materials locally. This makes it challenging to be both economically viable and sustainable as a craftsperson, Green explains.��

As a professor, Green sees many students who want to transition to more sustainable textile and fashion practices, but at present, there is no established network for them to access local wool, linen, hemp, or natural dyes.��

“Hopefully, in 10 years, a weaver would not need to concern themselves with this problem. We would have networks and an industry in place to access local materials,” Green says.��

“The work we are engaged in now, with other key partners in the province such as TapRoot Farms, is to build a critical mass of growers to create a consistent supply of high-quality materials.”��

Long-term plan to grow this sector in a holistic and sustainable way

The project has many deliverables, which Green believes are essential to growing the sector in a holistic and sustainable way.��

They will publish a grower’s guide for fibre flax to enable flax cultivation at the community level; create new materials, products, and markets by engaging craftspeople in the transformation of flax into linen textiles and garments; explore flax by-products in natural home building materials; and they will carry out supply chain mapping to visualize the textile ecologies that currently exist across the region.��

“Looking to the future, I see this as a long-term project that I plan to stay a part of until there is enough momentum, and it becomes self-sustaining. After that, it can take off without extra help,” says Green.��

Follow Associate Professor Jennifer Green’s project on Instagram or on ��

Learn more about ��ܽ��Ƶ’s BFA in Textiles/Fashion.����

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Canada Foundation for Innovation announces funding for the Community Mobile Media Lab at ��ܽ��Ƶ

Andy Murdoch — Thu, 22 Sep 2022 16:39:55 +0000

��ܽ��Ƶ is proud to share that Solomon Nagler, Professor of Media Arts and Film at ��ܽ��Ƶ, has received a $75,000 (CFI) John R. Evans Leaders Fund grant to fund the Community Mobile Media Lab (CMML).

The CMML is a purpose-designed mobile media production hub that will facilitate participatory research and mentorship in film and media arts throughout Mi’kma’ki. The lab will be utilized for the numerous community-based research projects currently being conducted by our faculty, which prioritize collaborative methodologies of co-creation and collective authorship. It will create innovative means of disseminating research to our immediate community, while also permitting alternative forms of outreach and education, which will further advance our equity, diversity and inclusion priorities by providing informal, community-based education with under-represented communities.

Currently, we are collaborating on a diverse set of community-based media art projects, which have been funded by the SSHRC-funded Counter-Memory Activism Inter-University Group. This research cluster is a collaboration between ��ܽ��Ƶ University and the University of King’s College. Given the priority of CFI to support youth and research, we see this project as aligned directly with the promise of “How can research forge the future you want?”. Our research cluster has partnerships with several community organizations, such as the Membertou Heritage Park, The Nova Scotia Museum, Cape Breton University’s Centre for Sound Communities, Saint George’s Youth Net and In My Own Voice (iMOVe) Community Art Organization. Our funded research projects involve the creation of collaborative work, which explores concepts of first-person documentary and works of memory activism. Hands-on training and mentorship are integral to these process ��ܽ��Ƶes of collaboration.

The unique design of the CMML as a mobile research, training and production tool will enable us to explore media art research-creation projects that decentralize accounts of history, transforming encounters with community members through innovative forms of collaborative projects. This methodology involves collective acts of research-creation that will become integral toolkits for community focused reconciliation and social justice. Investment in this infrastructure will impact the way post-secondary research can be produced and disseminated. Having faculty and research assistants embedded in populations who are underrepresented in post-secondary institutions will have an enormous impact on the media arts industries, and the Canadian economy as a whole. Through conference papers and publications our research methodology will provide a valuable framework for allyship and decolonialization.

Sobaz Benjamin

The CMML’s primary community partner, Sobaz Benjamin, is the Founder and Executive Director of iMOVe Arts Association, as well as a film-director, community worker, advocate, mentor, program facilitator and educator. He was honoured in 2014 by the Provincial Justice Department with a Minister’s Award for Individual Leadership in Crime Prevention. Benjamin has also received a Humans Rights Award for his work with youth, a Crime Prevention Award from the Province of Nova Scotia and film directing awards from the National Film Board of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Cinema and Television.

This grant is part of more than $64 million in research infrastructure funding committed by the CFI to help drive innovation and spark discoveries at 40 universities across the country.

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Research Archives - ��ܽ����Ƶ