Upcoming: The City Talks – Community Art and the City: A European View

The third City Talk in this term’s series on Theatre and the City is coming up tomorrow, Thursday, Nov. 24. Here’s the abstract:

Community Art and the City: A European View

A free public lecture by Eugène van Erven

Thursday, Nov. 24^th, 2011

7:30 p.m.

Legacy Art Gallery (630 Yates Street)

Eugène van Erven (1955) is a scholar and community arts producer from The Netherlands. He is artistic director of the International Community Arts Festival in Rotterdam and community arts curator for the Treaty of Utrecht cultural program in 2013. He is also Associate Professor of Theatre Studies at Utrecht University and the author of a number of standard works on art and social engagement, including Radical People’s Theatre (Indiana University Press 1988), The Playful Revolution: Theatre and Liberation in Asia (Indiana 1992) and the book and video packageCommunity Theatre: Global Perspectives (Routledge 2001). He serves on the editorial board and is an active peer reviewer for RiDE: the Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance (Routledge).

Abstract

Some say that community art is the grandmother of all art. The Scottish anthropologist Victor Turner, for one, suggested that human beings, through art that they themselves create, interpret past and present life and try out new ways of being for the future. It is one compelling reason why everyone should have access to the arts, so that they people can create their own images and tell their own stories, rather than having them represented – inevitably imperfectly – by others (autonomous artists, journalists, populist politicians). Once you know someone’s story it is much harder to hurt them, claims Scott Rankin from Big hART in Australia, one of the world’s most ambitious community arts organizations. His company made a huge impact at the recent International Community Arts Festival in Rotterdam, which I directed. That festival attracted many key players from around Europe. Today in our continent, community arts, with roots in the 1960s, is now beginning to spread from its traditionally strong and predominantly urban base in the U.K. and the low lands into new territories in the former east bloc and the south.

Amply illustrated with audiovisual material, this talk will first explore some of the origins and principles of community art as it has developed around the world, before focusing on its current practices and dilemmas in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe. What is the elusive power of community art? Are we perhaps frontloading the practice with too many unrealistic social and political expectations at the expense of art? Given the diversity of practices and emphases within the community arts continuum even within one single country, let alone when considered across national boundaries, these questions are not easy to answer. Even between The Netherlands and Flanders substantial differences exist when it comes to community arts. The dialogue across language barriers within Belgium, even among like-minded community arts practitioners, is pretty much mute. Yet, given its fundamental commitment to establishing sustainable, equitable relationships between artists and non-artists, community arts may still be better suited than any other art form for fostering fruitful dialogues across social, cultural, and national boundaries. It uncovers local stories and knowledge on people’s own terms, it provides opportunities for marginalized groups to perform beyond stigmas that others place upon them, it injects creativity and a vibrant cultural life in under-resourced parts of the city and rural areas, it counteracts prejudice and xenophobia, and, in the best of cases, enriches a nation’s cultural canon with innovative art from the bottom up. How it does all this – through theatre, visual arts, dance, and music – I hope to demonstrate with a few fascinating examples from the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, England, Poland, and the Czech Republic.

Upcoming: The City Talks — “Theatre and the City: Early Modern London in Reality and on the Stage”

This announcement just came by email:

The City Talks Presents:

“Theatre and the City: Early Modern London in Reality and on the Stage”
A public lecture by Jean Howard, Columbia University
Co-sponsored by The City Talks and the Lansdowne Lecture Series, University of Victoria

At the Legacy Art Gallery
630 Yates Street in Downtown Victoria

A free public event
Thursday September 22nd Doors open at 7:00
Lecture begins at 7:30

The City Talks will begin its second season with an exciting talk by Jean Howard, George Delcorte Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. Howard’s talk invites us into London between 1550 and 1600, a period of rapid demographic and artistic growth, examining, “the various ways that the theatre responded to the city of which it was a part, sometimes by setting plays in an imaginary London and sometimes by creating dramatic fictions that more indirectly spoke to the social issues posed by rapid urbanization and the acceleration of commercial activity within what was quickly becoming a bustling metropolis.”

Jean E. Howard is George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University where she teaches Renaissance Literature, Feminist Studies, and Literary Theory. Her books include Shakespeare’s Art of Orchestration: Stage Technique and Audience Response (1984); The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England (1994); Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare’s English Histories (1997), co-written with Phyllis Rackin; and Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy 1598-1642 (2007). The latter recently won the Barnard Hewitt Prize for the outstanding book of theater history for 2008. In addition, Professor Howard is one of the co-editors of The Norton Shakespeare and has edited seven collections of essays. The recipient of Guggenheim, ACLS, NEH, and Huntington, Folger, and Newberry Library Fellowships, she has also been President of the Shakespeare Association of America and an active member of many committees of the Modern Language Association. As an administrator, Howard has served as a Trustee of Brown University, has chaired Columbia’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender, served as Columbia’s first Vice Provost for Diversity Initiatives, and has just completed a term as Chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature. She is working on two books: a study of the plays of the contemporary feminist dramatist, Caryl Churchill, and a book on Renaissance tragedy.

For more information, please visit www.TheCityTalks.ca.

I won’t be able to attend, but I am hoping to have a guest post up early next week.

Links to my previous posts on The City Talks:

The City Talks – The Legacies of Colonization: Apartheid in Small Town BC

The City Talks – Getting the Indians Out of Town: Race and Space in Victoria’s History

The City Talks — Rights of Passage: Sidewalks and the Regulation of Public Flow

The City Talks — City, Nation, and Empire: The Urban Texture of Montreal’s 1960s

“What does a loonie really can revolutionize the way you use the Internet mean to you?”

Dear Shaw Cablesystems G.P.,

I’m having trouble understanding the first sentence of your recent letter to me. Can you please explain to me what it means?

“What does a loonie really can revolutionize the way you use the Internet mean to you?” My friends and I can’t figure it out!

Yours truly,

Vincent Gornall

Spacing Magazine Public Space Public Forum‏

Tomorrow, there will be a forum on public space in Vancouver put on by Spacing Magazine. I’ll be interested to see if there’s interest in my idea for Victoria Public Space Network.

Here’s the email I got from Space’s mailing list today:

Dear friends, urbanites, and public space enthusiasts,

On behalf of Spacing Magazine, with apologies for the short notice, I would like to invite you to a special event taking place tomorrow evening. Spacing‘s latest issue names the “100 Best Public Spaces in Canada,” so we are celebrating the inclusion of Beacon Hill Park (Top 10 in Canada!), the Inner Harbour, Causeway, the Galloping Goose, Fernwood Square, and the Dallas Road Waterfront.

Spacing has lined up a great local panel of experts who are going to talk about developing great public spaces and discussing the best ones found in Victoria – including ones that didn’t make the list or don’t exist yet. So pick up something to eat from Red Fish, Blue Fish; Foo; the Noodle Box; Hernand’ez; or your favourite downtown eatery on your way to Market Square and and join us for a lively alfresco discussion/debate of the importance of public spaces to Victoria.

Hope you can attend.

Cheers,
Holland Gidney

on behalf of Spacing Magazine

PS – Please invite your friends and colleagues! It’s a free event and open to the public. Facebook event link below.

PUBLIC SPACE PUBLIC FORUM

A discussion and debate focusing on Victoria public spaces

Tuesday, July 5, 2011  — 6 to 8 pm — Free

Market Square Courtyard, Victoria, BC

Panelists:  

Matthew Blackett, Spacing Publisher & Creative Director (moderator)

Franc D’Ambrosio, Architect, D’Ambrosio Architecture + Urbanism

Lee Herrin, Executive Director, Fernwood Neighbourhood Resource Group

Kevin King, Senior Planner – Urban Design, Development Services, City of Victoria

John Luton, City Councillor, Victoria & Executive Director, Capital Bike & Walk Society

Join Spacing Magazine in celebrating the release of its first-ever national issue for a public forum with local experts on urban design, architecture, sustainable transportation, and community building

focused on the top public spaces in Victoria.

Sponsored by BMO SmartSteps for Homeowners, Autoshare, and the Canada Council for the Arts.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=178035212252187

http://spacing.ca/national/

Kelowna Walking Tour

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the BC Studies Conference in Kelowna with my graduate supervisor to deliver a talk and explore Okanagan wine country. Before the conference started, I did a self-guided walking tour of Kelowna’s Cultural District using a brochure I found in the hotel lobby.

I took the express bus from the highway side hotel to the lake front downtown and roughly followed the path suggested by the brochure, starting from the bus exchange.

I was impressed by the variety of museums that Kelowna boasts, and disappointed that I didn’t have time to explore inside any of them. My particular interests would have drawn me to the Okanagan Heritage Museum to see how it presented the history of the city and region. I was also impressed by the local library branch. From what I saw, Kelowna’s library compares well with libraries I’ve seen in other communities. The library building and adjacent parkade architecturally reference the area’s industrial past and subtly blend in with nearby buildings. With large glass, steel and brick facades, and appropriately designed landscaping, I was impressed at how well these new buildings have been integrated into a heritage downtown.

The Waterfront Park and Rotary Marsh gave me a very pleasant view of the lake, as long as I could temporarily forget the adjacent Delta Grand Okanagan Resort, a massive set of buildings set right next to the park. The resort’s windows are positioned to maximize lake views, which also means that they overlook the public space in the park with no visual barriers. From my perspective, this partially privatizes public space by prioritizing the needs of property owners over those of (public) park users. It is also one example of “The Neo-liberal Transformation of the Downtown of Kelowna, BC,” one of the presentations that I saw during the conference. This part of the tour, therefore, was a useful part of contextualizing my conference experience.

Other interesting aspects of my walking tour included my serendipitous discovery of a 1920s era, well-preserved heritage fire hall (not marked on the map), and an incredible amount of public sculpture on display. These laudable aspects of Kelowna’s downtown, along with the plethora of museums and incredible library, helped to reshape my original impression of Kelowna as simply a highway town. I’m now able to appreciate it as a more nuanced city, and hope to have more time to explore there some time in the future.

The City Talks — City, Nation, and Empire: The Urban Texture of Montreal’s 1960s

On February 17, Sean Mills delivered the latest lecture in The City Talks series at the Legacy Gallery. His lecture connected urban history with larger historical narratives (political, national and international).

He started his lecture by saying that cities are incubators of new ideas, and are therefore sites of power and politics. He pointed to recent events in Africa and the Middle East to show the intersection between political foment in large cities and national/international politics. Something similar happened post-WWII, when decolonization movements developed in the “Third World.” This was tied to new “liberation theory,” which was influential even in Montreal.

Mills made three points about Montreal in this lecture:

1. Decolonization theory had a role in creating different ideas about the city.
2. There was activism of various kinds in Montreal during the 1960s.
3. The connections between theory and activism fueled massive protests in Montreal and throughout North America.

He said he was surprised by the extent of anti-colonial thinking in Quebec, and that it was large and influential because it provided a way to understand the concerns and interests of people living in Montreal. There was a long history of economic, political and linguistic discrimination against francophones in Quebec, and this was symbolized for many Montrealers by the physical separation between the lower class, francophone east side of the city and the upper class, anglophone west side. But there was also the possibility to carve out spaces of protest in the city, with some radical cafes providing spaces for intellectual mixing and cultural hybridization, which allowed exchange of anti-colonial ideas and space to organize protests. However, he noted that these weren’t perfectly utopian spaces, since woman and First Nations people were often marginalized from these sites of intellectual foment.

My notes on the second point are a bit hazy, but indicate that there were lots of grassroots organizations in 1960s era Montreal, protesting bad municipal zoning decisions, creating medical clinics and fighting for women’s rights. I’ve got an intriguing note that “social animators” helped reduce apathy, but I’m not quite sure what that refers to. Perhaps somebody else who was there can expand on this in the comments.

Among the protest movements influenced by larger theroetical considerations were women’s liberation, student and Caribbean/Black/African movements, as well as language politics. Radicals involved in these movements founded of a municipal party called the FRAP (Front d’Action Politique) in 1970. Although electorally unsuccessful, it was influential in protesting city decisions that kept poor people poor, investment in mega-projects and in demanding citizen control of development and funding for public housing and clinics. The labour movement later extended these gains after FRAP lost grassroots support.

Mills concluded by saying that these movements, and their intellectual underpinnings, have left a complicated legacy that transformed the city and the province. This shows, he said, that cities incubate power and resistance to power.

Among the many insightful questions after the lecture, someone asked about the importance of Expo ’67 to municipal politics. This relates to my proposed thesis topic on public space at Expo ’86 and Century 21. I was interested to hear that Expo ’67 was a site for protests, especially by the labour movement. Mega-projects in that era (including the 1976 Olympics) apparently “galvanized” people who felt marginalized, leading to protests.

Somebody else asked specifically what the legacy of these movements has been. Mills said that many have been forgotten, but that Quebec’s labour movement is still powerful. Particularly interesting is that the student movement in Quebec is more powerful than elsewhere in Canada, and that the language it deploys is usually more about democracy that about self-interest.

The next City Talks lecture is on March 24 at 7:30pm. It features Judith Garber from the University of Alberta, and is entitled “How Political Are Streets?” The venue has changed for this talk, and occurs at the Victoria Event Centre, 1415 Broad Street.

For my previous coverage of The City Talks see:

• Rights of Passage: Sidewalks and the Regulation of Public Flow
• Getting the Indians Out of Town: Race and Space in Victoria’s History
• The Legacies of Colonization: Apartheid in Small Town BC

CSRS Wednesday Lecture: “It’s the Spirit That Makes the Person”: Spiritual Practice and Political Agency in Contemporary Coast Salish Society

Every Wednesday, UVic’s Centre for Studies in Religion and Society hosts a public lecture on how religion and society interact. Last week, a legal scholar delivered a lecture titled “It’s the Spirit That Makes the Person”: Spiritual Practice and Political Agency in Contemporary Coast Salish Society. In it Andrée Boisselle addressed the question, “What can the spiritual dimension of the Coast Salish tradition of thought and action, in its current iteration, teach us about its political dimension – and in particular, about the construction of individuality in relation with solidarity, shaping people’s capacity to make choices and enact them in the world?”

Boisselle delivered a moving and informative lecture, concentrating on the close connection between spiritual practise and legal tradition among the Stó:lō. She described the act of witnessing as central to that relationship, defining witnesses among the Stó:lō as not fulfilling the typical roles in western legal systems (i.e. not witnesses who describe what happened, judges who decide on the importance of events, nor legislative or executive branches of government). Instead, Stó:lō witnesses emerge from a different conception of self and community to remember and create their law; this conception of the witness lies at the heart of their spirituality, which is interconnected with all parts of their lives.

The lecture centred around how annual winter dances among the Stó:lō are being used to create personal and community healing from colonialism, by harnessing the power of witnessing. She made a very personal connection between this practise and something that happened in her own life, and argued that it is important to “bear witness to [personal] agency in all its complexity.” Her research, she said, is an attempt to “connect two ethonographies of healing,” that can lead to a better understanding of settler and First Nation cultures. However, her research is continuing: after her talk, she was asked whether there was “a resonance or point of communication” between Canadian common law and Coast Salish law. Boisselle said that she isn’t done research on that yet, but knows that there are resonances to be found.

One thorny issue that Boisselle mentioned repeatedly is the difficulty in dealing with knowledge that is culturally protected and ought to be kept confidential. She said she was fairly sure she didn’t know anything that she wasn’t supposed to, but knowing that for certain is epistemologically difficult. She also indicated that it is a potentially fraught area, and that she has had to tread carefully in asking certain questions during her research interviews with community members.

One of her Stó:lō friends came to witness her lecture and thanked her for bridging their communities. His drum accompanied song at the end was moving and appreciated.

You can find a list of future (and past) CSRS Wednesday lectures here.

The City Talks — Rights of Passage: Sidewalks and the Regulation of Public Flow

On Thursday last week (January 20), I went to the latest edition of The City Talks at the Legacy Gallery. Nioclas Blomley’s lecture was called Rights of Passage: Sidewalks and the Regulation of Public Flow, and was based on his recently published book. He focused on a term he has coined for how engineers view sidewalks, distinguishing “pedestrianism” (his neologism) from “civic humanism.”

When I invited Francesca Smith-Jones* to the talk, she expressed amazement that anybody would study sidewalks academically and said she wasn’t interested in coming. Yet as Blomley pointed out, most writers on urban themes view sidewalks as important sites of “productive encounter” and “collective activity” that serve social and political ends as public space. Among the writers Blomley pointed to are Jane Jacobs, Jan Gehl, William Whyte and Spiro Kostof. (Jacobs’ famous comment on the “intricate ballet… of the good city sidewalk” is widely quoted, including in my recent grad application.) This idea is what Blomley means by “civic humanism,” and is clearly an important aspect of public space and urban scholarship.

Blomley contrasted this view with that of some engineers and municipalities, which he labelled “pedestrianism.” In this view, the only function of sidewalks is to promote pedestrian flow and all other sidewalk uses (benches, bus stops, garbage cans, newspaper boxes, busking) are conditional on maintaining flow.

His analysis (and his idea for the book) began with Vancouver’s attempt to outlaw “obstructive solicitation” and an expert opinion he offered in a court case challenging the City’s ability to do so. The idea behind this case was that outlawing panhandling infringed on several Charter protected rights.

During his research for the book, Blomley discovered that civic engineers think of sidewalks in a totally different way from civic humanists. He quoted one Vancouver engineer as saying that his “principal concern is safe passage and smooth and unobstructed pedestrian traffic flow,” and that streets and sidewalks are “sites of competing interests of various moving and static elements.” The engineer believed that there was no need to justify the single-minded focus on flow above all the other uses of sidewalks. Blomley found this attitude prevalent among other engineers, and quoted a humourous discussion he had with a Houston engineer who didn’t understand that there might be alternate uses of sidewalks.

This attitude, said Blomley, stems from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when sidewalks were seen as areas of disorder that needed regulation to maintain morals, public order and circulation. He also mentioned municipal bylaws and engineering codes that propagate this attitude, and said that municipal bylaws (like Vancouver’s mentioned above) have been supported by the judiciary.

Towards the end of his lecture, Blomley said that he did not want to suggest that flow is bad or that pedestrianism is “insidious” or “sinisterly motivated.” He indicated that engineers see it as a common sense category, and that it exists in a different mental universe than the rights talk that dominates in the civic humanist view. Pedestrianism has its own history and dynamics, he said, and this research provides an opportunity for both sides to better understand each other.

See my previous posts on The City Talks lectures here and here.

*Not her real name.

Canadiana Discovery Portal

Canadiana.org has created the Canadiana Discovery Portal, which links the digital collections of historical documents held by fourteen organizations. Because of my previous work studying the local history of cycling in Victoria, when I found out about the Discovery Portal, I searched for “bicycle,” and came up with a list of 933 documents and images. One of the first was a 1918 catalogue from Canadian Cycle & Motor Company Ltd. (CCM). Here’s the title page:

Looks like a good resource for me to use in the future.

(In light of my posts yesterday and the day before, I decided to try searching for Expo and the portal returned 3387 results! I’ll slowly work my way through them and report any interesting discoveries here.)

The Globe and Mail covers the Canadiana Discovery Portal here.

Expo Memorabilia

After yesterday’s post about my plan to write a Master’s thesis about public space at Expo 86 and Century 21, I decided to inspire some nostalgia for vintage objects from Expos ’67 and ’86. As an expression of my quirky obsession with World’s Fairs, I’ve posted some pictures of memorabilia from the beginning of a possible collection. I haven’t taken the time to critically examine these images, but there’s plenty of material here to do so!

First here’s an Coca-Cola branded Expo ’86 serving tray:

Expo '86 Coca-Cola Tray. Photo by Vincent Gornall.

Looks like Coke took the branding opportunity provided by Expo to distort space and create something laughably quirky, emphasizing sugary fun.

This image shows the “map” a little better:

Expo '86: Coke Compresses BC. Photo by Vincent Gornall.

It’s amazing how big the two main cities seem compared to the rest of the province, and how close everything else seems to them. Since I’m thinking about public space in cities after writing my grad application, here are details of Victoria and Vancouver:

Expo '86: Coke Distorts Victoria. Photo by Vincent Gornall.

Expo '86: Coke Distorts Vancouver. Photo by Vincent Gornall.

These complex cities are summed up, simplified and distorted by an interesting medley of iconic buildings, while others are depicted as brown smudges with black street grids (note Duncan and Richmond in the first detail, for instance). Yet they’re still easily recognizable. I guess that shows the power of iconic architecture!

The next image is of an Expo ’67 tray, which features some fascinating details of six country pavilions. Here’s a picture of the whole thing:

Expo '67 Tray. Photo by Vincent Gornall.

Here’s a detail of Canada’s Pavilion:

Expo '67: Canada Pavillion. Photo by Vincent Gornall.

According to this page, the “huge inverted pyramid” was Canada’s main building at its Pavilion, and was called “the Katimavik,” “which means ‘meeting place’ in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit.” The author claims that “The pyramidal roofs of the principal building give a crystalline effect symbolic of the minerals and metals of Canada.” I’m having trouble sorting out the cultural implications, since I wasn’t aware the Inuit built pyramids, inverted or otherwise. Still, it’s kind of a cool looking building and I wish I had been around then to experience the outpouring of national (and architectural) hope that Expo ’67 represented.

This detail shows the American Pavilion, one of Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Domes:

Expo '67: US Pavillion. Photo by Vincent Gornall.

At the bottom right, you can just see the monorail track that snaked through the building during the fair. As a transit geek, I find this really cool!

The final item in my Expo collection is this Expo ’86 lapel pin:

Expo '86 Pin. Photo by Vincent Gornall.

I haven’t had an opportunity to wear it anywhere yet. I guess I kind of missed the party!