Tag Archives: equity

Apr 24

Audrey Hudson on: hip hop, intersectionality, and education

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Image of OCAD U Faculty Adurey Hudson

Image of OCAD U Faculty Audrey Hudson

SITE-SPECIFIC: Hip-Hop & Convergence Culture is a new course at OCAD U that you will be teaching this summer. Can you tell us more about it and what led you to conceptualizing this course?

AUDREY HUDSON: I graduated from OCAD in 2002 from the Faculty of Design, with a major in Material Art & Design. I took courses from a wide variety of programs, trying to find my voice as a mixed race Black female in a historically Eurocentric field of study. When I was doing my undergraduate work, I did not have very many courses that spoke to me on a personal level, but I always tried to bring my lived experiences into my practice. Two years ago when I was invited to teach at OCADU, I was ready to come back and share my knowledge with students through the experiences I gained as an artist/designer, educator and graduate student. I knew, that in coming back to the school that I loved, I wanted to insert my voice into the curriculum, and have the stories of Black, Indigenous and artists of colour to be heard in the art/design world. My aim behind this course is to connect this subculture of post-modernity we call hip-hop, to design, media and education.

S: How can hip hop be used as a tool for decolonizing education?

H: Colonization was (or arguably is), a long, painful process, and decolonizing is an even longer one. The history of colonization and settler colonialism in Canada is often silenced and unspoken about in curriculum. In order for the process of decolonization to begin, we need to acknowledge the need for Indigenous sovereignty and work together, Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, to make this a reality. This means, educating one’s self about the knowledges that are silenced, and bringing them back into educative spaces. For me, hip-hop is a way to bring these rich knowledges and voices into pedagogical spaces and discuss histories of colonization, race, representation and sovereignty. I view hip-hop as a tool to begin decolonizing education because of the attention to minority voices and to the powers it speaks back to. Hip-Hop artists such as, A Tribe Called Red, JB the First Lady, Shad, K’Naan, and Wab Kinew are just a few Canadians who have taken up the work in their music. Here is an example:

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Jan 29

Syrus Marcus Ware on: intersectionality, story-telling, and disability arts movements

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Syrus Marcus Ware is a visual artist, community activist, researcher, youth-advocate and educator. He is the Program Coordinator of the AGO Youth Program, Art Gallery of Ontario.  Read more about Syrus below.

Syrus

Image of Syrus Marcus Ware

SITE-SPECIFIC: What’s missing from mainstream discourses of disability? How does this play out within art and design spaces?

SYRUS MARCUS WARE: In my experience, there is a lack of intersectional analysis in mainstream disability discourse. For those of us who are part of multiple communities, who identify with multiple identities, it can be very limiting to articulate our experiences one-dimensionally. We need a disability discourse that talks about gender, that talks about the ways that we experience racialization, that talks about sexuality. We need this because this intersectional approach will make for stronger analysis, stronger research, stronger frameworks for understanding marginality. We also need this approach because it pushes the theory to be what we need it to be: something larger than one-sided analysis, something that helps us change the world that we live in, into something that is built by and for all of us. If we talk about revolution, social change, reimagining the world to look and feel different than it currently does- we need to all be part of that conversation to help imagine something new together. Theory can help push us to this place, but it is essential that it considers the ways in which structural and systemic oppressions are linked and connected.

Within art and design spaces, we can’t limit the discussion of disability to be a question of access. It is about so much more than access! We need to talk about the ways that art and design can help us imagine new possibilities for society, yes for physical spaces and objects- making them useable by all-but more largely to help us imagine completely new ways of interacting with each other and our environments. Art and design needs to be something that talks about difference, that helps us ‘relate across difference’ as Audre Lorde suggests.

S: In the past, you have talked about the importance of creating space for the back stories of artists’ lives in order to understand their work. Can you share your thoughts on the role of social/biographical context in the process of interpretation? What are some critical issues that we should be mindful of in thinking through the politics and ethics of personal narrative and disclosure in art making?

W: When hosting a community advisory meeting with disability communities engaged with the AGO, one of the participants stated that one of the problems with art galleries and museums around disability is that we don’t tell the stories of disability at the core of a lot of artists lives. We may have a large collection of work by artists who are psychiatric survivors, for e.g. but this is not part of the interpretation when showing their work. He urged all museums to consider how to tell stories of disability in our day to day work, when celebrating the lives of artists in our collections. I thought that this was a great observation and challenge to those of us working within these settings.

However, I also have been thinking about the ways that artists with disabilities are often expected to disclose about their experiences of disability as part of their art making process. The act of disclosing is not what is at issue for me- to be clear- but rather the idea that we ‘need to know’ that the artist is disabled as part of ‘understanding’ or ‘appreciating’ their work.

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Jan 28

Renzi Guarin on: inclusivity, technology, and accessibility

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 Renzi Guarin is an AV Support Specialist through the IT Services Department at OCAD University.

SITE-SPECIFIC: Tell us about what you do here at OCAD University.

RENZI GUARIN: Our office deals with the circulation of audio and visual equipment for faculty, administrative staff and students.  We ensure that the faculty have the technology to help them teach effectively in our classrooms and that admin staff are properly prepared with tools to aid them with hosting meetings, seminars and in carrying out the day to day operations of the University.  For students, we offer a variety of equipment and services to facilitate their creative projects and curriculum work throughout the year.

Part of my job is to oversee the audio-visual and technology aspects of special events for OCAD University.  In the past couple of years, we’ve worked on various events providing AV support where accessible technology is involved.  Most recently, OCAD U hosted the 3rd Accessibility Camp Toronto conference, an event centered on assistive technology with workshops and seminars regarding the landscape of inclusive and accessible design.

” Whether it is a guest speaker, an exhibition opening, a town hall meeting or even a lecture in a classroom; If everyone is able to come away with the opportunity to become inspired, informed or educated then I think we’ve done our job.”

renzi

S: Some people differentiate between accessible media and all other media. You seem to work from the premise that all media is accessible with some ingenuity. Can you comment?

G: Whether it is a Guest speaker, an exhibition opening, a town hall meeting or even a lecture in a classroom; If everyone is able to come away with the opportunity to become inspired, informed or educated then I think we’ve done our job. Ultimately it should be the goal of anyone who organizes an event on campus to see accessibility included in the initial planning stages of the event rather than an after thought or on a case by case basis.  For event organizers, there might be hesitation when thinking about the complications that might arise when including things like ASL interpreters or captioning services, but I think that it is up to us to take that challenge head on and just find a way to be able to provide appropriate alternatives for any setup that is required or asked for.

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Nov 21

Danielle Nicole Smith on: privilege, positionality, and SITE-SPECIFIC

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SITE-SPECIFIC: Who are you? Tell us about yourself. What are the big questions your explore through your art-making?

DANIELLE NICOLE SMITH: I’m a Drawing and Painting undergrad student in my last year at OCAD U; last year, I completed Directed Studio and took part in Grad Ex. Before transferring programs, I did two years of Graphic Design.

My work tends to focus on topics deeply personal to me, topics such as mental health and disability, queer identity and sexuality, and rape culture. I aim to create work that speaks to my own experiences, but also may resonate with others. I use a variety of mixed media and my work tends to straddle the divisions between art, design, and craft.

My politics play a massive role in how I approach and work within my own art practice, as well as how I approach the greater art and design community.  Critical reflection and engagement are key parts of this; understanding how my own privileges situate me within the greater communities I am a part of, and how I can navigate those spaces in a way that is safe and helpful to myself and others. Research is another huge part of my work, situating my lived experiences within a historical context and understanding of my topics- although this happens more behind the scenes.

HOW DO YOU PROTECT YOURSELF AT NIGHT with bat, 2012, image courtesy Danielle Nicole Smith

[image description: painting with bright pink background and black text reading “how do you protect yourself at night”, white hand holding a bedazzled, glittered baseball bat in foreground]

S: What is the SITE-SPECIFIC Guest Blog Series and why is it being launched?

S: SITE-SPECIFIC is a way to advance the dialogue around equity we’re having within the OCAD U community- curating it online, bringing together the perspectives of various community members via the Guest Blog Series, continuing the conversation through comments and interaction with the content presented. OCAD U, and the wider community, needs to be having an ongoing, serious discussion around art and design, education, social justice and equity, and we start that by assessing where our knowledge and understanding is at and making it accessible to everybody. Participation, generation, collaboration, critical thinking, reflection and action are all goals of the Guest Blog Series and SITE-SPECIFIC as a whole.

My job as a Student Monitor with the Diversity and Equity Initiatives Office is to help coordinate and oversee SITE-SPECIFIC- determine the monthly themes, reach out to potential Guest Bloggers, manage the online presence, and always critically examine our content in relation to our goals. My hope for this space is that it becomes both a valuable resource to the community- in that it brings knowledge to the table- but also, that it becomes a safe space to assess what we don’t know or understand yet, and how we might go about approaching potential solutions. I would love for it to become a place of engaging dialogue and thought-provoking ideas. As a student, I know this is a thing we could benefit from, and my hope is to leave at the end of this year knowing I’ve helped build a start to making space to have the conversations we deserve and owe to ourselves.

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