Social Imagination: Documenting Engagement in Canada

Recently I came across a lovely introduction to Canadian work, “Documenting Engagement: A Community Arts Media Institute.” Documenting Engagement (a project of the Pacific Cinémathèque and Roundhouse Community Centre Association with support from two(2)catsworking inc. and the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation) brought together nine mid-career artists from across Canada to examine the practice of community-based arts and the potential of digital video as a means to document the aesthetics of engagement inherent in their work. During the three-week residency, the community-based artists worked with senior artists and producers to assemble their own footage into summary shorts. They are gorgeous.

The video collection, now available on DVD from Pacific Cinémathèque, includes the following short pieces by community artists.

“Something from Nothing” by Cathy Stubington, puppeteer/theater director and artistic director of Runaway Moon Theatre in the small rural town of Enderby, in Secwepemc territory, B.C. The video documents the community play she initiated with people from the town of Enderby and from the neighboring Spallumcheen Band of the Shuswap First Nation. [click for French language version of "Something for Nothing"]

“1001 Cups of Tea” by Pat Beaton, a visual artist who focuses on the natural environment in the urban setting. The video describes the creative process involved in the Mount Pleasant Community Fence Project, a community-carved cedar fence that surrounds the Fraser Street Neighbourhood Gardens overlooking downtown Vancouver. [click for French language version of "1001 Cups of Tea"]

“Letter to Skidegate” by dancer/anthropologist Karen Jamieson and Tanya Rae Collinson, Haida videographer and editor from Haida Gwaii. The video documents the process of a western dance artist collaborating with the Haida community of Skidegate to create an expression of spirit of place, a dance/performance/ceremony to honor Haida elder Percy Gladstone and the meeting of two different cultures. [click for French language version of "Letter to Skidegate"]

“Those Dreaded Dichotomies” by Ruth Howard, theater designer and artistic director of Jumblies Theatre in Toronto. This video documents Howard’s observations on her four-year residency at Toronto’s Davenport/Perth Neighborhood Centre, and the neighbors’ collective “memories” of a prehistoric lake. [click for French language version of "Those Dreaded Dichotomies"]

“Voices in Stone” Glen Anderson, Vancouver Downtown Eastside artist. The video documents Anderson’s experiences creating community mosaics. [click for French language version of "Voices in Stone"]

“Shedding Light on the Ravine” by Carmen Rosen, a performance artist and founder of Still Moon Arts Society and Mortal Coil Performance Society. This video documents her work of inspiring and celebrating the cleanup of the creek and ravine in her Vancouver mostly Chinese neighborhood. [click for French language version of "Shedding Light on the Ravine"]

“Reparative Culture” by Edith Regier, a director/artist-in-residence of the Crossing Communities Art Project of Winnipeg. This video documents the project, a visual forum to create dialogue through art with women and girls marginalized by justice issues. [click for French language version of "Reparative Culture"]

 “Paula Jardine, Public Dreamer (22 years in 7 minutes)” by Paula Jardine, founding artistic director of the Public Dreams Society in Vancouver. This video is a collage of her professional community art practice in neighborhoods from Edmonton, Alberta, to Victoria, B.C., where she now lives. [click for French language version of "Paula Jardine, Public Dreamer"]

Watching these inspiring documents, we might learn a few things from Canadian artists, such as:

• When an idea starts from nothing and you turn it into something, you can make anything happen. If people imagine together another reality we can create the world the way we want it to be. (Cathy Stubington)
• Gardening together helps to dissolve barriers that can isolate us from one another. We are brought together on a whole cultural level by the plants that we grow. (Pat Beaton)
• I was a conduit for something that needed to be said. It was a though everyone had a fragment – just a piece – of the puzzle. And some things are just too sacred to be recorded on camera. (Karen Jamieson, Tanya Collinson)
• I have to be pushed out into a scary place, and into an exciting, challenging place, doing something I’ve never done before, just like everybody else. (Ruth Howard)
• The aesthetics of where we live don’t necessarily need to be entirely guided by planners, developers, bureaucrats, design professionals where efficiency is more important than context, art or community. (Glen Anderson)
• I have been creating with my neighborhood for four years, but the work has just begun. We’re just beginning to tap into the potential of an active and engaged community. (Carmen Rosen)
• I think of there being a continuum between prisoner and free citizen. I think about if we can access a social imagination. And, if so, can we imagine alternatives to incarceration? (Edith Regier)
• What is the role of the artist in sacred secular spiritual expression? Artists need to be involved in all the important events of our lives.
  (Paula Jardine)

Linda Frye Burnham is codirector of the Community Arts Network.

Thanks so much to jil p. weaving of Vancouver Parks and Recreation for calling our attention to this brilliant work and Gabriel Forsythe of Pacific Cinémathèque for posting the videos on YouTube.

Original CAN/API publication: February 2009