Detour | Listen was the outcome of a final collaborative assignment for third year students in Community and Environmental Arts. It consisted of a series of live site-specific performances and installations linked together as a campus tour through an audio-video file downloadable to portable digital devices. It was subsequently adapted to stand-alone audio-video tour and accompanying Google Map for use as a future teaching tool. The map shows videos of individual assignments produced in relation to themes of land, archive, body and community. The intention with this teaching tool is for subsequent groups of students to add tours addressing a  range of thematic interests. This assignment facilitated critical analysis through participatory engagement with soundwalks produced by established artists; hands-on experience researching at the Archives of Ontario; and collaborative creation.

View the Google map here.

For other examples of pedagogical material, see the following articles on the Academic Publications page:

“Manifestos of Practice: Teaching Feeling in York University’s Community Arts Practice Program.” Transformations Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy. 22.2 (2012): 104-123.
In a special issue on Teaching Feeling. Special recognition to Jared Both, my former student, and Michelle Drew whose image of an activist intervention in Toronto was chosen by the editors for the cover. PDF is made available only for consultation, not for dissemination. Please contact Transformations for reproduction.

“Performing (Readings of) Moving Across as Decolonial Praxis.” Everyday Feminist Praxis: Doing Gender in the Netherlands, Eds. Koen Leurs and Domitilla Olivieri. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2014. 36-71.
A comparative consideration of performance works of Vanessa Dion Fletcher, Camille Turner, Oriana Duarte, Mariana Rocha and myself at sites in Canada and Brazil in terms of the possibilities of decolonial relationship between feminist memory practices, motion, body and land. PDF is made available only for consultation, not for dissemination. Please contact publisher for reproduction.

“Language as Landscape: Navigating Post-Conflict Reconstruction with Bosnian Youth.” Wild Fire: Art and Activism, Ed. D. Barndt. Toronto: Sumach Press, 2006. 188-204.
This paper reflects on my use of arts, mediation and journalism project facilitation with Bosnia youth leaders, as part of a program to support a four-year school system ethnic reintegration program. I analyze use of English as the language of facilitation with attention to local and geopolitical contexts. Please contact Sumach Press for reproduction permission.

See also my work as Rotary Poet, my youth facilitation work in Bosnia and publications about it,  The Contemporary Urgencies of Audre Lorde’s Legacy, which created opportunities for student artists and performers, and the curatorial and video workshop project Summer in Shanghai for pedagogical strategies bridging community and university.