Producing Artists

Cathy Stubington has been producing theatre with puppets actors, and live music for twenty years, often in non-traditional settings. She is particularly interested in the role of the artist in community: how to present difficult social issues through art, the influence of community involvement on arts practice, and the value of arts in community. Cathy is the Artistic Director of Runaway Moon Theatre in the small rural community Enderby B.C. and director of Popelko Balkan Choir. She recently served as Artistic Director the Enderby and District Community Play, a production which involved hundred of residents in celebrating the community, while approaching some of its underlying social and historical issues. She also produced Out of the Ordinary, a one-day giant theatrical event for Victoria Day. Cathy has also used her puppetry for development education and health education, and has volunteered her time and energy sharing puppetry techniques with rural indigenous health workers in Chiapas Mexico. She has also facilitated the creation of puppet shows with the Spallumcheen Band Health Board on AIDS, diabetes, and addiction awareness.

Glen Andersen has played an active role in community-involved art projects for over a decade in the Vancouver area, specializing in the creation of mosaic work with community groups. Much of Glen's recent work can be seen in sidewalks, schoolyards, plazas and parks in the Lower Mainland, where area residents have learned to make mosaics and have them installed where they live, play, or study, as a product of community spirit and effort. He has worked as a facilitator/designer for Britannia Neighbours Community mosaic mural, and Mosaic Creek Park, as well numerous other community based arts projects. Glen's current projects include a Persian carpet pebble mosaic for North Vancouver, which was created in collaboration with a local Iranian community group, and a Burnaby elementary school mosaic which will be created through the artSmarts program.

Paula Jardine is one of the founding creators of Public Dreams Society, and has extensive experience in community-based projects, with a focus on reviving and redefining community arts. She is best known for her initiation of the Illuminares Evening Lantern Procession and the Parade of the Lost Souls, both popular annual events held in East Vancouver, involving hundreds of volunteers and artists and attended by thousands. Paula is currently working on The Ghost Run, a lantern installation of a salmon stream, which outlines possibilities for community art in community stewardship. She is also collaborating on a "Teen Memorial" project that will look at the tragedies of teen deaths in car accidents.

Carmen Rosen. Celebration artist, singer, visual artist, costume and giant puppet designer, Carmen has been active in the Vancouver arts community for the past twenty years. Significant achievements include founding Mortal Coil Performance Society and creating, booking, and performing shows for thousands all over North America; singing, recording and touring internationally with Elektra Women's Choir; singing, recording, and touring women's folk music with Zeellia; creating Renfrew Ravine Sanctuary Park with a stone mosaic pathway; and creating community celebrations for the Renfrew-Collingwood neighbourhood. Most recently Carmen worked with her neighbourhood to create the first Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival celebrating the ravine, nature, community, harvest, and the Asian Mid-Autumn festival.

Karen Jamieson is an acclaimed Canadian dancer, choreographer and teacher, who has been performing professionally since 1969. She is founder, Artistic Director of Karen Jamieson Dance Society, professional dance company with a distinctly West Coast style and a body of work that aims to reveal the potential power of dance as a transformative process for both dancers and audience. Most recently, the company has been creating works of socially, geographically and historically aware dance, rooted in the community in which it grows. Necessary Encounter (1998), Raven of the Moon (1999), and Raven of the Railway (2000). For several years Karen has been collaborating with artists Doreen Jensen and Alice Jeffery from the Gitksan First Nation, and Salishartist Evan Adams. In 2002, Karen initiated the Skidegate Project which is a collaboration between herself and the Haida community of Skidegate in order to create a multimedia dance drama, to be performed in the summer of 2004. At Documenting Engagement, Karen will be collaborating with Tanya Rae Collinson of Skidegate.

Tanya Rae Collinson is an emerging video documentary artist from the community of Skidegate, Haida Gwaii, BC. She will collaborate with Karen Jamieson during Documenting Engagement. Over the last three years, Tanya has worked for the Ravens and Eagles television documentary series in a variety of roles, including camera assistant, videographer, and cinematographer. Her interests in film and video are driven by a desire to record and preserve cultural events that are crucial to the survival of the Haida people's future generations. These interests are complimented by her recent work as an oral history interviewer and her training with top archaeologists to learn more about the history of the Haida people on Haida Gwaii. Tanya will be attending the Aboriginal Film and Television Program at Capilano College this fall.

Pat Beaton is a visual artist who works in printmaking and installation, as well as community-based projects which have included quilts, carving and murals. She has been involved with grunt gallery, Malaspina Printmakers and Dundarave Printshop since 1986. Her strong links to neighbourhood, community gardens and the grunt gallery gave rise to the Mount Pleasant Community Fence Project, a carved cedar fence that stands alongside the community garden at 8th and Fraser. The theme of the human/nature relationship in this urban environment is often reflected in Pat's community projects. Projects such as Calling Birds (2003), Luna, the moon, (2001) and Coyote Facts and Folklore (1996) have engaged the public in the artmaking process and asked each participant to consider the natural world that exists in this very urban environment. In addition to her community art, she recently acted as artist-in-residence at the Richmond Art Gallery in Richmond, BC.

Ruth Howard is the founder and Artistic Director of Jumblies Theatre in Toronto, Ontario, which she created to facilitate her collaborative art projects with communities. Recent works include Twisted Metal and Mermaids Tears (2000), which interweaves fantasy and oral history, More or The Magic Fish, a theatrical banquet, and The Land of Three Doors (2003), a multidisciplinary event, in partnership with Davenport Perth Neighbourhood Centre, Toronto. Ruth has extensive professional experience across Canada and in England as a set and costume designer, most recently for Afrika Solo with Montreal's Black Theatre Workshop and The Landau Papers, a new opera produced by Random Acts Music Theatre in Yorkshire, England. She is currently working on Once A Shoreline, a large production to be performed in May 2004 at Davenport Perth Neighbourhood Centre, and is planning an upcoming residency project in Etobicoke. Ruth is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada and the University of Toronto, a member of Associated Designers of Canada, and a board member of Community Arts Ontario.

Edith Regier, a Winnipeg based artist and curator, is founder and director of the Crossing Communities Art Project, a non-profit organization in partnership with the Elizabeth Fry Society Winnipeg through which women and girls who have moved in and out of prison since adolescence meet with artists twice-weekly on an ongoing basis. This cultural democracy initiative establishes a visual dialogue by and with women and girls marginalized by justice issues. This project has created a number of exhibitions, a publication, a video documenting project, a postcard project, and numerous workshops. Edith also edited Passing Pictures with Prisoners, published by Mentoring Artists for Women's Art in 2001, to explore these questions: is it possible to communicate visually with visually with women in prison or does their incarceration create too great a barrier; what value does this have in building community and is it art? Edith has her MFA from the University of Houston, Texas. Her artwork has been exhibited in Canada and the United States.

Visiting Faculty Artists

Pam Hall is an interdisciplinary artist and educator living in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Pam has been active as an advocate for artists, serving as a member of the Canadian Advisory Committee on the Status of the Artist and also as president of Newfoundland's Cultural Industries Association. In 1997-99, Hall became the first artist-in-residence at Memorial University's Medical School.

Pam works in many different media, including film, installation, image-text, and sound. Her installation piece The Coil is in the Permanent Collection of the National Gallery of Canada. The first of her own films, Under the Knife: Personal Hystories, won the Rex Tasker Award for Best Atlantic Canadian Documentary. She teaches in the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts Program at Goddard College in Vermont.

Pam’s keynote address at Documenting Engagement will be Ethics and Engagement: Representation, Documentation and "Doing the 'Right' Thing." Click here to read this presentation.

Julie Salverson has worked extensively across Canada as a playwright, producer and community animator. As founder of both Second Look Community Arts in Toronto and Flying Blind Theatre Events she has been instrumental in the development of popular theatre in Canada. She has also worked for over 15 years as an Artist in Schools through the Ontario Arts Council. Recent works include include "The Haunting of Sophie Scholl" produced at Queens University, and a musical adaptation of "Thumbelina" for Sudbury Theatre Centre. Julie was a member of Tapestry New Opera Work's Lib/Lab in Toronto in 2002, and is writing the libretto (with composer Juliet Palmer) for "Over The Japanese Sea”.

Julie is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Drama at Queen's University and her academic work involves the study of the relationship between artistic practice, ethics and the translation of stories of violence into performance. She is currently working on a research project that involves the role of the witness in translating the story of the path of uranium from Deline, North West Territories to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She is also working on a manuscript for a book, "The Courage To Be Happy: Staging Witness".

Julie will be presenting a keynote address for Documenting Engagement on the topic of art, community and imagination. Click here to read this address.

Guest Presenters, Session Facilitators and Panel Participants

A number of cultural sector workers, academics and educators will play roles during the first week of Documenting Engagement. They will extend observations, raise questions, facilitate discussions and frame the challenge with the producing artists.

Media Mentors

Professional film and video artists worked with the producing artists to introduce strategies and methodologies of effective documentary production.

Project Management Team

Cultural workers and practicing artists who formulated, initiated and developed the Institute.

Stuart Poyntz was Director of Education at Pacific Cinémathèque between 1995 and 2003. He teaches media education and video production throughout the BC education community. In 2000, he hosted, wrote and co-produced Depth of Field, a nine-part TV series on video production with the Knowledge Network, and developed a province-wide digital video production program. He has written more than twenty study guides on film, and teaches at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia during the summer months. Stuart completed his Masters degree in Communications at SFU in 1994 and is currently working on his PhD in the Faculty of Education at UBC.

jil p. weaving is an artist who has pursued various strategies over the past 25 years in order to explore and engage with issues, audiences and community participants. She was a founding director with The Artists' for Noncommercial Culture an artist-run collective, has created community based arts projects and residencies, worked as a provincial researcher with the jointly funded Artists and Communities Pilot Funding Program and coordinates the city-wide Artist in Residence Program with the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation.

Patti Fraser, as story editor for the Education Department at Pacific Cinémathèque, has developed and story edited many award winning youth videos. She has also directed and produced videos on a number of community based projects. Her work in creation and development in film, theatre, and video spans over a decade and includes Bowl of Bone, the international award winning documentary by Jan Marie Martell, the internationally produced play for young audiences "Boom" (cowritten with Julie Salverson) as well as co-authoring six radio dramas for CBC Network. With Steven Hill and James Fagan Tait she created and performed the seminal AIDS informer. In 1990-1992 she worked with Headlines Theatre and received the Mosaic's Human Rights Award for popular theatre work on violence and racism with youth. She also served as guest artistic director of Nakai Theatre in Whitehorse, Yukon.

Corin Browne is a graduate of Simon Fraser University’s School of Communication, where she specialized in video production, media analysis and media education. She has worked as a media educator with youth for more than six years, in both community and school settings, and has taught video production with the Sights and Sounds Program at Pacific Cinémathèque since 1998. Corin’s video collaborations include video productions on social justice and popular culture, public service announcements, press releases, community-based advocacy documentaries, as well as digital animation shorts. Corin is mid-way through her Master’s degree in Communication at SFU.

Analee Weinberger is Director of Education at Pacific Cinémathèque. She has been designing and teaching visual media courses since 1995, and currently develops and facilitates media education workshops for youth, educators and community organizations. She has an MSW in social policy from McGill that focused on applications of digital media technologies in human rights advocacy, and she has developed video- and web-based educational resources on the subject for high-school and undergraduate courses across Canada. Analee is a photographer who works primarily with alternative Polaroid-based techniques, particularly emulsion transfers and manipulated SX 70 film.

Selection Committee

Renae Morriseau has been working within the film and television industry for over 15 years. As a filmmaker, she has written, produced and directed several documentaries dealing with Aboriginal concerns and issues for broadcast. Renae has worked as an actress on stage and television as well as a singer and musician. She continues to mentor and train young people through private and public schools including Capilano College, Gulf Island Film and Television School, Native Education Centre, and Britannia Community School.

Amir Ali Alibhai is a visual artist, independent curator, writer, and has been Arts Programmer at the Roundhouse Community Centre since it opened its doors in 1997. Previous to that time he worked for several years as gallery educator and guest curator at the Richmond Art Gallery and was Assistant Curator at the Surrey Art Gallery 1995-1997. Amir's curatorial and research interests have been in the area of cross-cultural collaboration, community art practice, and community cultural development. He received his BSc in 1985. He has been a professional artist since 1989, when he graduated with his BFA from UBC. His professional practice led him back to university to complete his MA in curriculum studies (2000); his thesis was about cross-cultural collaboration.

A native of Montreal, Susan Gordon studied literature at McGill, the arts in Mexico and education at SFU before starting with the City of Vancouver at the newly opened Carnegie Community Centre in 1980. With an interest in community development, she worked at various community centres before becoming the Co-ordinator of Arts and Culture for the Vancouver Park Board. The creation of an arts policy for the Park Board in the early 1990's introduced community cultural development to the city. Susan has worked for the past 11 years to implement community-based arts programs and projects.

Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Victor Porter studied Social Communication, Film and Theatre in Mexico City. Victor has been a Popular Theatre/Education practitioner for the last 20 years. Using the Popular Theatre Methodology/Theatre of the Oppressed, a vehicle to explore issues, reflect, evaluate, share experiences and search for solutions in an active accessible and participatory way, Victor has facilitated workshops and forums for a variety of groups and community organizations including: Latino, Chinese and Vietnamese youth, Vancouver high schools, Unions, National and International Conferences, and inmates in prison, the Community Development Institute, Leadership Vancouver, National and International conferences, and others. In June 2002 Victor travelled to Hong Kong to train staff from Caritas H.K., YMCA H.K., and the Hong Kong Association of Social Workers.

Victor currently works for MOSAIC, an Immigrant and Refugee Serving Agency as the Manager of the Community Outreach Program. He is an avid reader, a long distance runner and the father of four children.