Seeking New Docs by Emerging Filmmakers

NFB-TVO DOCUMENTARY CALLING CARD PROGRAM

NFB-TVO CALLING CARD PROGRAM: AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DOC CREATORS IN ONTARIO TO MAKE A NEW MEDIA OR BROADCAST DOCUMENTARY

The Calling Card Program provides an opportunity for emerging filmmakers and new-media teams from Ontario to work with the NFB and TVO to create documentaries for new-media platforms and television broadcast. 2009 marks the first year that the Calling Card Program has been expanded to feature an interactive new media category.

Documentaries must be original, character-driven narratives with a focus on social, political and cultural issues. The submission deadline is August 31, 2009. The winning team in each category (new media and television broadcast) will be awarded $45,000 and receive mentorship from members of the film and new-media community to take their doc from concept to television premiere or online launch.

The winning 30-minute TV documentary will have its premiere broadcast on TVO's flagship Canadian documentary series The View From Here. The winning on-line interactive documentary will be launched and hosted at both nfb.ca and tvo.org.

for more info. check out the website

Homelessness and Solutions from Lived Experiences through Arts Informed Research

From the Day in the Life Photography and Story Collective, Photo from Anagraphia website Nancy Viva Davis Halifax

Homelessness –Solutions from Lived Experiences through

Arts-Informed Research

Come and listen to our speakers panel and experience the arts based research projects.

a collaborative initiative to put forward and take action on the knowledge gained from eight arts-informed, community-based participatory research studies in Toronto. Help move our recommendations forward:

Date: Wednesday, October 1, 2008

9:30 am – 12:30 pm

Speakers Location: Toronto Metro Hall (Rotunda)

55 John Street, Toronto

A Day in the Life: Stories and Photographs of Health and Homelessness in Toronto

Coming Together: Homeless Women, Housing and Social Support

asleep in Toronto

Count Us In! Inclusion and Homeless Women in Downtown East Toronto

I WAS HERE

The Street Health Report 2007

Street Health Stories

Struggles, Strengths and Solutions: Exploring Food Security with Young Aboriginal Moms

These projects were conducted by peer researchers, community agencies and academics working with people with experiences of homelessness. Together, these works represent an important body of evidence on the lived experiences of homelessness.

The exhibit will be on display from Tuesday, September 30, 2008 to Friday, October 3, 2008. For more information, please contact Professor Izumi Sakamoto at (416)946-8224, or email: mailto:artsandhomelessnessresearch@gmail.com

Other links:
http://ccahtecrossingborders.blogspot.com/2007/05/day-in-life-nancy-viva-davis-halifax-is.html

Coming Together

Article Centre for Applied Social Research, University of Toronto http://www.socialwork.utoronto.ca/index.php?section=495

Visit Nancy Viva Davis Halifax BLOG Anagraphia/Photography and Story http://anagraphia.blogspot.com/index.html

As the Crow Flies Ron Benner's Garden Installation Raises Awareness About Unequal Distribution of Food

An interesting article by reporter Kathy Rumleski in the London Free Press last week-end about artist Ron Benner's garden installation project "As the Crow Flies" and book launch of "Gardens of a Colonial Present". The installation was first exhibited in Montreal in 1984 and involved years of research and investigation.

Within the garden are photos that trace the militarization of food and society as well as themes of activism, environmentalism and global food politics.

"Certain countries view food as a form of warfare.....the roots of this warfare are hidden, like a plant's."
Artist, Ron Benner

The book is a compilation of newly commissioned essays, published material and photographs and, as Rumleski reports, "Gardens of a Colonial Present" reminds us that we are still affected by colonialism. Food can be used as a form of warfare.

If you would like to meet the artist to discover more about this work visit the 4th Annual Corn Roast Saturday, September 13, 2:00 to 4:00 pm. at the Wolf Sculpture Garden,
Museum London, London, Ontario. Ron Benner will be at his garden installation "As the Crow Flies" for "a corn roast"..part sculpture, part installation and part performance.

Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art Offers Accessible Data Base

CCAHTE Journal and our Arts and Health Crossing Borders BLOG often feature and support the works of contemporary Canadian artists many active in provocative artmaking in the visual arts, installations, new forms of public performance..work that inspires further investigation and questionning while opening the way for constructive criticism and a fresh examination of current belief systems or practices.

I would like to share with you today a helpful website and resource, The Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art Data Base. Here you will find the artists, the designers, writers and curators as well as highlights about projects by artists on the leading edge of contemporary art in Canada. CM

The CCCA's Canadian Art Database Project is a work in progress. With the overall objective of broadening public awareness of contemporary Canadian Art in Canada and abroad, the CCCA is documenting the careers of some of Canada's leading professional artists, designers, art writers and curators, as well as some important Canadian art institutions and organizations that have helped shape the Canadian art scene since the 1960s.

A wide range of previously hard to access material [images, texts, media works, and related ephemera]from a variety of sources across Canada is being assembled into the fully searchable, bilingual, database.

The Canadian Art Database Project currently holds 54,000+ images and 600+ video and audio clips by 600+ artists and designers; and 1,600+ texts by 200+ writers and curators.

Click here for more information about the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art and

Data Base.

Art for Social Change

A product. A statement. A crisis.



A portable inflatable shelter

attached to a building heating vent.

Product name: The Para SITE

Read more about this work and others featured at the current Museum London exhibit "Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art" in columnist Ian Gillespie's article, London Free Press, January 19
http://lfpress.ca/perl-bin/publish.cgi?p=222093&x=articles&s=arts

This exhibit at The Ivey Galleries, Museum London

Opening January 25 running until March 16, 2008.

"Organized by curator Stephanie Smith, " Beyond Green Toward a Sustainable Art" explores the ways that sustainable design philosophy resonates with the work of an emerging generation of international artists....Ranging from the highly practical to entirely rhetorical, these projects make use of the discursive power of art, embedding environmental concerns within larger ethical and aesthetic explorations and building paths to new forms of practice that go beyond green." Museum London Quarterly see: http://www.londonmuseum.on.ca/pdfs/jan3.pdf

"I think this is a great vehicle for demonstrating how artists are really starting to work differently," says Melanie Townsend, head of exhibitions and collections at Museum London. "There's a lot of collaborative work, where artists are working with scientists and researchers and agricultural workers. And there's a lot of activist elements at work."quote from article London Free Press

http://lfpress.ca/perl-bin/publish.cgi?p=222093&x=articles&s=arts

Homeless Woman Have a Voice with Community Based Research Project by Dr.Izumi Sakamoto, University of Toronto

"Community-Based Participatory Research using Arts:

"Coming Together": Homeless Women, Housing and Social Support"

Dr. Izumi Sakamoto, Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto

Date: November 8th (1:15pm - 2:45pm)

Location: Bahen Centre, University of Toronto: Room B024 (40 St. George Street, immediately south of Russell Street)

'Coming Together: Homeless Women, Housing and Social Support ', is a community-based research project by the University of Toronto, Regent Park Community Health Centre, and Sistering - A Woman's Place, which explored how women and transwomen build support networks with each other when housing is the issue . With the help of the advisory board consisting of women/transwomen who experienced homelessness, women/transwomen at four drop-in centres created scenes depicting their own visions of inclusion, friendship and safe space through painting, theatre and photography ("staged photography"). Various methods have been used to disseminate the study findings and the evaluation of the project is under way. The challenges and rewards of conducting university-community collaborative research will be discussed.

Izumi Sakamoto is assistant professor of social work at the University of Toronto. A former Fulbright Scholar, she received MSW, MS (Psychology) and Ph.D. (Social Work & Psychology) from University of Michigan and BA and MA from Sophia University, Japan. Dr. Sakamoto's current program of research focuses on the intersecting oppressions, self-advocacy, and empowerment communities such as immigrants, homeless women/transwomen, and people of colour in local, international and transnational contexts. She has experiences in community-based research, arts-based research, qualitative research and mixed-method research. She has held research grants from the Social Science & Humanities Research Council, Wellesley Institute, and Centre for Excellence in Research on Immigration and Settlement -Toronto(CERIS), among others. Free, all are welcome, please RSVP to cuhi.admin@utoronto.ca

Homelessness, Social Action, Photovoice, Appeal for Cameras and Donations

Urgent! Participate, Act, Get Involved
Help Homeless Persons Voice Their Stories
Support Research Project with
Cameras and Donations


We blogged a story on May 8, 2007 from Toronto,
Ontario, "Researcher Raises
Awareness About Homelessness through
Photodocumentary, Photovoice, Story and Narrative
Methods (refer to post in sidebar) about researcher
and artist Nancy Viva Davis Halifax Ph.D. and her photovoice
project working with homeless persons on the streets
of Toronto with the Street Health Community Nursing
Foundation. Read more
at http://anagraphia.blogspot.com/index.html

This empowering arts informed project helps
homeless and underhoused persons photograph, record and
document true stories about the realities of living
and surviving in downtown Toronto.

"armed with a shoestring budget and cameras that
eventually had to be held together by elastic bands
a group of homeless men and women set out to
document their first hand experiences in Toronto...
Each of the photographs shows a place in a way that
disrupts the central concept of its daily use. "

"These forgotten people, how can we forget

people who are in plain sight? How are we

able to construct an account of life that leaves

them out of any rights
based society where justice matters? How can
we work against the collapse of hope?"
Nancy Viva Davis Halifax, Ph.D. Researcher, Artist

How can you help?

1. Put the cameras in the hands of the people

who can tell the stories. If you have a used camera,

or a new one, wrap it up
and send it today to:

Street Health,
338 Dundas Street East
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 2Al

Attention: Erika Khandor

2. If you are able, send a donation to Street Health,

visit website at www.streethealth.ca and click on "donations"
page for full instructions.

All cheques should be made out to Street Health

and should include
"PHOTOVOICE" in the memo line.

We hope you might consider participating in a very worthwhile

arts informed research project for hope and change.

"If I have my story I'm alive. If I share my voice with others I'm a human being."

CM