Transformative Learning Centre Transforms Lives, Raises Awareness about Power Relations, Class, Race and Gender

Circles of Transformation documents the Spirit Matters gathering, a landmark event organized by The Transformative Learning Centre in Spring 04. This package includes 6 hrs. of DVD's including reflective essays and commentary. See http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/view-item?item=12215

The Transformative Learning Centre, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Fosters Individual and Social Transformation

The centre's main goals are:

• To provide an interdepartmental structure for community-university partnerships in research and field development.

• To provide a forum for the discussion of interdisciplinary issues related to learning in community and global transformation.

• To provide a means for faculty and students to participate in specific networks requiring membership from a community-university base...

• To support interdepartmental instruction in Transformative Learning Studies and related areas.

"Transformative learning involves experiencing a deep, structural shift in basic premises of thought, feelings, and actions. It is a shift of consciousness that dramatically and permanently alters our way of being in the world. This shift includes our understanding of ourselves and our self-locations and our relationships with other humans and with the natural world. It also involves our understanding of power relations in interlocking structures of class, race and gender, our body awareness, our visions of alternative approaches to living, and our sense of possibilities for social justice, peace and personal joy. "

"Transformative learning helps us understand the world in a different way, changing the way we experience it and the way we act in our day-to-day lives. Transformative learning has an individual and a collective dimension, and includes both individual and social transformation.
In the Transformative Learning Centre we are inspired by the notion of grounded hope. We believe that one of the best ways to predict the future is to actively create it, moving together towards our collective visions by developing viable alternatives that recognize the limitations and possibilities (especially the possibilities!) of each particular context."

Above excerpts from http://tlc.oise.utoronto.ca/about.html#contact


The following information was sent to us by
Michelle Currie M.Ed. , our Ontario based student regional liaison representative for CCAHTE Journal.

PARTICIPATE, MEDITATE, CREATE

with Michelle Currie M.Ed.

Participate, Meditate, Create is an experiential workshop that explores the use of Meditative Arts (meditation and art) as a tool for social change.

Date & Time:

Friday, June 22nd 6:00-8:00

Saturday, June 23rd 1:00-4:00

Facilitator: Michelle Currie is a graduate of the Masters of Education Program at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, where she focused on the use of meditation and the arts for personal growth, social change and environmental consciousness.

INFO:

Transformative Learning Centre (Room 7-165)
Department of Adult Education and Counselling Psychology
Ontario Institute of Studies in Education
University of Toronto (OISE/UT) Fax (416) 926-4749

Email for info: Michelle Currie: meditativearts@yahoo.ca

More info: Transformative Learning Centre
http://tlc.oise.utoronto.ca/

Researcher Raises Awareness About Cancer and Homelessness Through Photodocumentary, Photovoice, Story and Narrative Methods

Urgent! From the Day in the Life Photography and Story Collective

Nancy Viva Davis Halifax is an interdisciplinary researcher, scholar and artist. Her work is located at the intersection of the arts (broadly conceived), the body, healthcare, and the ordinary places of daily living in the context of urban communities.
She completed her Post-doctoral Fellowship Innovations in Cancer Education, Using Drama, Storytelling and the Arts for Information Dissemination on the Internet working with people with colon cancer using documentary methods in the development of textual and photographic expressions related to the cultures of disability and illness challenging both medical and popular representations of the stigmatized body. This work shares a place of being and body not in accord with dominant medical, social and cultural discourses.

Nancy Viva Davis Halifax held conversations with
people living with colorectal cancer, interviewing them and asking them to represent their experiences through journal writing and photography. What they revealed is represented on

the website "Things That Matter" http://www.storiesthatmatter.com/ This web site is in the form of creative non-fiction and photographs. The stories are built on the experiences, photographs and language of the participants.

Nancy Viva Davis Halifax was also Principal Investigator on the Wellesley Central Urban Health Enabling Grant A day in the life: Photovoice and the social determinants of health, partnering with Street Health Community Nursing Foundation. Together they engaged in a community based research inquiry supporting a research agenda identified by a community of underhoused and homeless individuals. Through their inquiry they documented three social determinants of health: poverty, social exclusion and the lack of secure housing. This research resonated with her Post-doctoral work as she continued with her determined grace to work with vulnerable communities, translating knowledge using photodocumentary and narrative methods.

Source: Centre for Global EHealth Innovation

http://www.ehealthinnovation.org/user/165

Visit website "Stories That Matter"

http://www.storiesthatmatter.com/

Visit blog site by Nancy Davis Halifax, Anagraphia/Photography and Story
http://anagraphia.blogspot.com/index.html

What dreams appear here?
"I took down Urgent on Friday night. Wrapped it up. Literally. Looked over the comments and began to think about how we provide space for stories that are "out of place" in the larger social and cultural memories of a citizenry. Each of the photographs shows place in a way that disrupts central concepts of its daily use.These forgotten people - but 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 sociey where social justice matters? How have we forgotten their belonging? Their place?In this photograph a person re-creates their nightly ritual of going to sleep with a blanket, by taking off their shoes and carefully placing them by their side for the night. This space feels too open for my personal safety, yet it was chosen deliberately because it is safe. And I wonder what dreams appear here?"
Nancy Viva Davis Halifax, read more at blog http://anagraphia.blogspot.com/index.html



Read about Urgent! and see photos from The Day in the Life Photography and
Story Collective, from Reconstruction Studies in Contemporary Culture Realistic Possibilities of Passing Interest, Nancy Viva Davis Halifax, Fred Yurichuk http://reconstruction.eserver.org/071/halifaxyurichuk.shtml

Read Report "Failing the Homeless Barriers
in the Ontario Disability Support Program
for Homeless People With Disabilities"
http://www.streethealth.ca/Downloads/FailSum.pdf

Info. about Photovoice http://www.photovoice.com/

We featured a story about Nancy
in our June 06 issue of the CCAHTE Journal
"Honouring the Creative Arts in Life and in Practice"
access full June issue as well as recent and archived
issues free by subscribing with an
email "please subscribe" to ccahte@cmclean.com







And this news just in from Rebecca Fortin by way of Sandra Knol HCTP, University of Toronto

Students Use Photography and Blogging to
Raise Awareness about Young Parents/homelessness

"With my summer placement at Toronto Public Health, I am working on a
project called: I WAS HERE. This project puts digital cameras and
online blogging into the hands of young parents, who are experiencing
homelessness. I have just met all of the artists on Friday and they
are some of the strongest, most beautiful, and talented women you
could ever meet. This project has also produced a "declaration of
needs" and has received overwhelming attention from the City of Toronto.
There is an opening reception for the I WAS HERE exhibit at the
National Film Board this Thurs. at 6:00 pm (150 John Street). I will
be there, and I would love for you all to hear about the project first
hand. If you cant make it the photos will be exhibited for the entire
month of May as part of the Contact Festival."

Rebecca Fortin

See video Filmmaker in Residence NFB

http://www.nfb.ca/filmmakerinresidence

http://www.nfb.ca/filmmakerinresidence/blog/?page_id=9

See info about "I Was Here"