Events and Conferences 2008 New Websites

A few reminders about upcoming events and conferences and a couple of interesting websites for you on this Tuesday morning February 19th.


Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, May 31 to June 8


Fourth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, May 14 - 17


Robert Neimeyer Death Loss and the Quest for Meaning, February 28


Hand Held Digital Technology and New Media, March 20

If you haven't already registered for Congress 08 in Vancouver I highly recommend you plan on attending. This is the largest conference of its kind in the country. It's a unique multi-disciplinary event that brings together over eighty national societies and associations and an estimated 8,000 participants from across Canada and internationally. I've always enjoyed my experiences at the congress as well as opportunities to sit in on presentations related to my own interests in arts informed research, narrative, drama and life history research. A great networking opportunity to connect with others with like interests.

At The Fourth International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry this year at The University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign there will be a very interesting line up of presentations, among them, Autoethnography and Performance Studies, Justice as Healing, Participatory Action Research, Visual Sociology, Visual Ethnography and...a special presentation by Dr. Norman K. Denzin on Performance Ethnography.

And new websites, check out Manifestation: Journal of Community Engaged Research and Learning Partnerships. It's an open-access, electronic, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to conversations about how to most beneficially support and engage in community-based research, community-campus partnerships, service-learning, action research, and other inclusive methods and practices that build and empower our communities. Peter Levesque of Knowledge Mobilization Works is founder and editor of this progressive new open access journal as well as the Publisher of Mental Health Poetry

And, finally, if you didn't catch it on air, you can access podcasts from the the CBC radio show "White Coat Black Art" with host Dr. Brian Goldman who takes listeners through the swinging doors of Canadian hospitals and doctors' offices for direct, issue oriented and honest talk about healthcare. Tune in to the podcast with Dr. Cunningham . In this interview he tells his story speaking with openness and conviction about physicians , "the God complex", alcoholism and his own personal spirituality. "White Coat, Black Art" airs Monday's at 1130 am and Friday's at 8 pm on Radio One and is also broadcast at 4:30 p.m. Monday's on Sirius Satellite 137, and podcast every week.

All the best for February, the journey continues,

Cheryl McLean.

Digital Storytelling and New Media, Event Explores Power of Digital Technology in Hands of Young Mothers in Need

We heard today from CCAHTE subscriber, Catherine Moravac, Clinical Research Co-ordinator at Women's Health Care Centre, St. Michael's Hospital Toronto. Catherine contacted us to share news about the Hand-Held conference in Toronto and film and new media projects making a difference for young mothers experiencing homelessness. CM

You are invited to a unique one day event...HAND-HELD is an [un]conference that explores how digital storytelling and new media can be harnessed to improve health care when the tools of creation are placed in the hands of citizens. For one day, HAND-HELD brings together health-care professionals, academics, media-makers, politicians, advocates, decision-makers,and young parents who have experienced homelessness.

March 20th MaRS Centre 101 College Street, Toronto

HAND-HELD will showcase the remarkable results of I WAS HERE, a photoblogging project that puts digital cameras into the hands of young mothers who have experienced homelessness to document their lives through their own eyes. Their work will be the starting point for discussions throughout the day:

• How can we improve the health of young pregnant or parenting youth who are homeless?

• How can the I WAS HERE media workshop model inspire innovation elsewhere in health-care?

Confirmed participants include The Honourable Deb Matthews (Ontario Minister for Youth and Child Services), Tonya Lee Williams, (an actor best known for her role on The Young and the Restless, and a tireless advocate for a strong Canadian Media Industry) and Dr. Michael Evans (Director of the Health Media Lab at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's Hospital).

The day-long event is the culmination of a three-year experiment in socially-engaged media-making, the National Film Board of Canada's Filmmaker-in-Residence project at St. Michael's Hospital.

Presented by the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's Hospital and the National Film Board of Canada

More conference info at the website: http://www.nfb.ca/webextension/handheld/

See video clips:
http://www.nfb.ca/filmmakerinresidence/

Disability Culture, Art, Activism Featured in Shamelessly Successful Film by Bonnie Sherr Klein

"Art, activism and disability are the starting point for what unfolds as a funny and intimate portrait of five surprising individuals. Director Bonnie Sherr Klein (Not a Love Story, and Speaking Our Peace) has been a pioneer of women's cinema and an inspiration to a generation of filmmakers around the world. SHAMELESS: The ART of Disability marks Klein's return to a career interrupted by a catastrophic stroke in 1987. Always the activist, she now turns the lens on the world of disability culture, and ultimately, the transformative power of art.

Joining Klein are a group of artists with diverse (dis)abilities.Humourist David Roche is taking his one man show off-Broadway, The Church of 80% Sincerity, in New York. Poet and scholar Catherine Frazeeis navigating a jam-packed schedule of teaching and speaking engagements. Dancer, choreographer and impresario Geoff McMurchy is producing KickstART!, an international festival of disability art. Sculptor and writer Persimmon Blackbridge is creating mixed mediaportraits from "meaningful junk".

"What the critics are saying about SHAMELESS:

"What emerges in SHAMELESS is an intimate look at five artists, all dealing with attitudes towards disability, all finding their way through a culture that views them with revulsion or even suggests they would be better off dead. Klein manages to pull it off, amazingly, without a hint of sentimentality."Matthew Hays, The Globe and Mail

"Other films of this genre are hopelessly influenced by the"us-and-them" approach. Bonnie has done a tremendous job of allowing the viewer in without putting the subjects in a circuscage."Lisa Bendall, Former Editor of Abilities Magazine, and Author. "

See a brief Youtube Video clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQlYt_eVmdM

More information about SHAMELESS:

www.nfb.ca/shameless

Bonnie Sherr Klein's SHAMELESS: The ART of Disability

See it Sunday, May 13 at 5PM PT and 8PM ET on BRAVO (Canada only)