New Conversations - Canada-UK Performing Arts Collaborations for a New Era

This week we review some of the offerings and share highlights among the projects to watch out for in a recently announced Canada-UK arts collaboration brought together by the British Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Farnham Maltings, and the High Commission of Canada in London.

Drawing from the past and looking to the future is a theme for some of dynamic new projects: Reinventions in Virtual Storytelling brings together two leading international biennial storytelling festivals -- Beyond the Border Wales International Storytelling Festival (Wales) and Festival interculturel du conte de Montréal (Quebec)-- to discuss, explore, and initiate new digital storytelling collaborations.

In a different vein, Artists Cole Alvis (Ontario) and Subira Joy (England) unite for the project blood memory & other ancestral technologies, a supportive exchange exploring blood memory, ancestral ways of knowing, and intergenerational knowledge under colonialism.

Approaching the environment in new ways to address the ongoing climate emergency unites other projects. Woodland Wanders (via the) world-wide web, a collaboration between GIFT (England) and Mia & Eric (Alberta), will support the development of methodologies for remote, site-responsive, artist residencies in rural locations through a series of online artistic collaborative encounters.

Former collaborators Naomi Woo (Manitoba) and Sophie Seita (England) will create The Minutes of the Hildegard von Bingen Society for Gardening Companions, an experimental research and theatrical project based on an imaginary historical society of queer and female gardeners centering around themes of interspecies and environmental care, women’s work, sound, sickness, plants, and healing.

Working with the senses and learning from the past year, a number of choreography projects sound especially interesting. Touch: keeping connected, a collaboration between Second Hand Dance (England) and WeeFestival of Arts and Culture for Early Years (Ontario), uses touch as a starting point to explore knowledge sharing, collaboration, and choreography when separated by distance.

For their part, Laura Dajao and Stopgap Dance Company (England) along with Maxime D.-Pomerleau (Quebec) will work with disabled artists to create intimate and immersive sound-based dance pieces in a project called Audio Choreography. And finally, two West African arts companies -- The Successors of Mandingue (Wales) and Productions Sagatallas S.E.N.C. (Quebec) -- will explore duality and unity using a French and Welsh musical composition as the catalyst for the co-creation of an R&D dance piece, Mandingue Horizons - Cymraeg/Québécois.

The full list of Canada-UK art collaborations made possible by this project can be found on the Culture Canada website.

CMF Scholar Dr. Rosie Oakes

Climate change is a global emergency- we all are aware of that. It is imperative that we, as a population, understand how we can live more sustainability on our planet and make meaningful changes to address this increasingly pressing issue. To do that, we rely on geologists such as Canada Memorial Foundation scholar Dr. Rosie Oakes, who study the physical changes in the earth to understand what has happened, and predict future impact.

Dr. Oakes is an International Climate Services Scientist at the Met Office. She takes output from climate models and works collaboratively with other countries to help them prepare for climate change. She will for instance advise a country that is facing a drought on how best to exploit its food resources to avoid a food security crisis.

Dr. Oakes grew up in rural Cheshire, and did not fully experience urban life until she moved to Edinburgh to go to University. She then went on an exchange program at the University of Toronto during her undergraduate studies, and recalls spending the first weeks staring at the high rises in Toronto. She very much enjoyed the research-based teaching that Canadian institutions are famed for, praising the way Canadian faculty and teaching members were always approachable – it gave her a fresh perspective on how she could be doing research. She subsequently applied for the CMF scholarship and was selected to go to Toronto to study for a Master in Geology.

She says, “ I absolutely loved the research aspect of my studies. I worked on understanding how the climate could impact the chemistry of the ocean. Being able to study in a small department (there were 12 faculty at the time) made it extremely collaborative and gave me the confidence to then apply for a PhD. I would never have been able to raise the finances necessary, so having the CMF scholarship alleviated all my financial worries and gave me the opportunity to buckle down and fully concentrate on my studies.”

Rosie also shared her advice for prospective applicants, "Apply! It’s always daunting applying for grants, but there is a 100% chance you won’t get the grants you don’t apply for! Go for it!"

As spring arrives in Canada, our thoughts turn to emergence from hibernation, for ourselves and our animal friends. Our PhD scholarship recipient Alice Higgs, looks at animals and considers the need for change.

Animals are part and parcel of Canadian history, both materially and symbolically. In 1972, Margaret Atwood argued that the ‘realistic’ animal story, depicting animals being hunted and dying, was an important ‘facet of the Canadian psyche’, explaining that ‘Canadians themselves feel threatened and nearly-extinct as a nation.’

Atwood has continued this interest in animal fiction throughout her literary career, from the early depiction of the dinosaur bones in the Royal Ontario Museum in Life Before Man (1979) to her speculative fiction and MaddAddam trilogy, including Oryx and Crake, which imagines a post-apocalyptic world of seemingly post-human herbivores.

My research looks at the representation of animals in contemporary Canadian literature, and what the presence of these animals might tell us about Canadian culture in the contemporary era. The Canadian literary canon is rich with the presence of animals and much debate has occurred as to the reason for this.

Perhaps Canada’s most famous "animal novel" is Marian Engel’s Bear (1976). A bestseller about a woman who develops an intimate relationship with a bear whilst staying at a remote cabin in Northern Ontario, Bear won the Governor General’s Award for fiction, and was hailed by many as the most controversial book ever written in Canada. The book rose to attention again more recently after a user of the website Imgur posted an image of the novel, apparently horrified by the pseudo-sexual nature of the novel, exclaiming: "You have some explaining to do, Canada."

Covers from McClelland & Stewart, 1997 & 1999. Quill & Quire, 2014.

As spring arrives in Canada, our thoughts turn to emergence from hibernation, for ourselves and our animal friends. Our PhD scholarship recipient Alice Higgs, looks at animals and considers the need for change.

Animals are part and parcel of Canadian history, both materially and symbolically. In 1972, Margaret Atwood argued that the ‘realistic’ animal story, depicting animals being hunted and dying, was an important ‘facet of the Canadian psyche’, explaining that ‘Canadians themselves feel threatened and nearly-extinct as a nation.’

Atwood has continued this interest in animal fiction throughout her literary career, from the early depiction of the dinosaur bones in the Royal Ontario Museum in Life Before Man (1979) to her speculative fiction and MaddAddam trilogy, including Oryx and Crake, which imagines a post-apocalyptic world of seemingly post-human herbivores.

My research looks at the representation of animals in contemporary Canadian literature, and what the presence of these animals might tell us about Canadian culture in the contemporary era. The Canadian literary canon is rich with the presence of animals and much debate has occurred as to the reason for this.

Perhaps Canada’s most famous "animal novel" is Marian Engel’s Bear (1976). A bestseller about a woman who develops an intimate relationship with a bear whilst staying at a remote cabin in Northern Ontario, Bear won the Governor General’s Award for fiction, and was hailed by many as the most controversial book ever written in Canada. The book rose to attention again more recently after a user of the website Imgur posted an image of the novel, apparently horrified by the pseudo-sexual nature of the novel, exclaiming: "You have some explaining to do, Canada."

Canada’s Rhian Wilkinson appointed assistant coach England Football Association Women’s team
Former Canadian assistant coach Rhian Wilkinson has joined the coaching staff of the England women's soccer team as they head into the Tokyo Olympics. Called one of Canada’s brightest young coaches by CBC, Wilkinson has earned 181 caps for Canada, including 2 Olympic victories and 4 FIFA Women’s World Cups. We caught up with Rhian this week to talk about her journey -- in both education and sport – from Montreal to Cardiff and Vancouver, and beyond.
Born in Quebec to a British father and Welsh mother, Rhian’s childhood included schooling in French, English, and in Welsh, during her parent’s sabbatical year in Wales. Describing herself as a non-traditional learner, Rhian shared that a combination of parental advocacy, sports, and exceptional teachers were the keys to her success. At a time when girls sports programmes were not well supported in the Welsh educational system, the advocacy of her parents helped enormously. Later, exceptional teachers and sports mentors instilled a sense of confidence and community that was essential to finding her path, and success, in a sports career.
“My parents, who are both professors, were my first role models, but I remember an important teacher, Miss Lewis, who absolutely changed my life. She helped my twin sister Sara and me understand that labels, such as “the academic twin and the athletic twin”, were too binary for what we really were, namely just two individuals with different learning styles that needed to be accommodated and respected.” Her key advice to both educators and athletes is that deeper understanding and acceptance of individuality is essential to their achievement, as it was to hers.
She continued “Mentoring has been an essential part of my education and career as well, I would say. I’ve been supported and guided by many incredible men, but as I made my way as a woman in sport, it is the women who talked to me, shared their experience, that guided me. I’m so honoured to be one of the first generation of women who can really look at being an athlete as a job.”
Rhian said that she identifies first and foremost as a Canadian, and the key difference she sees is the Canadian love of sports and the importance we place on sport in the education system. Everyone in Canada plays soccer!” she said. Canada hosted the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup and it was strongly supported by a diverse audience across the country. Rhian won Olympic bronze for Canada at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics. She remarked on the warm Canadian hospitality during London 2012, and speaks with pride about the stellar support of Canada House to her family while she was “incommunicado at the Olympic Village”.

Rhian and her mother at Canada House, showing Olympic medal

She brings enormous talent and experience, alongside knowledge of the Canadian soccer world to her role with the England team, and that can only help the Canada-UK rivalry on the field. The next contest for the English Women’s team is with France in Caen on April 9 before playing Canada in Stoke on April 13 – both games are friendly and part of preparations for both the Olympics and Euros to follow. Wishing you well Rhian!

With story input from Karin Lofstrom, fmr ED Canadian Women and Sport, Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame.

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