Living a Creative Life Congress 2016

Art, Community, Change: Creating Something From Nothing

My area of expertise is dance, and I have taught thousands of dance classes to young adults and, more recently, to older adults. Planning a dance class involves consideration of the types of physical experiences you are trying facilitate, as well as thinking about the group as a whole; dancing is both individual and collective at the same time. I would like to suggest that dance can provide us with helpful ideas about community-building and how to start something from nothing—how to figure out the first move, then the second move, then the third move, until the rhythm and pattern is established and there’s continuous motion. Dancing is essentially “action,” it is about “doing,” and so how can we use this ancient and ubiquitous form of human expression to ignite both individuals and communities into action?

This session will draw on simple exercises from creative processes used in the dance studio to approach questions about community-building and creating change.

No dance experience is necessary for participation in this session.

About Anne Flynn

Anne Flynn is Professor Emerita (Dance) in the Faculty of Kinesiology, and Member of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute. She has been part of the Calgary dance community as dancer, artistic director, scholar, administrator and dance education advocate.

Her research on Canadian women in dance, multiculturalism and performance, and dance in health promotion and education has been presented and published internationally. She is currently co-investigator on a national SSHRC partnership project on Arts for Social Change, collaborating on research programs on dance for senior citizens, and for people with Parkinson’s disease. Flynn created Calgary’s Dancing Parkinson’s program along with Vicki Adams Willis, Founder in Residence of Decidedly Jazz Danceworks. She is serving as President of the U.S. based Congress on Research in Dance

Creative Economy – What Does it Take to Create Shared Prosperity

What do we mean by shared prosperity? We view the world from a perspective of abundance. We all have the capacity to share which implies that sometimes we are giving, sometimes we are receiving and sometimes we are negotiating an exchange. Understanding where we are in the relationship and what we are sharing requires us to be true to ourselves and to our community. We welcome people to have an open and honest conversation about sharing on an individual and community level… which ultimately shapes our view of shared prosperity.

What are you willing to share?

About Avnish Mehta

Avnish is born and raised in Calgary and loves this city. He is an entrepreneur through and through. He currently owns and operates a presentation and public speaking consulting firm based in Calgary with clients all over the world called Stand and Command. He is Beer Baron with the Village Brewery, an advisor to Goodpin, and a part of the executive team at an Edmonton-based tech start-up called Accent Free.

More than anything else, Avnish loves to be able to contribute back to his community. He is currently a volunteer Board member with the Calgary Public Library, Vice President of the Alberta Library Trustee Association, a member of the Fundraising Committee with Calgary Folk Music Society, and a member of the Community Relations Council at Bow Valley College.

Avnish believes is it all about getting better. No matter where we start, we want to move towards, better and better.

About Court Ellingson

Court joined Calgary Economic Development in 2014 as a Project Manager and Economic Strategist. He works with government, non-profit and the private sector on the implementation of Building on our Energy: The 10 Year Economic Strategy for Calgary.

From 2008 to 2014 Court worked in community economic development as a Senior Consultant with Millier Dickinson Blais (now MDB Insight) after working  in Indonesia for six years as a Country Program Manager with CUSO International.

In addition to holding a Bachelor of Commerce, Court is currently working on his Masters in Economic Development. Through his role implementing Building on our Energy, Court is a member of the Stewardship Group with imagineCALGARY, participated in the Thrive Community Economic Development Network and sits on the implementation committee for Enough for All, Calgary’s poverty reduction strategy.

Reclaiming/Redefining the Mainstream

A critical examination on how we construct our understanding of our community’s past, present and future. How do we create a more inclusive public discourse and mind frame amidst all our diversities and differences? What are the small steps? What are the big steps?

About Cesar Cala

Cesar currently works as the Manager for the Neighbourhood Strategy at United Way of Calgary and Area. Before moving to Canada in 1996, Cesar was involved in community development in the Philippines and other parts of the world for more than 15 years on issues of human rights, democratic reform, people’s participation, grassroots development and social innovation.

In Canada, he pursued his interest in community development, both in volunteer and professional capacities, with organizations like Oxfam-Canada, the Developmental Disabilities Resource Centre of Calgary, the Ethno Cultural Council of Calgary, the Children’s Legal and Educational Resource Centre, Calgary, he has been involved in local initiatives like Calgary Vital Signs, grassroots grantmaking, cross-cultural dialogue and community organizing. His current work involves supporting citizens lead community change and facilitating collaborative initiatives of residents, social agencies, funders and other partners.

Cesar occasionally lectures at the University of Calgary on community development and social justice.

About Teresa Woo-Paw

Teresa Woo-Paw is a former MLA for Calgary-Northern Hills. Born in Hong Kong, Woo-Paw graduated from U of C in 1982 with a Bachelor of Social Work and has been an active member of the Calgary-Mackay community for more than 30 years. Prior to politics, Woo-Paw was employed as a private consultant providing diversity training, program facilitation and instruction. She has worked for the Calgary Health Region, Cultural Diversity Institute, United Way, the Red Cross, CBE, the Calgary Immigrant Women’s Association and the Calgary Immigrant Aid Society.

She has also founded and/or served with many organizations such as CCVO, Calgary Chinese Cultural Centre, Alberta Wild Rose Foundation, Society for Cultural and Multicultural Programs, Calgary Chinese Community Service Assoc, Southern Alberta Asian Heritage Foundation, and the Ethno-Cultural Council of Calgary. Her active community involvement has earned her many prestigious awards including the Alberta Centennial Commemorative Award, the Queen’s Jubilee Award for Multiculturalism and Community Services, the YWCA’s Women of Distinction Award, the Immigrant of Distinction Award, and Canada 125th Commemorative Award for Community Services.

Never Read The Mandate!

We artists are pretty good with words and have become adept at incorporating words like “Diversity” and “Engaging” and “Reflecting the Community” into how we describe our work and our companies. But, if you were to examine what we do, rather than what we say we do, would any of those aspirational terms come to mind? We’ll ask you to consider if these words have been rendered meaningless by dilution and misuse, and what happens when we focus on actions rather than conversation (through a conversation, it’s a trap!).

About Elaine Lee

Elaine Lee is a visual artist, writer and public speaker with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Emily Carr University and a Certificate of Liberal Arts with theatre experience from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC. Recently appointed Playwright-in-Residence by Inside Out Theatre, she is currently co-creating a new play Make Love Not Art.

About Col Cseke

Col Cseke is a playwright director, performer and documentary-theatre maker with an interest in community generated theatre, non-fiction theatre and storytelling, and new work of all stripes. As a Disability Theatre ally, Col is the Artistic Director of Inside Out Theatre.

The Truth About Stories is, that’s All We Are – Thomas King

We are all made of stories. After 150 years of cohabitation which we are about to celebrate, Indigenous and non-Indigenous people have barely begun to get to know each other. We have been raised upon colonial stories which have hidden us from one another. Rio and Cowboy will share and engage participants in processes they use to build large-scale activated storytelling circles which allow people to share and listen to stories in a new way, across different worldviews. Rio and Cowboy use these processes to generate and create REDx Talks programs in different communities; to bring together Indigenous communities and Mount Royal University professors through story-based engagement towards building new Indigenous curriculums together, and to create verbatim performance across real and perceived difference. Listening to the true stories of our shared history and how they have created our current world is imperative before we can begin to re-define a narrative together, to tell the stories which will become the future of the collection of Nations that we call Canada.

About Cowboy Smithx

Cowboy Smithx is an Award Winning filmmaker of Blackfoot Ancestry from the Piikani and Kainai tribes of Southern Alberta, Canada. Cowboy is the founder and curator of the highly acclaimed International Indigenous speaker series REDx Talks, and creative director for the Iiniistsi Treaty Arts Society. He writes, directs and produces film works in documentary, narrative, music video and experimental. He was the youngest person to ever receive a Blackfoot Arts Award for his decades of work in the performing arts. Cowboy is currently working in Indigenous education, Cultural consultation and Youth work across the globe. Cowboy hosts the critically acclaimed podcast The Silent X.

About Rio Mitchell

Rio Mitchell is the co-founder and Creative Producer of the Iiniistsi Treaty Arts Society, exploring iiniistsi (treaties) between and among Indigenous and settler cultures and individuals; treaties past, present, and possible.

She is a theatre and filmmaker of second-generation Settler descent living in mohkknstis (Calgary), and is foremost a facilitator of diverse ensemble and collaborative processes—from producing REDx Talks—the Indigenized speaker series, with programming expanding across Canada and the globe; to facilitating Indigenous curriculum development with Mount Royal University and treaty 7 elders and community; to working with the late Michael Green as associate producer and production manager in the development and creation of the ground-breaking Making Treaty 7 project.

Through the facilitation of iiniistsi-based art, community and educational programming, Rio continues advocating for honest, healthy and transformative conversation and collaboration between Indigenous and Non-Aboriginal peoples of Canada and the world.

From Me to We: Recognizing the Impacts of Identity & Power on Diversity

A few provocative statements about our city and the world have recently inspired us:

• Diversity stimulates local economic growth (aricherlife.org)
• Calgary is currently the fourth largest city in Canada with the highest immigrant population, next to Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal (Diversity in Calgary: Looking Forward to 2020)
• “Examine what you are doing to create a climate in which diversity is valued.” – George D. Calliou

Using Theatre of the Oppressed as a jumping off point, we’ll engage in a collective exploration of the role that our identity plays in the power we have access to and the influence we can therefore wield. The goal is to understand and position “diversity”; as a primary driver of artistic, cultural and economic enrichment in Calgary, by moving from individual empowerment (inclusion) to collective impact (equity) through cross-cultural solidarity.

About Jenna Rodgers

Jenna is a mixed-race Director and Dramaturg based in Calgary. She is the Artistic Director of Chromatic Theatre—a company dedicated to producing and developing work by and for diverse artists. She is a Co-Producer of the Calgary Congress for Equity and Diversity in the Arts (CCEDA), and is the Associate Dramaturg at the Playwright’s Colony at the Banff Centre.

Recent Directing credits include: Lunchbox Theatre (Let the Light of Day Through) Chromatic Theatre (10-Minute Play Festival, Cowboy Versus Samurai, Parched); and Common Ground (Beneath the Skin). Assistant Director: Lunchbox Theatre (In on It; Book Club; Epiphany; What Gives?!), Downstage (A Bomb in the Heart);Tarragon Theatre (carried away on the crest of a wave), and fu-GEN Theatre (Ching Chong Chinaman, Yellow Fever). Beyond the Banff Centre, Jenna has had the pleasure of dramaturging work at the Kennedy Center, Lunchbox Theatre, Chromatic Theatre and fu-GEN Theatre. Jenna holds a MA in International Performance Research from the universities of Amsterdam and Tampere.

About Michele Decottignies

Michele Decottignies has 30 years’ experience teaching evidence-based, anti-oppressive practice to agents of change in the arts sector and beyond. She’s spent the last 15 years exclusively prioritizing equity & diversity in the arts through her own company, Stage Left Productions – a conduit of artistic innovation and cultural freedom for diverse artists.

Through Stage Left’s globally-esteemed Theatre of the Oppressed practice, Michele has successfully facilitated over 300 arts equity workshops, across Canada, as well as in the USA and Australia. Her arts equity practice is unique: It pays equal attention to the barriers experienced by all equity-seeking communities and attends to inequities embedded in all three spheres of influence (personal, social and structural). Michele especially pays particular attention to needed cultural and emotional safeties, and her approach goes far beyond those divisive frameworks of “us versus them,” toward cross-cultural solidarity and collective impact.

Through the Looking Glass: Why our World Feels Different

Pretend you are sitting at a chess board. Imagine all the talents, training, and experience you currently have, are actually chess skills. You studied chess in school, you played chess in your spare time, and over the years, you developed skills and relationships that expand and deepen your experience of chess. Whatever else is happening in the world, there is one thing you know:you are a chess player.

Now, imagine looking across the chess board, and seeing your opponent. In this scenario, your opponent is a five-year- old. You effortlessly engage your understanding of the game while connecting with this young person. Halfway through, the child across from you declares that, “from now on, this piece can move anywhere, and all of my pawns can fly.” And just like that, your talents, training, and experience are irrelevant. Your identity as a chess player drops away, and everything feels different.

We have had this feeling before. When new technology—in the form of the printing press—arrived in the west, everything changed. People at the time spoke openly about the ways the world felt different. Many complained about new technology’s superficiality, its corrupting influence on the youth, and its challenge to the necessary secrecy of politics. Others lauded its creative, transformative potential.

Back at our chessboard, we can imagine these conversations. You can explain to your opponent that “this is not the way chess is played,” or, “we need the rules for it to be a game,” or most commonly, an appeal to history, “this is the way chess has always been played…for hundreds of years!” Is there any scenario is which you can imagine this approach working? Of course not, because your reasoning is no match for the power of the idea that pawns that can fly.

We live in the midst of the largest change in technology in human history. All of the rules of the game have changed. The change happened faster, and to more of us at once, than any other shift we have previously encountered. What research shows us is that if we keep playing chess the same way, or merely try to incorporate the notion that pawns can fly, in order keep all our old approaches in place, we will fail miserably and feel constantly displaced. Nothing will work. What we know, and how we know it, bears no relation to the reality of the current state of the game. We are through the looking glass. The feelings this brings up are strong, and can be hard to engage. But, if they come from the reality of our time, we have to feel them to live.

In this session, we will collectively explore the new rules of the game. If we can understand them, our talents, training, and experience can be reborn in the new world. Taking the best of the old, and allowing it to die in its earlier form so it can live in the new order, is the definition of the term renaissance. It’s a process that is creative, innovative, and its potential energy is beyond anything in human history. It is also scary, and feels deeply unsettling, but come on; how cool is it that pawns can fly?

About Patrick Finn

An active artist and academic, Dr. Patrick Finn studies performance: how it works, what constitutes excellence in performance, and what performance studies offer our daily lives. He is an Associate Professor in the School of Creative and Performing Arts, and Computational Media Design at The University of Calgary, and Chair of Research and Innovation at The Edmonton Digital Arts College. He works with companies, government and nonprofit organizations, artists, athletes, and anyone interested in bringing attention to the ways they do what they do. He unites his work using Aristotle’s phrase, “you are what you repeatedly do,” and brings focus to the approach by considering everything as technology. Technology, taken in the broad sense, involves what, and how, we do what we do. Thus, technology can be a physical gesture, the organization of a meeting, or the use of tools as part of our attempt to engage, connect, and flourish.

Community Activism Through the Arts

When artists are at the grassroots of community, amazing things unfold. How can the arts bring the public together to experience greater connection, solidarity, understanding, belonging, and celebration? Using the Equinox Vigil in Union Cemetery, Carol of the Belles, Femme Wave as examples, Sharon Stevens and Kenna Burima will lead a conversation about community activism through the arts. Join them to share your ideas, challenges, and passion.

Community Activism Through the Arts – But Why?

Why should the arts be the catalyst to bring the public together to experience greater connection, solidarity, understanding, belonging, and celebration? Why become a community-based artist? Is the arts valued through community events? What is the role of funders? The City? The public? What myths do we need to dispel? Kenna Burima and Sharon Stevens will initiate a conversation. Join them to share your ideas, challenges, and experiences.

About Sharon Stevens

Sharon Stevens is a multi award-winning media artist, activist and instigator who’s made a career of integrating art and community ritual-making into a series of projects that enlighten, enliven and entertain.

She currently supports her art practice as Executive Director for Alberta Media Arts Alliance Society a Provincial Arts Service Organization.

Founder Equinox Vigil in Calgary’s historic Union Cemetery.

#AFA25 Influential Artists.

Media artist, activist, collaborator Essense Productions.

About Kenna Burima

A classically trained pianist with a flair for jazz, pop, garage rock, and every genre in between, Calgary’s Kenna Burima’s current work Hymn features swirling synths and a meticulously crafted horn arrangements laying the foundation for songs mining the social, political, and emotional ground of an angry world.

She’s a connector, a teacher, an activist—in her adopted hometown of Calgary, Kenna Burima has earned a reputation as someone who can turn ideas into big projects and inspire people to come together. But at her core, Burima wears one label most proudly: musician. A classically trained pianist with a flair for jazz, pop, garage rock, and every genre in between, the tool that Burima uses to express herself most purely will always be her music.

Burima’s love for all musical forms is clear from the sheer number and diversity of projects she’s involved in (she plays keys in garage pop group LoveWaves, the sweaty party band Beaver Squadron, in a classical duo with violinist Foon Yap, and as a hired keyboard gun for a number of other artists), but the best way figure out what drives Burima is to delve into her solo albums: classical-cabaret affairs that draw on her vast musical know-how. Pinning Burima’s solo music down is no easy task—the complexities of her writing and performances reflect the heart of an artist who is never content to restrict herself to one genre, one project, or one set of rigid ideas.

Burima’s second and latest solo album Hymn is the product of all of those converging ideas and genres: a bold and uninhibited album that sees Burima mining musical, political, and emotional ground, and bravely reporting her findings with raw honesty, while pushing her music to greater heights. Taking on her feelings about issues like Black Lives Matter, the epidemic of violence against women, Canada’s epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women, and the hate that grows out of fundamentalism, as well as personal experiences of loss and love (though, for Burima a love song can include references to crop circles or Game of Thrones), she shows no fear and lets her songs expose her thought process and own struggles with the world around her.

And because she’s all about community, Burima brought on a strong gang of musical friends to back her up on Hymn: as she sings her heart out and plays the keyboards, Steve Fletcher (who also produced the album) takes care of the synthesizers, with Jon May on drums and percussion, Carsten Rubeling on trombone, Andre Wickenheiser on trumpet, Mark DeJong on bass clarinet, and Jesse McMann-Sparvier on flute. These seasoned musicians bolster Burima and complement her work, making her message ring even clearer and more loudly.

Topical, expansive, vulnerable, and unabashedly honest, Hymn is a peek into Kenna Burima’s heart and soul.

Brian Calliou is a First Nations thought leader. He is Cree from northwestern Alberta and is married with two grown children and three grandchildren. Brian is a lawyer by training and remains connected with the Indigenous Bar Association. Brian still plays competitive hockey, albeit old timer’s hockey, or as a friend put it, “over the hill” hockey. Brian loves music such as blues, folk, rock and country. He plays guitar, sings and is working on songwriting. He has a strong commitment to social justice and views his work as helping to build a better world. The Peter Lougheed Leadership Institute’s (PLLI) purpose reflects this commitment by developing leaders who want to make change and create a better world.

Brian is the Director of Indigenous Leadership and Management and leads a team of very dedicated people who also want to see a better world. Brian researches and writes about Indigenous community economic development, from a strength-based approach, that is, from a basis of stories of Indigenous organizational success. They call this a wise practice approach to community economic development, where they have identified seven elements that lead to success, including the central importance of Indigenous knowledge and wisdom. With research they have found that culture and identity are important areas that Indigenous leaders want to protect and cultivate as they face contemporary challenges and opportunities.

Based on a simple principle—dancing is good for us—Dancing Parkinson’s YYC is a program for those

living with Parkinson’s disease. Launched in 2013, the program provides dance classes to people with Parkinson disease, and their spouses, friends or care partners. Using live musical accompaniment, the program focuses on rhythm, body awareness, motor learning, and socializing.

Dancing Parkinson’s YYC is a partnership between DJD, Calgary Parkinson’s Research Initiative, the Rozsa Foundation, the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Kinesiology and the Hotchkiss Brain Institute.

Jim Button is a leader in networked marketing and has been for over 25 years. As a founder of Village Brewery, Jim works hard to gather people around community. Using beer as a social lubricant he leverages his many experiences in marketing and building communities to create a more connected Calgary. At Evans Hunt Group, a digital marketing firm, Jim gets to focus that networked background on a one-to-one relationship—helping customers participate in the brands they engage with online. Through both organizations Jim has created countless festivals, conferences and programs that are building a better city—Circle the Wagons Travelling Food, Beer and Music Festival and Best of Calgary being two of the  most recent successes.

His passion for community investment has been a common thread through his career and has earned him a philanthropy award from the Canadian Association of Fundraising Professionals, two “40 Under 40” awards with Avenue Magazine, and an e-Award for Community Service from Alberta Venture Magazine. He also came in second place for best Dad as voted by his kids.

Jim is the Dean of the Haskayne School of Business, and Associate Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship.

Prior to entering academics, Jim held several senior executive positions, including President & CEO of Walker Newby & Partners Inc., Hopewell Residential Communities Inc., and StoneCreek Resorts Inc. He is on the boards of Boardwalk REIT, the West Campus Development Trust, CPA Alberta, Innovate Calgary, Junior Achievement Southern Alberta, and an Advisor to the Real Estate Development Institute. He has held several leadership positions, including Chair of HomeCo Inc., Chair of the Urban Development Institute, Lead Trustee of Boardwalk, Deputy Chair of SAIT, and Vice-Chair of Calgary Housing Company.

In 1999, Jim was named Calgary’s Citizen of the Year, and in 2011 the Alberta Real Estate Foundation named him a Thought Leader. He is an Honorary Member of the Appraisal Institute of Canada, has won best teaching and best paper awards. For several years he was the Real Estate columnist for the CBC Eye Opener, and urban design co-columnist for the Calgary Herald. Jim has several research and teaching awards, three books, two book chapters, over 20 academic papers, and over 60 newspaper and practitioner articles to his credit. Jim’s newest book, Achieving Longevity: How Great Firms Prosper through Entrepreneurial Thinking was included in the Forbes list of 17 Summer Reads Creative Leaders Can Read at the Beach post, and received acclaim from major International business outlets, including CEO Magazine, Fortune, Globe & Mail, BizEd, Boss Magazine, and Business Superstar.

Lauren Voisin started Robots Are Fun when she was eight. She regularly exhibits her projects at the Calgary Mini Maker Faire and Make Fashion.  Lauren enjoys sharing her ideas and has been a speaker at many events including the San Francisco Maker Faire. She participated in a Google Edu Start Up weekend in the fall of 2013 and won the crowd favourite award. She has been featured in Owl Magazine and currently sits on the Board at the Werklund Youth Leadership Advisory Centre at the University of Calgary. Lauren’s passion remains to encourage other kids to try robotics and see what they can create.

Micheline Maylor’s newest collection is titled Little Wildheart and was recently shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch award for experimental poetry, and is slated for publication in spring of 2017 with the University of Alberta Press, and deals with the question: What is it to be human in our environment?

Her second collection Whirr and Click (2013) was placed on the Pat Lowther Memorial Award shortlist. She teaches creative writing at Mount Royal University where she won the teaching excellence award in 2015. She serves as guest editor at Frontenac Press’ renowned Quartet series for 2013-17. She serves as the past-president and co-founder of Freefall Literary Society and is the consulting editor of FreeFall literary magazine. Her latest works can be found in Partisan, The Literary Review of Canada, and Quill and Quire. Micheline is a member of the Alberta Magazine Publisher’s Association.

Micheline was appointed Calgary’s Poet Laureate on April 25, 2016.

Micheline was appointed as Author in Residence of the Calgary Public Library on April 26, 2016.

The Wrong Kind of Girls are Canada’s preeminent queer-feminist-ukulele-comedy band. With original songs that are one part sweet, one part crude, one part hilarious, their music is sure to get stuck in your head and in your heart. Today’s performance is a living example of a creative approach to making change and the power of art to start conversations and bring social issues to life.

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Click image to download a PDF