ᒪᒥᑯᒥᐁᐧᐃᐧᓇᐣ Acknowledgements

Fitsum Areguy is a graduate student in Community Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University. Broadly, his research interests follow two paths. The first focuses on youth civic engagement, drawing from Black, Indigenous, and Leisure studies scholarship. The second explores adaptation and identity among youth who provide substantive caregiving for friends, family, and/or kin. As a community-engaged scholar, he values inter/multi-disciplinary collaboration and creative analytic practices to represent work that is accessible and evocative. Fitsum is the co-founder and editor of Textile, a literary publication and mentorship program that showcases emerging marginalized artists and writers in Kitchener-Waterloo. Fitsum also works as a freelance writer and journalist with words published in CBC/Radio-Canada, The Breach Media, Canadian Dimension, Briarpatch, and Waterloo Region Record. He is the co-founder and editor of insideWaterloo, an independent media initiative that amplifies the voices of Black, Indigenous and racialized residents living in Waterloo Region, ON.

Aly Bailey is a Mitacs Postdoc at McMaster University, where her time is split between working within the Department of Health, Aging, and Society, and the YWCA Hamilton. She also holds an Adjunct Professor appointment at the University of Guelph working at ReVision Centre. She is Principal Investigator of a SSHRC Insight Development Grant entitled, “ReVisioning Fitness” which is a participatory and arts-based project exploring ways to counter eugenic-based connotations and meanings of the word “fitness” by queering, cripping, and thickening fitness. Her research program more broadly interrogates modern-day understandings of fitness, recreation and leisure, inclusion, accessibility, body image, and more by centring the lived-experience and knowledge of people who identify as Black, People of Colour, non-binary and LGBTQ+ people, people with disability, and/or fat/thick/curvy/plus sized people. She hopes her arts- and activist-based research will be infused in for-profit and not-for-profit organizations to improve the understanding and implementation of accessibility and inclusion across facilities earmarked for physical activity and leisure.

Kayla Besse is a Relaxed Performance consultant with a background in English Literature, Theatre Studies, and Disability Studies. She is an accessible communications professional with expertise in digital media and knowledge mobilization. Together with her colleagues at the British Council of Canada and Bodies in Translation, she co-authored “Relaxed Performance: Exploring Accessibility in the Canadian Theatre Landscape,” a report on the status of Relaxed Performance in Canada in 2019.

Seika Boye is a scholar, writer, educator, and artist whose practices revolve around dance and movement. She is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream and Director of the Institute for Dance Studies at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Toronto.

Seika curated the archival exhibition It’s About Time: Dancing Black in Canada 1900–1970 (2018) and co-curated Into the Light: Eugenics and Education in Southern Ontario (2019). Her publications have appeared in numerous academic journals and magazines, and she is an Associate Editor for Canadian Theatre Research (2021).

Seika is a sought-after speaker, instructor, and consultant in the performing arts sector. She was an Artist-in-Residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario (2018), Toronto District School Board’s African Heritage Educators’ Network Arts Honoree (2019) and a 2020 recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s Heritage Trust Award (co-curator, Into the Light). She was recently the inaugural recipient of The Dance in the Public Sphere Award presented by the Dance Studies Association (2021), for her work on It’s About Time.

Seika is currently a co-investigator on Gatherings: archival and oral histories of performance (SSHRC Partnership Development Grant).

Dr. Shital Desai is an Assistant Professor at the School of Arts Media Performance & Design and heads CIF funded Social and Technological Systems (SaTS) lab at York University. Her research addresses issues that focus on UN Sustainable Development Goals using design research methods and human-centred design approaches. To that extent, she develops inclusive assistive adaptive technologies for older adults, persons with cognitive impairments and children. She cocreates governance policies and design solutions to support these policies around global health. She is a member of the WHO Dementia Knowledge Exchange peer review network where she shares her expert knowledge on dementia and technology in strengthening policies, service planning and health and social care systems for dementia. She is actively involved with the Jane Finch community, developing sustainable solutions around housing, finance and social connectedness in seniors especially during covid-19 pandemic. Shital is passionate about training students in systems design and design thinking methods to address societal issues around accessibility and inclusivity.

Jose Miguel (Miggy) Esteban is a Filipino-Canadian dance/movement artist and educator based in Tkaronto (Toronto). He shares his work through local festivals, community events, showcases, and through self-produced process showings with Impetus Movement Project. He further shares his practice through workshops that invite a return to the body as a stage for collective storytelling.

Miggy is currently a PhD student in the Department of Social Justice Education at OISE/University of Toronto. He engages with dance practices and methods of research-creation to rethink the relations between disability studies and educational praxis. Centring the work of disabled dance/movement artists, scholars, and creative practitioners, he seeks to release new orientations to a critical and creative pedagogy through dance. Encountering the inspiration and repetition of gestures, his research works to reveal new possibilities for interpreting a return to our bodies, to our belonging within space, and to our movement in relation with one another.

Lindsay Fisher is the founder and director of Creative Users Projects, a non-profit arts service organization whose mission is to amplify the visibility of Deaf and Disabled artists in a world that’s transforming to digital.

Lindsay’s background is rooted in the arts. With a Bachelor of Fine Art from ECIAD University, Vancouver, and a Bachelor of Design at OCAD University, Toronto her passion is using art and design to problem-solve alongside underserved communities.

As a woman with lived experience of disability, her trajectory through the arts is motivated by a desire to build opportunities and spaces for difference to spark innovation, creativity and community.

Hannah Fowlie is a PhD candidate in the Social Practice and Transformational Change program at the College of Social and Applied Human Science (CSAHS), University of Guelph. As the Coordinator of Storytelling and Social Equity for Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice, she facilitated several digital storytelling workshops with many different communities both in-person and online. Hannah has a lifetime love and involvement in the arts, as an actor, director, and aspiring filmmaker. She also has a background is social work.

Ian Garrett is designer, producer, educator, and researcher in the field of sustainability in arts and culture. He is Associate Professor of Ecological Design for Performance at York University, where is Graduate Program Director for Theatre and Performance Studies. He is the director of the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts and Producer for Toasterlab, a mixed reality performance collective. He maintains a design practice focused on ecology, accessible technologies and scenography. With Toasterlab’s Mixed Reality Performance Atelier recent work includes a partnership with Theatre Passe Muraille's Accessibility Labs to develop solutions for ASL interpretation for performance with Augmented Reality; The Right Way with DLT Experience at the Venice Biennale; Groundworks collaborating artists from Pomo, Wappo, and Ohlone communities; The locative audio project TrailOff with Philadelphia’s Swim Pony; and Transmission (FuturePlay/Edinburgh and Future of Storytelling Festival/New York). With Chantal Bilodeau, he co-directs the Climate Change Theatre Action. His writing includes Arts, the Environment, and Sustainability for Americans for the Arts; The Carbon Footprint of Theatrical Production in Readings in Performance and Ecology, and Theatre is No Place for a Plant in Landing Stages from the Ashden Directory. He serves on the Board of Directors for Associated Designers of Canada, was the Curator for the US for the 2019 Prague Quadrennial, and is co-chair for World Stage Design 2022 in Calgary.

Kat Germain is an Audio Describer and Relaxed Spaces Specialist, providing access, consultation and teaching services in both live and recorded contexts. Her work is grounded in Disability Justice, Anti-Racism and Equity Intersectional frameworks.

Kat is a member of: Canadian Association of Theatre Research, Audio Description Association (UK), ACTRA, Canadian Deafblind Association, Ontario College of Teachers.

Kat has described everything from Amputee Aerial Circus Arts, to “Crip” Conferences, to Deaf poetry, to wheelchair basketball. She sits on the Described Video Best Practices Committee and is a consultant on boards/ projects with: Wee Festival Theatre and Culture for Early Years (ON), Zuppa Theatre (NS), Inside Out Theatre (AB) and Creative Users Projects (National). Kat is also a teacher of Description skills, and certified teacher who works in intensive support classrooms with kids who are neurodiverse. Kat splits her time between K'jipuktuk/ Halifax and Tkaronto/ Toronto and was recently awarded a Research Grant by Canada Council. www.katgermain.com

Julia Gray is a performance and cultural theorist, a critical social scientist, an artist, and currently a Visiting Scholar at Sensorium, a research centre embedded within The School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design at York University. With her work being interdisciplinary and intersectional, she has published and presented across disciplines. She recently completed a SSHRC-funded postdoctoral fellowship at Bloorview Research Institute (fully affiliated with University of Toronto's Faculty of Medicine), and she holds a PhD from University of Toronto. Through her program of research, Julia aims to interrogate the ways the arts can provide spaces to overturn cultural assumptions of difference, support well-being for individuals and can be exploratory processes of embodied resistance. She edited the collected works 'ReView: an anthology of plays committed to social justice' (Brill-Sense Publishers).

Dante Jemmott is a Toronto based actor and recording artist. He received his training at York University in the Acting Conservatory where he has appeared in the productions of William Shakespeare's Coriolanus, Charles Mee's Iphigenia 2.0, Suzan-Lori Parks's 365 Days/365 Plays and Amy Rutherford's Mortified. Dante was the voice of W.L. Hutton at the exhibition called Into the Light: Eugenics and Education in Southern Ontario held at the Guelph Civic Museum which was recipient of the Lieutenant-Governor's Ontario Heritage Award for Conservation Excellence. He also played Romeo in the Stratford Festival and Why Not Theatre production of R+J.

Kathryn Harvey (PhD, Alberta, 1995; MLIS, Dalhousie, 2005) is former Head of Archival and Special Collections at the University of Guelph and now works as an archivist in the unit. She is Senior Associate Editor of Archivaria, and a former President of the Association of Canadian Archivists (2015-2016). Her research interests include the power of archives and roles of archivists in shaping history, as well as subject-specific collections at the University of Guelph including Ontario theatre, landscape architecture, cookery, and Scottish resources. She takes particular interest in assessing collecting areas as a whole to find gaps needing to be filled and working with other institutions to ensure archival materials are in the most appropriate repository. Furthermore, she is passionate about ensuring that all the voices in the archives that want to be heard are—even when the stories may not be flattering to the hosting institution.

Sue worked as a social worker supporting people to live independently in the community after the gradual closing of the institutions began 25 years ago. She has been supporting self-advocates in human rights work in developmental services since.

Sue joined ARCH to coordinate Respecting Rights in 2011. Sue loves supporting self-advocates in providing public legal education that is accessible for people labelled with intellectual disability, staff and families in developmental services. Using art, music, theatre, Sue loves co-teaching alongside people with disabilities, and bringing the message of freedom and choice to the developmental disability community.

Aaron Kelly is a theatre crafter. He has worked in theatre production and design for 25 years as a production manager and technical director, and as a lighting, projection, image, and set creator for dance, theatre, and opera. Aaron is also an Assistant Professor in the Theatre Department at York University. At the time of writing, he is on the advisory council for York University's teaching commons and is the Department of Theatre's education committee chair.

He joined this project to contribute to the pedagogical design, production management advising, and video media accessibility.

Aaron worked on the original Into the Light project in a support capacity providing some production and design assistance - helping to realize the creative artifacts in the exhibit.

Evadne Kelly is a white settler dance artist and interdisciplinary scholar with a PhD in Dance Studies from York University. Currently, she is a Research Associate at Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice, University of Guelph. Publications of her research can be found in Pacific Arts Journal, The Dance Current, Performance Matters, and Journal of the History of Behavioural Sciences. Evadne’s book, Dancing Spirit, Love, and War: Performing the Translocal Realities of Contemporary Fiji, examines the social and political dimensions of kinesthetic expression and performance. It received support from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and builds on her 20 years of professional dance experience with David Earle. Building on her original archival research, she led and co-created an accessible, arts-activist, community-engaged exhibition (co-funded by Bodies in Translation and Guelph Civic Museum) called Into the Light: Eugenics and Education in Southern Ontario (recipient of the 2020 Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Award for Excellence in Conservation). She is project lead, co-director (with Dr. Carla Rice), co-creator, researcher, writer, and project manager for Into the Light: Living Histories of Oppression and Education in Ontario.

Dale Lackeyram (he/him) is a settler, and gay person of colour who resides and works on the Treaty Lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit, in Guelph. He is guided by his lived experiences and a philosophy of compassion and believes in the transformative power of education and educational experiences. He values teaching, and participating in learning as an act of reconciliation, with the intention to contribute to a shared understanding that guides us to do better.

Dale currently works as the Associate Director in the Office of Teaching and Learning at the University of Guelph. His experience in inclusive curriculum development, student learning, facilitative leadership and learning outcomes assessment spans two decades. He is motivated by collaboration and opportunities to promote more inclusive experiences for traditionally under-represented learners in all forms of education.

Margaret Lam (MISt) is a published information science researcher, a seasoned print and digital designer, and an advocate for independent artists. Her SSHRC-funded research on music knowledge-sharing platforms and the design of domain-specific information systems has been published as journal articles, a book chapter, and presented at conferences on knowledge management, information professionals, ethnomusicology, and digital futures around the world.

As the Design Research Lead at Octagram, a software consultancy in Canada, she consults and advises on numerous strategic digital initiatives, where she brings a nuanced understanding of how human-centered design practices can inform transformative digital initiatives in the arts and culture sector. She has served as a jury member of Canada Council for the Arts’ Digital Strategy Fund. Select projects include Creative Users Projects’ Accessing The Arts, ArtsPond’s Hatch Open, CAPACOA’s Linked Digital Future Initiative, ThePitch.ca, Ontario Arts Council and Grow Twillingate. She is the founder of BeMused Network, and also the co-founder of the Digital Arts Services Symposium and DigitalASO with Jessa Agilo.

Jess Notwell ᓂᑎᓯᔨᑳᓱᐣ. ᐊᒪᒋᐚᐢᐱᒥᐏᐣ ᐅᐦᒋ ᓂᔭ ᑲᔭᐦᑌ. ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐤ ᑳᑎᐯýᐃᒥᓱᒋᐠ. ᑕᐢᑕᐏᔨᓂᐘᐠ. Guelph, ON ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐘᐢᑮᐏᐣ ᓂᐢᑐᓵᑊ ᐑᑕᐢᑮᐏᐣ ᐅᐢᑌᓯᒫᐓᔭᓯᐍᐏᐣ ᒣᒁᐨ ᓂᐑᑭᐣ.

I am a Two Spirit Cree/Scots Métis land defender, mom, and scholar/activist focused on decolonizing knowledges, relationships, institutions, and systems. A survivor of assimilation attempts by the Canadian settler colonial state, I am reclaiming my identity through Cree language learning, as a Drum Carrier and Moon Circle Co-Facilitator, and through participating in a Women’s and Two Spirit Traditional Teachings Apprenticeship with Grandmother Isabelle Meawasige of Serpent River First Nation.

My PhD uses the Indigneous Methodology Decolonial Co-Resistance to understand how women cultivate and mobilize decolonial love toward liberation/decolonization, including to address settler/colonial violence as genocide, land theft, mass incarceration, and collective punishment. As Indigenous Graduate Educational Developer, I work with Indigneous Initiatives and the Office of Teaching and Learning to support the decolonization and Indigenization of pedagogies and curricula at the University of Guelph. As Co-Chair of the 8th Fire Alliance, I contribute to cultivating unity and solidarity action among First Nations, Inuit, Métis Peoples and allies. I am also CEO of Decolonize Now, a consulting firm that supports non-profit organizations to work in respect and reciprocity with All Our Relations.

Dawn Owen has held leadership roles in Ontario’s public museum and art gallery sector since 1998. As Acting Director (2013-2016) and Curator of Contemporary Art (2007-2017) at the Art Gallery of Guelph, Owen led the artistic program and the transition of the gallery’s identity, centring transformational change as core to its mandate. As Curator at Guelph Museums (City of Guelph) since 2017, Owen leads the museum’s collections, exhibitions and educational programming.

Relationship-building and mentorship are core to her work towards establishing decolonial practices and contemporary collecting at the museum. Her recent work has focused on the cultivation of community partnerships and co-creative research methodologies, through which present-day lived experiences, d/Deaf and disability arts communities, and socially-engaged practices are centred.

Before joining Guelph Museums, she served a three-year term as the Arts, Culture, and Tourism representative on the City of Guelph's Downtown Advisory Committee. Currently, she is a board member serving Galeries Ontario Galleries – representing non-profit and charitable museums and art galleries in over 30 municipalities across the province. She is also a community advisor to the PhD Program in Social Practice and Transformational Change at the University of Guelph.

Jasmine Plumb is a designer, front-end developer, and undergraduate student in the York University/Sheridan College Program in Design. Her specialization in product design and creative problem solving is grounded in human-centred approaches.

As the digital designer and developer of Into the Light: Living Histories of Oppression and Education in Ontario, she deeply enjoys and is honoured to be designing and collaborating with a multidisciplinary team where she iteratively translates feedback and observations into design solutions.

Dr. Carla Rice is the Tier I Canada Research Chair in Feminist Studies and Social Practice in the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences at the University of Guelph. She is an internationally known feminist scholar whose scholarship focuses on non-normative embodiments, feminist and intersectionality studies, and arts-based research methodologies. Since coming to the University of Guelph in 2011, Dr. Rice founded Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice and the Revisioning Differences Media Arts Laboratory (REDLAB), a cutting-edge community-embedded research creation centre and a state-of-the-art medialab, which seek to explore how communities can use arts-informed research/research creation methods to advance social wellbeing and justice.

ᐢᑲᔾ ᐢᑐᐣᐱᐡ ᐊᓂᔑᓇᐯᑫᐧᐃᐧ ᑲᔑᓇᐃᐧᓭᓂᐠ ᓂᒥᐊᐧᑯᑎᓂ ᐅᑭᑭᐡᑲᐣ ᑲᐊᓂᔑᓂᓂᐃᐧ ᓂᒥᐨ, ᓂᑕᒪᒪᓯᓇᑭᓯᑫ, ᒥᓇ ᓂᑕᒥᑭᓯᑲᐧᓱ. ᐢᑲᔾ ᓇᓇᑲ ᑫᑯᓇᐣ ᐅᑲᐡᑭᑐᐣ ᐁᑐᑕᐠ, ᑐᑲᐣ ᐅᑐᒋᐊᔭᒥᑕᒪᐊᐧᐣ ᔕᐣᐟᕑᐊ ᐢᑊᐃᕑᐢ ᐸᐧᑦᐯ ᑲᐊᓄᑲᑕᐠ ᒥᓇ ᑲᑲᓄᑕᐠ ᒪᒉᒋᑫᐃᐧᓂ ᒥᓇ ᑲᑲᐁᐧᐱᓇᑭᐣ ᑲᑭᐱᓂᑫᒪᑲᑭᐣ. ᐢᑲᔾ ᒥᑐᓂ ᒋᑫᐣᑕᑯᓯ ᐁᐅᒋᐃᐧᒋᐦᐃᐁᐧᐨ ᒋᐃᐧᒋᐦᐃᑎᐊᐧᐨ ᐊᐃᐧᔭᐠ ᒥᓯᐁᐧ ᑲᐃᔕᐨ.

Sky Stonefish is an Anishinaabe jingle dress dancer, photographer, and beadworker. Sky is a trailblazer in many arenas: from her modelling for Shandra Spears Bombay to her activism confronting discrimination and tearing down barriers. Sky’s magnetic leadership brings people together everywhere she goes.

Cara Wehkamp (Algonquin) is the Special Advisor to the Provost on Aboriginal Initiatives at the University of Guelph. Cara is dedicated to enhancing the access and support for First Nations, Métis and Inuit learners in postsecondary education. She advises and supports institutional initiatives focused on the advancement and reconciliation and decolonization at the University of Guelph.