Curating for Change: Transforming NL Communities Through Arts Festivals
Friday April 28, 2017
MMaP Gallery, St. John’s Arts & Culture Centre
This day-long symposium will feature presentations by researchers and music festival programmers from across Newfoundland to explore the potential of arts festivals to promote social change. Dr. Ajay Heble will deliver the keynote address, “Curating for Change: Festivals, Improvisation, and the Staging of Diversity.” His talk will question how, as arts presenters and festival curators, we might best play a role in encouraging what George Lewis has called an “inter-culturalizing” of the field—a broadening of the range and scope of cultural references that the field takes on. He will draw on his work and experience as the founding Artistic Director of The Guelph Jazz Festival to explore how the curation and presentation of improvised music in a festival setting may provide a modest, but perhaps also a profound, role in enabling generative new forms of community-making, critical thinking, and social practice, and to consider how the act and practice of staging diversity is one vital way festival presenters can curate for social change.
Dr. Heble’s keynote talk is a public event and will also be live-streamed through Music at Memorial at 1pm on Friday April 28 and archived online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmsWHFlh-og
Schedule
Friday April 28, 2017
9:00 am Registration + Tea/Coffee and snacks
9:30 am Welcome: Dr. Ellen Waterman (IICSI-MUN Site Coordinator) and Carolyn Chong (PhD Candidate, MUN)
9:45 am Opening remarks: Dr. Noreen Golfman (Founding Director and Chair of St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival, Provost and Vice President (Academic) MUN)
10:00 am World Café Discussion #1 – Opportunities and Challenges
* See page 13 of the program for a description of the World Café approach.
10:45 am Break
11:00 am Panel Discussion: New Contemporary Art Festivals in Newfoundland
Moderator: Penelope Smart (past Eastern Edge Gallery Director
Panelists: Jane Walker (Bonavista Biennale Curatorial Assistant); Philippa Jones (Eastern Edge Gallery Director); April White (past HOLD FAST manager)
12:00 pm Lunch (provided for registered participants)
1:00 pm Keynote talk: Curating for Change: Festivals, Improvisation, and the Staging of Diversity.
Dr. Ajay Heble (Project Director of IICSI and Founding Artistic Director of the Guelph Jazz Festival). Dr. Heble’s keynote talk is a public event and will also be live-streamed through Music at Memorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFk50jxJxkY
2:00 pm Break
2:30 pm World Café Discussion #2 – Building Community
3:10 pm Break
3:20 pm World Café Discussion #3 – Curating for Change
4:00 pm Break
4:20 pm Large group discussion
5:00 pm Closing remarks
Discussion and networking to continue at Bitters Pub & Restaurant for those who are interested.
Thanks to the MMaP research centre for providing space and supporting the technology for this event.
