ke ogs/sshrc - take two

This doctoral research project has two primary aims. First, to document and describe non state-based and non-corporate organizations which operate to promote photographic communication and photographic learning. De Cuyper (1998) and Braden (1983) each detail a rich history of community arts practice utilizing photography from late 20th century Britain. However, no comparable history of such practice in Canada exists at present. Through interviews and archival research, this project will begin to fill this gap by developing a history of community arts photographic practice in Ontario. The second aim of this research is to describe and define the social benefits, perceived and actual, of the activities conducted by these organizations. Given that photography-centered community arts practices exist in some form in most major Canadian cities (and in many smaller communities as well), it is apparent that a range of agents deem them of social value—both those who fund them and those who participate in them. By engaging in case study explorations of several arts-based practices, including field research in at least one community arts setting and with one visual arts cooperative organization, I intend to develop a theoretical framework that defines key activities, goals, and practices of community arts agencies and their participants. Doing so may be crucial to developing a strong policy position that argues for maintaining or increasing small-scale, autonomous, and community-supported initiatives such as these—particularly important in the face of continuously eroding funding for the arts (at least at the federal level) in 21st century Canada.

ogs/sshrc draft --comments?

hey folks--long time no chat! mind taking a gander at the following proposal and dropping in your 2 cents? thanks -k

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Several decades ago, Su Braden proposed that the new kind of critical literacy afforded by photochemical, electronic, and digital communications technologies was limited by our conventional notions of what constitutes “literacy.” The public’s capacities to understand and communicate through a wide variety of symbolic forms—not simply the written word—remained inconsequential, she argued, as long as written language predominated and was institutionalized.

Despite the proliferation of images and image-making technologies that characterize our contemporary cultural existence nearly 30 years later, our institutions seem more bound to the written word—not less—than ever before. In a culture where anti-bullying by-laws are adopted to protect a school board’s teachers as much as its students, and where the equivalent of a EULA (an End User Licensing Agreement) can dictate how one “operates” a package of fresh green grapes, it is apparent that a proficiency in manipulating the written word remains a singularly powerful ability. Yet, as I intend to argue, this is an ability that is not entirely inevitable.

This doctoral research project has two primary aims. First, to document and theorize communicative practices that exist outside of mainstream, text-centered institutional settings. This will entail a case-study exploration of several arts-based practices, including sustained field research in at least one community arts setting, and with at least one visual arts cooperative organization. The second aim of this research is to articulate how visual experience might be better developed and understood as a component of democratic participation in mainstream society. More specifically, this project will suggest how elements of a visual “literacy”—that is, learning about visual rhetoric and skill-development with image-based technologies—might complement and extend traditional literacy strategies, both to support the imperative of text-based language learning, and to provide engaging alternatives to those marginalized from traditional language learning strategies.