Throughout my time at the CAG I focused on public programs with Holly Schmidt and other members- Shaun Dacey, Jas Lally, Jill Henderson, and Maddy Tranter. My roles consisted of:

1) Helped facilitate the programming events concerning the artist in resident Keg de Souza:

-This included attending the workshop held for students of King George Secondary School, photo documenting the workshop and helping with the exercise Keg provided.

-Attended two of Keg’s weekend open houses, where I greeted visitors/informed them about Keg’s project and the details of the final events, as well as help her put the structures together.

-Pursued research for Keg’s final event, tracking down the best options for dim sum and bamboo mats needed for the event. Lastly I attended the event. Her project came together so well!

2) Haroon Mirza, exhibiting artist in mid-January

-Research Haroon Mirza, gather valuable information/videos/ other relevant information, start to structure information towards writing a teacher’s guide.

-Research Teacher’s Guides and Gardner’s five-point entry system to understand how the CAG’s teacher’s guides function. This research provided a template to how I structured my research on Mirza i.e. coming up with relevant key words, key themes, and questions that facilitated a variety of ways to think/question the artwork.

-Write an introduction about Haroon Mirza that would give incite to the head members of John Oliver Secondary School as to what kind of work they and their students will be engaging with. Giving a brief description of Haroon, his practice, what it might be like to experience his installations, and video links/images that further inform his work.

-researching possible LED circuit experiments to conduct for family day during the month/in light of Mirza’s exhibition

In an conclusive meeting with Holly, we agreed to continue working together throughout the New Year, specifically with programs concerning Mirza. We have planned that I will oversee/aid in completing the teacher’s guide with her, help to conduct further family day’s, and, if possible, document Mirza’s installation and interview the artist when he visits. As Holly and I had previously discussed my participation with the programs planned for John Oliver, I would assume to help facilitate those workshops as they occur in the New Year as well.

3) Extras

-volunteer at the CAG’s annual auction

-write transcripts for the educational videos by artist Skawennati (part of the learning-videos workshops)

-create materials (plasters/moulding) for Guillaume Leblon’s family day

-oversee and help facilitate New West Minster High School tour of Guillaume Leblon tour

-write an introductory blog post about myself and my position with the CAG

My initial project plan was structured in terms of specific projects and dates, however Holly provided several extra opportunities that engaged my position in different and spontaneous areas as well. Although my project did not consist of completing a full teacher’s guide for Haroon (rather conducting research/researching teacher’s guides, writing an introduction for J.O), my partnership will continue in to the New Year, helping Holly to fully complete Haroon’s teacher’s guide, and help facilitate other programs planned for him. Skills that I previously had before the partnership was the ability to perform in-depth research, strong interpersonal and communication skills, rich exposure/experience with contemporary and historical art, and although this might be somewhat off, but as a teacher of yoga I felt an initial interest or experience with education/teaching (although art and yoga are two different fields completely).

A quality that I found very compelling inherent in the mandate/programs of the CAG was to provide a large scope of accessibility for the community to engage with contemporary art. As a large part of my project was to write an introduction on Haroon and gather research for a teacher’s guide, I became interested in how linguistics are an integral part of accessibility. I’m most familiar with writing papers based on Art History or Art Theory, two genres very different from writing an educative guide. I actually had struggled when I wrote the introduction on Haroon for J.O in a strait forward, non “art history” type of way.  In my own pursuit, I conducted and completed a research paper concerning the use of linguistic expressions of metadiscourse (a linguistic function specifically to simplify, organize, and engage the readers) and its functions in relation to a teacher’s guide compared to an “art jargon” riddled webzine platform. This research in combination of working with Holly very much intrigued my interest in learning more about writing teacher’s guides, or art education in general. With this research and feedback from Holly, I developed a new perspectives concerning writing about art in very strait forward ways. In addition to the closing meeting I conducted with Holly, I had discussed this research/pursuit with her, and we discussed what options may look like for me in the future either with her or in further education. Whether in writing or with programs/workshops, something that I really would like to continue to work with are methods of engaging the community/readers. This partnership really opened my eyes to the variety of roles/activity surrounding education in the arts.

Contemporary Art Gallery, Public Program Intern, September 2016-present

This position focused on several areas of the Contemporary Art Galleries public programs. Strong interpersonal communication skills, strength in conducting in-depth research and writing, proficient organizational skills, and knowledge of the contemporary art realm were employed. Using these skills, my position facilitated preliminary research for writing teacher’s guides on artist Haroon Mirza, attending workshops with High School students, working with the artist in resident Keg de Souza, and contributing towards various community based workshops and programs such as family day, learning guides, and the annual auction. 

Much of my partnership with Holly focused on researching the CAG’s featured artists to write a Teachers Guide. Teachers guides are written to support high-school teachers to educate their students about the CAG’s artists, providing questions and workshops that enable accessible knowledge platforms for students to learn from. As Holly Schmidt’s position has taken over public programming for youth, much of her energy at the CAG goes in to writing teachers guides and other forms of youth programs. As as homage to Holly and the work that I have personally carried out researching the January exhibiting artist, Haroon Mirza, for the to-be written Teacher’s Guide, I’ve decided to write a mini teacher’s guide about Holly as an artist herself. I felt it would be an appropriate culmination of the work I pursued at my time at the CAG, and to gift Holly a break from writing the plethora of teacher’s guides about other artists with one about herself.

I started by researching Holly’s practice. What I found interesting about her work were parallel to the artist in resident at the CAG throughout my partnership, Keg De Souza. Similar to what I found incredibly interesting about Keg’s work, Holly’s practice very much focuses on creating participatory informal pedagogy, engaging discussions concerning sociopolitical contexts of elements in the changing urban landscape. In addition, likewise to Keg, Holly’s work often deals with food culture in these respects. The qualities of discussion, history, pedagogy, sociopolitical contexts, culture, and community I found were incredibly compelling, and influenced how I wanted to frame the teacher’s guide.

I framed the teacher’s guides in the same respects that the CAG organizes their teachers guides, giving a short description of the artist in relation to the contemporary art community and the CAG, and then pulling out key themes, key words that help contextualize the artists practice. As discussions surrounding food seemed to be predominate in Holly’s practice, I decided to make an homage to her practice, most specifically her project “Grow”, by creating a teacher’s guide/mini education about Holly’s personal favourite food- popcorn. The guide incorporates a brief introduction of Holly’s practice, the significance of her project “Grow”, and the socio-political history of popcorn to reflect Holly’s use of informal pedagogy. Throughout researching the history of popcorn, I’ve created key themes and words that contextualize popcorn’s history in similar ways the Teacher’s Guides function. “Grow”, a project whereby Holly and Othersites worked together functioned to prompt discussions about agriculture in the changing urban landscape of Vancouver. By engaging the community living in the Olympic village with building agricultural plots, discussions around the sociopolitical importance of community gardens in the changing urban space manifested out of this project. To reflect this project, I incorporated a knowledge guide to how to grow your own corn so that one could themselves “grow” their own popcorn. The elements I chose to bring together spoke to the implications of food culture, discussions, and sociopolitical contexts inherent in Holly’s work, and the pedagogy that relates to both Holly’s practice and the nature of the Teacher’s Guides. The components are of elements that deeply influenced my time at the CAG, and  frame the homage to this mini teacher’s guide/discussion about her own favourite food. It functions as a gift of “giving back to Holly” what she has so passionately provided for the community and contemporary art world throughout her own practice and position at the CAG.

To wrap this project up, Michele and I both agreed that our projects were in dialogue with each other. To sum up our time at the CAG, I think we can both agree that the strong factors we took away from our experience at the CAG was the importance of education, research, discussion, and most importantly- community, throughout the multifaceted engagements of Contemporary Art.

Michele and I met with Holly at the CAG last Tuesday, the 26th, where she gave us an overview of all of the CAG’s projects for the next three months. She went over Keg de Souza’s residency and the events related to her project, the artists in upcoming exhibitions in to January, the partnerships with local high schools, and the events that take place at the CAG such as family day and tours. We were not given specific tasks that we’ll be working on throughout partnership but rather she opened up the possibility for us to work with any area within these projects that we are interested in. This is great for Michele and I because it gives us the freedom to do some projects together but also personalize what projects we want to work on. For example Michele is interested in communications/social media and working with children, where I am keen on working on writing the education public programs for the exhibitions and working with the education projects with the high schools. The projects that the CAG carries out are dominantly rooted in education which function in an integrative way with the community. I see that these programs acts as a platform for the community to learn about the art projects as an engaged participant of the projects rather than as outside viewers in the gallery space, a fantastic way for people of all ages to have access to learning about contemporary art.

After my meeting Holly sent me an email giving details of the dates of the events associated with projects. Emailing is a platform we have been communicating on however we have planned to have Tuesday afternoons for 5 hours be the time that I do work with her at the CAG. Outside of my weekly work period at the gallery I’ll attend extracurricular events on dates that I choose, for example two days at Keg De Souza’s weekend workshops, and one family day. I will be attending Keg’s workshop on October 22nd and 23rd, and family day on November 27. Other than those dates the project offers a variety of possible focuses we can choose to work with, and seems that as the partnership progresses my roles in the projects will be evolving with them. Holly’s plans (dates, events) with high schools John Oliver and King George have yet to be solidified, so depending on how those plans evolve the schedule is subject to shift. Given the nature of the project consisting of many different areas to work in, I believe my role working at the CAG is to help facilitate Holly and Shaun with the projects that are taking place over the course of the partnership, however throughout the course of the partnership I want to engage in my own research in education programs offered at the CAG and other galleries in Vancouver.