Naming Ourselves as Popular Educators: An Appreciative Inquiry into West Coast Canadian Artists' Identity

Dorothy Lander; Anita Sinner

Dorothy Lander St. Francis Xavier University
Anita Sinner Concordia University

Abstract

This multimedia essay combines words and images in a creative performance drawn from our 2009 cross-Canada Whistlestop Project, 1 a study of the diverse art practices of Canadian popular educators involved in the womenâ€™s movement. We focus on the Tofino Whistlestop on Vancouver Island on the Pacific Coast, the most westerly point on this research-by-rail journey, which began on the Atlantic coast. The eight participants at The Common Loaf Bake Shop in Tofino represented diverse art forms: arts-researcher Dorothy; arts-researcher and photographer Anita; baker-designer Maureen; painter-collagist-muralist Marla; flamenco dancer ThÃ©rÃ¨se; baker-mosaic artist Stephanie; poet-writer Chris; and, poet-writer-videographer John. This essay unfolds as a show and tell of the research participantsâ€™ art practices as they constitute popular education in the context of arts-based action research methodology of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to generate personal and collective stories of life-affirming experiences of art as popular education. This video essay highlights the relational art of story-telling and story-receiving through gesture, performance, and symbol.

Author Biographies

Dorothy Lander, St. Francis Xavier University

Dorothy Lander is Senior Research Professor of Adult Education at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Her teaching and research practice focuses on the art of women activists as educators and learners in the womenâ€™s movement across three generations, encompassing peace, temperance, suffrage, cooperatives, art-in-medicine, palliative and hospice care.

Anita Sinner, Concordia University

Anita Sinner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art Education at Concordia University. Her research interests include arts research methods, life writing, teacher culture and digital media. Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to the authors at dlander@stfx.ca (Lander) and anita.sinner@concordia.ca (Sinner)