Peter Navratil at an open mic stand-up comedy night

A program that allows you to take creative writing, visual arts of multiple disciplines, learn unique performance techniques, and earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts was exactly what Nav was looking for to pursue his degree.

Now in his final year of the BFA program, where he is concentrating on interdisciplinary Performance, Nav notes that he has learned a lot about himself and has found direction for his future. He is a multidisciplinary artist working in found art sculpture, screen-printing, writing and all kinds of performance.

“I have a better idea of what I want, I have direction, I learned how to fail, and now I better understand what I can and cannot do,” says Nav “I reaped the benefits of an education and my mind is better for it.”

Nav gives some of this credit to the talented and supportive faculty and staff that he has worked with throughout the program. He notes that there are a number of incredibly talented and caring individuals working in the fine arts program.

“I regularly leave a meeting or class feeling uplifted in my pursuits, or troubled with the right questions to get my work done. The collective accomplishments of the people that work in the CCS building are substantial and they are more than willing to impart what they have learned.”

For the past two years, Nav has been heavily involved in the volunteer collective for the Living Things Festival, gaining experience in the real world of creating theatre and performance in the community.

The festival, organized by FCCS professor Neil Cadger, features a month long program containing performances from world-renowned theatre performers, community events, and opportunities for local artists. Throughout this festival there are numerous opportunities for students to interact with professional artists and gain exposure to some fantastic performance work the Okanagan would never see otherwise.

“Watching these shows and talking with the selected artists has helped me set achievable goals for a career in the arts, maintain motivation to continue my work, and create more interesting pieces through a broadened perspective.”

When asked what advice he would give to fellow and incoming students, in addition to diversifying your interests and trying a variety of electives, Nav reminds everyone to make educational choices based on personal development and interest. “Regardless of grades, regardless of career opportunities, pursue something that excites you. Eventually every meal gets cold, you have to stay hungry anyway!”

L-R: Professor James Clark (Exeter), Dr. Charlotte Tupman (Exeter), Dr. Emily Murphy (UBCO), Dr. Lizzie Williamson (Exeter), Gary Stringer (Exeter), and Dr. Karis Shearer (UBCO).

What do mid-century sound recordings and medieval manuscripts have in common? Thanks to a new Digital Humanities (DH) collaboration between the University of Exeter and the University of British Columbia Okanagan (UBCO), students now have new resources to learn to digitize both.

Digital pedagogy research has shown that one of the biggest challenges students face in DH is the lack of formal training in the tools and technologies required of them. We also know that resources are one of the biggest challenges to providing this training. Teams from both universities meet in Exeter for 10 days last week to share best practices for student training and research and to develop two online training modules, one for audio digitization, and another for text encoding.

“While online training alone isn’t the solution, delivering these skills through a hybrid model combining self-paced online modules with in-person training that brings participants into the lab communities is more closely aligned with the collaborative ethos that undergirds DH and is, I think, very promising,” says Dr. Karis Shearer, Associate Professor of English and Director of the AMP Lab.

UBCO team members from the AMP Lab and the Centre for Culture and Technology in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies (FCCS) visited the Exeter Digital Humanities Lab in the College of Humanities. The labs at the two universities apply the methods, tools, and critical approaches of the Digital Humanities in teaching and research. The new modules they have created will be implemented in classrooms, as independent self-paced learning, and as research training.

The collaboration builds on the foundations laid this spring, when Professor Bryce Traister, Dean of FCCS, made a visit to the University of Exeter. This June provided an opportunity to deepen the partnership at the Digital Editions, Digital Archives symposium organised by Karis Shearer and Dr Francisco Pena, Associate Professor of Spanish. From Exeter, Professor James Clark, Associate Dean for Research and Impact for Exeter’s College of Humanities, and Dr Charlotte Tupman, Research Fellow in Digital Humanities, attended to discuss their research and opportunities for collaboration.

The two visits established that the complementary expertise of our institutions will enable knowledge exchange in several key areas of digital expertise, including text encoding, audio digitisation, 3D printing, and 2D digital photography.

Digital Humanities research and training is key in both universities, notes Traister: “Exeter University has one of the top humanities faculties in the UK, in no small part because it has united the best of traditional humanities scholarship with visionary investment in cutting-edge and newer forms of humanities research. Exeter is a natural partner for the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at UBC’s Okanagan campus.”

Student training in digital humanities is at the heart of this initiative, with student interns actively involved in the production of the modules themselves. At UBCO, student intern Stephen French (BA English candidate and SpokenWeb RA), brings strong technical skills, as well as interests in literary audio and podcast production. With Shearer and Dr. Miles Thorogood, he will contribute to the reel-to-reel and compact-cassette digitisation content creation. At Exeter, student intern Connor Spence (in the second year of his undergraduate studies in English) will contribute his encoding skills and his experience as a DH Lab intern to this initiative. With Tupman, he will assist in the creation and testing of the collaborative training module for encoding languages to digitize text.

These modules will be implemented immediately in student training. Dr. Emily Murphy, Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities, will use the text encoding module in her courses next year, and audio digitization module will support the research training for the AMP Lab and SpokenWeb SSHRC Partnership.

“UBC’s Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies is thrilled to be collaborating with the University of Exeter on digital humanities training,” says Greg Garrard, Associate Dean of Research in FCCS. “It will help support our new Digital Arts and Humanities graduate degree, and at the same time also provide exciting research opportunities for students.”

To continue the collaboration, the teams at the two universities are looking for new ways to support student training and professional development.

“We anticipate that this collaborative pilot project will lead to the development of a wider programme of online, self-paced training provision in digital skills for Exeter and UBCO students, and a longer-term collaboration between Exeter and UBCO in Digital Humanities.” Says Tupman

“This is an exciting development for digital humanities at Exeter, just a year after our new Lab facilities were opened,” says Professor James Clark. “As might be expected from connective technology, digitally-enabled Humanities is a truly international research community, characterised by creative exchanges right across global Higher Education. Our project with UBC Okanagan is an excellent opportunity to enhance and extend our own practice in partnership with a centre of excellence at one of the world’s leading universities.”

Photo credit: Stephen French
Emily Murphy (AMP Lab Assistant Director and Professor of Digital Humanities) and Leif Isaksen (Professor of Digital Humanities).

Photo credit: Karis Shearer The UBCO team get a tour of the city of Exeter.

Photo credit: Stephen French (UBCO undergraduate intern). DH Lab Manager Emma Sherriff facilitates a session on Wikipedia editing.

What: Artist Panel
Who: Wanda Lock, Melany Nugent, Tania Willard, Victoria Moore
When: Monday, April 1, 2 to 3:30 p.m.
Where: UNC 106 Theatre, UBC Okanagan Campus

The Visual Arts Course  Union is hosting a panel discussion of professionals working in Kelowna’s visual arts and cultural community.

The panel will include Wanda Lock, curator at the Lake Country Art Gallery and practicing artist, Melany Nugent, assistant director of the Alternator Centre and practicing artist, Tania Willard, curator, MFA graduate and visual arts instructor in FCCS, and finally Victoria Moore, emerging artist and professional working at the Kelowna Art Gallery and Alternator Centre, a recent graduate from the BFA program. The panel will be moderated by Winnipeg based curator Jaimie Isaac.

The purpose of this panel is to shed light on possible careers in the arts, the panelists will discuss their experiences, education, residencies, etc. and their current positions in their field, to help educate our students on the possibilities upon completing their Fine Arts degree.

What: Student Okanagan Film Festival
Who: Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies (FCSS)
When: Monday, April 29 at 7 p.m.
Where: Mary Irwin Theatre, Rotary Centre for the Arts, 421 Cawston Ave

We are excited to announce the 4th annual Student Okanagan Film Festival! SOFF continues a tradition of celebrating emerging student filmmakers of the Okanagan Valley.

The screening will take place at the Mary Irwin Theatre and will showcase short films from a wide range of genres including mini-documentary, experimental, music videos, animation, short narrative & more!

This event is open to the public. Admission is by donation.

Submission deadline: April 15th.

Visit soff.ok.ubc.ca to apply.

Undergraduate student Megan Butchart has been working in archival research on campus and in the community

Megan Butchart had the opportunity to work at the Kelowna Museums as a summer student two years in a row, working with physical artifacts and the archives. She found out about this opportunity from one of her History Professors, Dr. James Hull, and this has fueled her passion about the possibility of a career working in the archives.

In the first semester of her studies, Megan was excited about the intersections between History and English that she discovered in her classes, prompting her to pursue her Bachelor of Arts degree with an English and History double major. Finding many parallels between the two subjects and discovering how historical contexts complement and enhance the works studied in English literature, Megan sees this as the perfect lead in to further her studies and career in literary archives.

The tight knit community on this campus has been an important part of Megan’s time during her degree.

“Because of the small class sizes you really get to know others in your disciplines and create lasting friendships. I have also had the opportunity to work closely with some of my professors who have been wonderful mentors and who have helped me find out about amazing opportunities offered at UBCO.”

Now in the fourth year of her degree, Megan has been working closely with Dr. Karis Shearer in The AMP Lab at UBCO on the SSRHC-funded project, SpokenWeb. This project is working towards digitizing and making accessible a collection of literary audio recordings on magnetic tape and cassette which are deteriorating in their analogue formats and would otherwise not be available for us to learn from.

“In some cases we have the only known copies of specific readings, lectures, and interviews, and it is therefore important to preserve that history for people to listen to and learn from, so we do not lose what came before,” says Megan. “It is exciting to work with this collection of literary audio recordings from the 1960s to the 1980s as they really reflect the poetry community of UBC Vancouver at that time.”

She is working on assessing the collection, developing metadata, and cataloguing, as well as transcribing and researching specific tapes within the collection.

Megan credits Dr. Karis Shearer with fostering her interest in poetry and as being a great influence on her being able to work with the team in the lab, work that is directly related to working towards her future aspirations. With Megan’s interest in conservation and preservation, this project is perfect to set her up for a career in the heritage sector.

“It is exciting to work on something big, to work towards a larger goal within my studies. I’m fortunate to have had these opportunities to get involved in different aspects of academia on campus and in the community.’

Megan is planning on working towards a master’s degree in archival studies after completing her BA at UBC Okanagan. She notes that she has had some amazing experiences here during her degree that will lead her further working in an archival field.

The Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies and Okanagan College Arts & Foundational Programs are please to present this new film series, Welcome to the Anthropocene: Now What?

The Anthropocene is a term increasingly entering public and policy discourses, including those of the humanities and social sciences, and it is understood as a force now altering the planet’s biosphere and implicating human-kind in mass extinctions of plant and animal species, the pollution of the oceans, deforestation and the alteration of the atmosphere, among other serious and even irreversible impacts.

While there is already ubiquitous evidence/data available regarding the Anthropocene, including climate change, environmental degradation, unsustainable water usage, deforestation and hothouse conditions, pollution, etc., the aim of this film series is to bring us to the “Now what?” a question that is not merely rhetorical but one that has local and global import.

All films will be held in the Okanagan College Theatre, Kelowna Campus (1000 K.L.O Road), from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Discussion will follow each film.

Film Series Schedule:

October 25, 2018 – Anthropocene
November 29, 2018 – Before the Flood
January 30, 2019 – H.O.P.E. : What You Eat Matters
February 27, 2019 – The End of Meat
March 27, 2019 – Speciesism: The Movie 
April 25, 2019 – Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home

For information contact:Dr. Jodey Castricano – Jodey.Castricano@ubc.ca or Dr. Shona Harrison – SHarrison@okanagan.bc.ca

This film series is made possible through the generous support of the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies,, Okanagan College Arts & Foundational Programs , and VegFund.

(photo credit: Farm Watch, https://www.flickr.com/photos/93911830@N06/25611230188/)

Laura Wyllie graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from UBC Okanagan in 2012. Originally thinking of pursuing a degree in towards architecture, she realized that the science aspects were not for her, and switched to a major in Art History and Visual Culture.

After completing her undergraduate degree, Laura continued her studies at Carleton University, completing a Masters in Art History. While in Ottawa, she had the opportunity to complete a practicum in the Education, Public, and Community Programs department at the Ottawa Art Gallery. Laura moved back to the Okanagan in 2015, and began working at the Kelowna Art Gallery as a summer student, continuing on as the full-time as a public programming assistant that fall, while working towards her Masters in Education at UBCO.

Nearly 4 years later, her job title is the Curator of Learning and Engagement. As the leader of the education and public programs department, she advocates the role of art in lifelong learning for all members of the community.

“I strive to create programs with my team that offer meaningful art experiences for all ages and abilities.” Laura says, “While my studies focused on art education and theorizing what the role of a public art gallery should be, I was able to reflect on daily experiences at the gallery and the diversity of visitors we work with, teach, and learn from.”

Laura Wylie, leading a public tour at the Kelowna Art Gallery