As part of our ongoing efforts to recognize contributions and excellence in a variety of areas, FCCS has established three awards for the members of the FCCS community. These awards present FCCS with yet another opportunity to express gratitude for the contributions that advance our mission and the objectives of our strategic plan and to shine the spotlight on those contributions.

The Teaching Awards for Excellence and Innovation were first awarded in the fall of 2013. Allison Hargreaves was the recipient of the Teaching Excellence Award, and Karis Shearer was the recipient of the Teaching Innovation Award. This year, we are excited to introduce the Community Engagement Award and the Service Award.

For information about nominating FCCS faculty, staff, or students, please see  the information below.

Community Engagement Award – This award recognizes excellence in community engagement within the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies (FCCS). Community engagement is defined, in the context of this award, as an activity or activities that make a significant and positive impact on communities beyond the University.

Dean Wisdom Tettey (centre) presents the new FCCS awards for Teaching Excellence and Teaching Innovation to winners Karis Shearer (left) and Allison Hargreaves (right).

Service Award – This award recognizes excellence in service within the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies (FCCS). Service is defined, in the context of this award, as significant and positive contribution to the work of a department, the Faculty, and/or the University.

Teaching Awards for Excellence and Innovation– These awards are designed to recognize one faculty member for teaching excellence and one faculty member for teaching innovation each year within Creative and Critical Studies.

Information about nominations can be found on our web site www.ubc.ca/okanagan/fccs/about.html

WHAT: Alterknowledge Discussion Series – Schooling the World: The White Man’s Last Burden
WHEN: Friday, March 14, 7-8:30pm
WHERE: Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, 421 Cawston Ave.

Following a screening of Schooling the World: The White Man’s Last Burden, a documentary directed by Carol Black, UBC student Alana Wittman will facilitate a discussion on the role of formal education as a means of alleviating poverty in the Global South. Featuring interviews with Dolma Tsering, Vandana Shiva, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Manish Jain, and Wade Davis, Schooling the World takes a critical look at the ideal of progress that informs formal education and argues that formal education can produce harm as well as opportunity.

The AlterKnowledge discussion series brings together faculty and/or students affiliated with the Cultural Studies Program at UBC’s Okanagan campus and members of the Kelowna community to foster discussions about topics related to Culture, Power, and Identity. The series is organized by Allison Hargreaves and David Jefferess, and is held at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, downtown Kelowna in the RCA, 421 Cawston Ave.

For more information on the Alterknowledge Discussion series, visit our web site www.ubc.ca/okanagan/fccs/news-events/ongoing/alterknowledge.html

The Department of Creative Studies and the Visual Arts Course Union are pleased to announce two Visiting Artist talks coming up next week, Sarah Burwash and Elizabeth McIntosh.

The Far Woods, book cover

Sarah Burwash, UBC Okanagan Alumna (BFA ’09), will do an illustrated public talk on Monday, February 24th at 12 noon in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies building in Studio (CCS) 222. Her presentation will be followed by a book launch and author signing of The Far Woods, published by Conundrum Press, 2013.

Sarah Burwash grew up in Rossland, BC, completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at UBC Okanagan in 2009, and now lives in Nova Scotia. Over the past five years she has compiled an extensive history of solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the US, and abroad. She has participated in numerous artist residencies across Canada and in the US, and has just completed a six-week thematic residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

Widely recognized and admired for her extraordinary talent in narrative drawing, watercolor, and illustrational drawing, she is also active in video, animation, ‘zines and artist book works. Her recent book The Far Woods was influenced by her artist residency locations, travels in the wilderness, and stories from remote areas and rural communities.

Elizabeth McIntosh in her studio

Artist Elizabeth McIntosh will speak as a guest lecturer at UBC on Tuesday, February 25th at a free public event. The talk starts at 12 noon in Room CCS223, Creative and Critical Studies Building, UBC’s Okanagan campus, Kelowna

The work of Elizabeth McIntosh reveals itself through the multiplicity of visual interpretations and understandings, shying away from aesthetic resolution. McIntosh’s position is in that sense rather bold, as she operates in an unguarded manner, with a subjective process that becomes an invitation to the direct appreciation of the perceptual experience. Reflecting on the painter’s role, she renegotiates limiting categories such as abstraction and figuration, to convincingly propose sophisticated, intriguing and intangible pictorial worlds.

Elizabeth McIntosh received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Honours from York University in Toronto, and her Masters of Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art in London, UK. McIntosh is represented by Diaz Contemporary in Toronto. Recent solo exhibitions include Pink Nude, Diaz Contemporary (2012), Three Oranges at Exercise in Vancouver (2011), Violet’s Hair at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver (2010-2011), A Good Play at Diaz Contemporary in Toronto (2010), and Cut Out at Goodwater in Toronto (2009). In 2013 she was the recipient of the prestigious VIVA Award in Vancouver. Elizabeth McIntosh lives in Vancouver where she is an Associate Professor at Emily Carr University.

From Left to Right: Astri Jack, Lauren Richardson, David Jefferess, Francine Lingad, and Samantha Steenwyk

Students in a 4th year Cultural Studies and English seminar have produced a Study of the Global Citizen Kelowna initiative.

Shaped by course readings on humanitarianism, the students analyzed specific components of the local global education initiative, as well as the way the initiative conceives of global citizenship education. The students characterize the Global Citizen Kelowna initiative as a form of ‘soft’ global citizenship, as it focuses only on global citizenship as a form of providing aid to the so-called ‘developing’ world.

The initiative does not provide opportunities for participants to explore the complex inter-connections among people in the world. Instead, it focuses on ‘empowering’ Kelowna children and youth to ‘make a difference’ by providing support for development NGOs working in the Global South.

Specific aspects of the initiative, such as the simulated ‘slum’ activity and the Global School House, present people in the Global South in simplistic and degrading ways, reinforcing long-established stereotypes of the Canadian ‘saviour” and the ‘helpless’ African ‘in need’.

The Study analyzes the Global Citizen Kelowna initiative in the context of global citizenship education and debates regarding the best ways to alleviate poverty. The students provide a variety of recommendations that they hope will make the initiative more ‘critical’.

The Study was launched in January at an AlterKnowledge Discussion event at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art which was attended by nearly fifty people. Students Astri Jack, Francine Lingad, Lauren Richardson, and Samantha Steenwyk presented key elements of the Study.

The project is the product of course-work in CULT/ENGL 437A Postcolonial Studies (Topic: Humanitarian narrative), taught by David Jefferess, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and English.

A copy of the Global Citizen Study can be found on our web site.

Click here for more information about the Cultural Studies program.

WHAT: Future Delta – Gaming Technology and Climate Change
WHEN: Wednesday, January 15, 2 to 3:30 p.m.
WHERE: CCS 142, UBC Okanagan Campus
ADMISSION: Free

As part of the FCCS Research Series, Emerging Visions: Digital Media and Culture,  Dr. Aleksandra Dulic and Dr. Stephen R. J. Sheppard, will discuss Future Delta, an educational virtual environment where players can learn more about climate change solutions by interacting with the space.

Future Delta is an immersive and interactive virtual environment that acts as a tool for communication between researchers and the public.  Combining climate change modeling, socioeconomic scenario analysis and 3D image modeling of real places, we aim to make climate change science and solutions more salient and understandable.

Dr. Aleksandra Dulic is media artist working at the intersections of interactive multimedia and live performance with research foci in cross-cultural media, interactive animation and computational poetics. Her artistic work is presented in exhibitions, festivals, and television broadcasts across Europe, Asia and North America. These works include films, animated media performances, interactive computer installations as well as instruments and tools for live animation.

Dr. Stephen R. J. Sheppard teaches in sustainable landscape planning, aesthetics, and visualization in the Faculty of Forestry and Landscape Architecture programme at UBC. He received a BA/MA in Agricultural and Forest Sciences at Oxford, a MSc. in Forestry at UBC, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Planning at UC. Berkeley. He directs the Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP), an interdisciplinary research group using perception-testing and immersive/interactive visualization to support public awareness and collaborative planning on sustainability issues. He has over 30 years’ experience in environmental assessment and public participation internationally. He has written or co-written two books on visual simulation, and co-edited “Forests and Landscapes: Linking Ecology, Sustainability, and Aesthetics”, Volume 6 in the IUFRO Research series. Current research interests lie in perceptions of climate change, the aesthetics of sustainability, and visualization theory and ethics.

Emerging Visions: Digital Media and Culture is sponsored by Green College UBC and the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, UBC Okanagan. For more information on the research series, visit www.ubc.ca/okanagan/fccs/research/areas-of-expertise/media/emergingvisions.html