|
Below
are
descriptions of some of the Crossing Communities Art Project's
Workshops, Videos, Exhibitions and Public Forum Events.
Scroll down or click on a project title for more information.
Pictures of
Self-Harm, Sisters of
Sorrow Sisters of Hope, Looking
In - Speaking Out, Stop Motion Animation, Film Poems, Island Lake
Community Radio Project, Manitoba Youth Centre Workshops,
Women and Girls in the Sex
Trade +
Trying to Exit, I
AM HERE HERE I AM,
Staging Human Rights,
Hello Cards Project,
Out and About,
Conditional
Sentences / Reparative Pictures, Passing Pictures With Prisoners,
Portage Art
Project
|
Pictures
of Self-Harm was released January 24,
2008
The launch took place in the Muriel Richardson Auditorium at the
Winnipeg Art Gallery
This 20
minute video was
produced over a 5 year period. Women
who self-harm are the main protagonists, in the video they are both
interviewees and documentary artists in search of an understanding of
their own self-harming behaviour and society’s response.
Read a longer description of Pictures of
Self-Harm
Dr. Cathy
Fillmore and Dr. Colleen Dell have partnered with Crossing Communities
throughout the production of Pictures
of Self-Harm. Their collaborative research on self-harm is
available for download from the following links.
Fact Sheet Self-Harm
Among Criminalized Women PDF Document
Prepared
by Dr.
Colleen Dell, Senior Research Associate Canadian Centre on Substance
Abuse and Tara Beauchamp, Research Assistant
Reviewed by Dr. Cathy Fillmore and Members of the Manitoba
Intersectoral Committee on Self-Harm
2006
Community
Mobilization for Women and Girls Who Self-Harm
An Environmental Scan of Manitoba Service Providers PDF
Document
Catherine
J. Fillmore, University of Winnipeg
Colleen
Anne
Dell, Carleton University and Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse
in
conjunction
with the Elizabeth Fry Society of Manitoba
September,
2005
Prairie
Women, Violence and Self-Harm PDF Document
Catherine J. Fillmore,
University of Winnipeg
Colleen
Anne
Dell, Carleton University and Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse
in
conjunction
with the Elizabeth Fry Society of Manitoba
August, 2000
back to top |
|
 |
Sisters
of Sorrow, Sisters of Hope
November
18, 2007
An
honouring of missing and murdered women and girls through film, drum
song and audience discussion. In partnership with the
Winnipeg
Aboriginal Film Festival at the Winnipeg Cinematheque.
Four
Films / Videos Presented:
The
Valley Dir. Peter
Brass & Helder Cauricio Carvajal, Canada,
8 min, 2007
Sister Dir. Ervin
Chartrand, Canada, 13 min, 2007
Butterfly Dir.
Jackie Traverse, Canada, 3 min, 2007
Mr.
Soul (Just Another Indian) Dir.
Jeremy Torrie, Canada, 110 min, 2007
Honour
Song: Okiijida Ikwe Drum Society
Audience
Discussion led by
Crossing Communites Artistic Director Edith Regier
Alexus Young,
Experiential Woman
Jackie Anderson,
Manager of Little Sisters, a group home for sexually exploited youth
Gloria Enns, Program
Manager os Sage House, a drop in and resource centre for women in the
sex trade
Officer
Edith Turner
from the Winnipeg Police Services
Corrine Warkentin,
trauma counsellor with 15 years experience
back to top |
Looking
In - Speaking Out
Looking
In – Speaking Out is a cross-media interchange
connecting
women and girls (including transgendered women) who are socially and
economically marginalized. Participating women and girls will produce
and exchange videos, films, photos and podcasts over the web.
Through
a net based media exchange participants will lead public conversations
(locally and online) that explore obstacles and solutions to decrease
self-harm, sexual exploitation/the sex trade, teen suicide, drug abuse
and HIV/AIDS. These are topics have been initiated by
women
and girls that are current participants at Crossing Communities and in
discussion with our partners including Bandita Thapa Director of the
Women Foundation of Nepal.
Looking
In Speaking Out will be launched as a website in 2008.
back to top
|
 |
 |
Stop
Motion Animation
August -
September 2007
Visiting
community collaborator and cross discipline artist, Jessica MacCormack
conducted a 10 day
exploration of stop motion animation and video.
A number of videos using a variety of techniques and approaches were
completed including "Dancing Trolls" by
Cheyenne Traverse, "Butterfly" by Jackie Traverse and "DJ's Wilderness
Adventure" by DJ Fisher.
back to top |
Film
Poems
March
- October 2007
Visiting filmmaker, photographer, painter and writer Shelley Niro
mentored a series of video
workshops beginning in spring and concluding in fall of 2007. The women
participating in these workshops drew
from their
personal experiences and family histories to create videos that are at
once personal and widely relevant,
including "A Collision Between Two Worlds: Nature Vs. Industrial" by
Alexus Young, "Dougie" by DJ Fisher and "The Story of
Saa-gii-yaa-damoogk" by Jackie Traverse
back to top |
 |
|
Island
Lake Community Radio
Project
July - August 2007
Youth and
elders in the remote communities of Wasagamack and Red Sucker Lake
produced radio projects to initiate positive inter-generational
dialogues. Mentored by storyteller Duncan Mecredi, radio
producer, Sarah Miller and Alison Davis
back to top
|
Manitoba
Youth Centre Workshops
Spring 2007
In
spring 2007 Crossing Communities held a series of workshops with
incarcerated youth in the Manitoba Youth Centre. The workshops included
a Multi-media poster workshop, a Photography workshop on the subject of
Home mentored by visiting artist Dominique Rey and a photocopy transfer
workshop.
back to top |
 |
|
Women
and Girls in the Sex Trade + Trying
to Exit
May - October 2005
Women and
Girls in the Sex Trade is
a courageous portrayal by seven women and tansgendered women describing
the links between the sex trade and the drug trade, street violence,
child sexual abuse, family breakdown and childhood trauma. Each woman
scripts and directs her own story with deep insight into the dynamics
of sexual exploitation, drug addictions and the harsh
realities of
street life. Women and
Girls in the Sex Trade
is a valuable educational resource and intended to increase awareness
of the dynamics of sexual exploitation. The video productions
were mentored by
Shawna Dempsey, Lorri Millan and Erika MacPherson.
23 min
Trying
to Exit
is a
frank public discussion with the women and transgendered women about
the obtacles and solutions to leaving the sex trade. In this
talk
out forum event at the opening screening of Women and
Girls in the Sex Trade,
the women who told their stories in the videos share their hopes and
dreams for their futures and desribe the hard process of leaving the
sex trade and the long term supports they need to accomplish this.
Hundreds of people including front line workers and
Aboriginal
elders join together to speak out about how to increase the chances for
some of the most vulnerable women and girls in our society to
transition out of the sex trade. 20 min
A
DVD of these videos is available for purchase. Prices are
in Canadian Dollars.
$30
for individuals and Non-Profit Organizations
$100
for Educational Institutions
Please
e-mail newmedia@crossingcommunities.org
or phone (204) 947-5430 to order.
back to top |
I AM
HERE HERE I AM
July - August 2006
In July and
August
2006
Crossing Communities conducted workshops involving youth from
the
Manitoba Youth Centre and Ndinawe
Youth Resource Centre. During a series of three day workshops the youth
created digital collages that were then printed as 4'x4' posters.
The
mixed media posters were exhibited in August 2007 at Crossing
Communities as an installation that included the voices of the youth
who made the posters talking about their artworks and lives.
Mentors:
Pat
Aylesworth, Alison Davis, Edith Regier.
back to top
|
  |
 |
Rio
de
Janeiro, Brazil November, 2005
Staging
Human
Rights brought
together Brazilian government officials, prisoners, prison staff and
the public
in general to dialogue though the arts about human rights in the
justice system. Edith Regier, Crossing Communites' Artistic Director,
was invited to perform
In Memory of
Darcie Hall
a video-performance piece performed by Edith Regier with video footage
shot by Erika MacPherson.
back to top
|
Hello Card
Project
February
2005 - March 2006
Over a
series of
workshops
women at risk of
imprisonment
produced images for two sets of cards. One set was sent out for
Valentine's Day 2005 and the second set went out for Women's Day
2006. The cards
included a message written by the women who produced the images and
were sent to government, community organizations, and women in prison,
to raise awareness and request support for criminalized women.
The
workshops included photo-transformation
workshops mentored by Sarah Crawley and retablo workshops
mentored by Edith
Regier. Susan Chafe mentored the women in graphic
design.
back to top
|
 |
 |
Oct.
2,
2004
On October
2, 2004
UK and Brazilian based People’s Palace
Project
that stages Art For Human Rights partnered with Crossing Communities
Art Project to present a public forum that explored art as dialogue
towards alternatives to incarceration.
back to top
|
Conditional
Sentences/Reparative Pictures
October 24
- November 3, 2001
An
exhibition of
artwork by women recently released from prison and
Manitoba Artists Shawna Dempsey, Aganetha Dyck, Grace Nickel, and Reva
Stone. The show was curated by Edith Regier and took place at
Gallery 1C03 in the University of Winnipeg.
New
Genre
Public Art Forum
This
forum was co-hosted by Plug In Institute of Contemporary
Art. The invited speakers were: Suzanne Lacy,
California
based performance artist and author of Mapping
the Terrain - New Genre
Public Art, Dr.
Jeanne Randolph, Toronto based
psychiatrist and art theorist, author of Symbolization
and Its Discontents,
Kim Pate, the National Director of the Elizabeth Fry Association,
Debbie Blunderfield, Manitoba Director of the Elizabeth Fry Society,
and Edith Regier, Crossing Communities Director. Catherine Mattes an
independent curator moderated the forum. This forum was held
in
conjunction with the “Conditional Sentences/Reparative
Pictures” exhibition to bring together a broad spectrum of
the
community to dialogue about the artist’s role as engaged with
criminalized women and girls towards social transformation.
back to top
|
 |
 |
Passing
Pictures with Prisoners
1999
6
+ 4 = Passing Pictures with Prisoners was an exhibit in 1999 curated by
Edith Regier at Urban Shaman Gallery, Winnipeg Manitoba. Four Manitoba
artists collaborated with six women in prison over the period of a year
during that time their paintings, poems, drawings and ceramics were
developed through a mail exchange.
Between the Creators and
the Receivers
A
roundtable discussion in conjunction with 6+4=Passing
Pictures with Prisoners.
Dr.
Jeanne Randolph cultural theorist and psychiatrist, Yvonne Johnson the
great, great granddaughter of Big Bear and author of the autobiography Stolen Life
who is serving a life sentence (she joined the discussion via
videotaped presentation), and Mary Roberts a First Nations
elder.
Each spoke from cross cultural positions about the exhibition and its
relationship to the local and national justice system.
back
to top
|
Portage Art Project
The Portage
Art
Project was a series of studios in the Portage
Correctional Institution for Women. Initiated by Edith Regier as an
umbrella project for the artist-run centre Mentoring Artists for
Women’s Art (MAWA). Workshops offered
included photo
workshops with UK based photographer Rosie Martin and performance
workshops with Shawna Dempsey as well as Passing Pictures with
Prisoners Mentor by Mail Exchange.
back to top
|
|
|
|
|
|
