The locus for art, research, activities and events undertaken through the Concordia University Research Chair in Art + Education for Sustainable and Just Futures. Studio Re-Imagine is the locus of research and creation developed under the banner of the Concordia University Research Chair in Art + Education for Sustainable and Just Futures (2021-26) and Socially Engaged Art and Public Pedagogies (2
016-21), held by Dr. Kathleen Vaughan. Studio Re-Imagine creates and evaluates a series of socially engaged art projects in collaboration with a variety of local stakeholders in Montreal, Canada, and elsewhere, working with graduate researchers via research-creation and oral history methods. Our mandate is to explore how socially engaged art engages public pedagogies to build impact and promote change. Three large multi-year projects are currently underway:
• Walk in the Water / Marcher sur les eaux, which explores the histories, political ecologies and personal meanings of the St-Lawrence River, particularly at the Pointe-St-Charles shoreline. An area repeatedly infilled and changed over the years, whose contaminated soil remains problematic for the natural world, this shoreline is blocked off by highways and railways and is virtually inaccessible to human passage. Based in visual art and storytelling (audio), this project aims to raise awareness of this shoreline and of the rights and needs of the River's ecosystems in general.
• Black and Light / Noir éclair examines the transformative possibilities of participatory practices as linked to cultural institutions, whose permanent and temporary exhibitions can prompt collaborative art-making, engaged discussion and -- possibly -- support longer term personal change.
• At Home in the City / Être chez soi dans la ville considers the neighbourhood immediately surrounding the Sir George Williams /downtown campus of Concordia University, a dense and diverse part of Montreal that is changing rapidly through new development (the transformation of the Children's Hospital site) and gentrification (via condo building). Taking up the histories and projected futures of the area from Bishop St to Greene, Sherbrooke St. to the Ville Marie Expressway, this initiative considers how and whether collaborative art-making can bring together a broad representation of residents and visitors in an exploration of common concerns about home and belonging.
