OUR PARTNERSHIP ORGANIZATIONS UPDATED
Why a Partnership Approach?
Our partnership approach ensures that the research we develop aligns with the priorities of professional advocacy organizations that are committed to preserving the history and heritage of performance occurring within the geographical borders of the lands now referred to as Canada. In addition, we expect that our partnered research will help to facilitate a transformation in policies and practices across both the heritage and artistic sectors, leading to more sustained access to, and development of, performance history research. We have engaged with four distinct types of partners: 1) national, 2) academic, 3) artistic sector, and 4) heritage. This range is necessary in order to achieve our research, advocacy, and knowledge mobilization objectives. In addition, the project is designed to promote a cross-fertilization of knowledge and practice, prompting important relational connections between performance-makers (artists), arts organizations, institutions, and heritage sector partners (including galleries, libraries, archives and museums). Finally, our partnership strategy will build capacity for the documentation of performance history–through archival, oral historical, and digital methods–and fuel an advocacy and long-term investment in the inclusion of performance in heritage research and education.
Partner Organization Participation
Central to our project’s partnership is the engagement of three national partners–Playwrights Canada Press, Dance Collection Danse and Canada’s Theatre Museum. Throughout the partnership development phase, our team fostered a meaningful and deep engagement with these partners. Our governance structure reflects the ongoing strength of this involvement, and the leadership undertaken by these organizations, serving as part of the project’s oversight committee. In this role, they will guide the project’s research approach and objectives over the project’s next seven years. The project also offers these partners a unique opportunity to collaborate on the design, delivery, and execution of the project’s knowledge mobilization strategies, including the culminating exhibition. In this way, Gatherings is facilitating the important cross-pollination of knowledge and resources across organizations that are often, in other contexts, unable to foster this collaboration because of cultures of scarcity and precarity in performing arts heritage funding.
The activities are supported by 7 confirmed academic institutional partners, from coast to coast, including University of Victoria, University of Lethbridge, MacEwan University, University of Toronto, Trent University, Queen's University, and Dalhousie University. The Potential Partners section of this application also indicates further academic institutional partners that will be finalized in the project’s first year. Through regular meetings by our participants representing University partners, we will ensure that the project has the research infrastructure to sustain its ambitions, including access to further training in EDI and data management, data storage access for researchers, research assistantship support, equipment rental, space access (including access to theatres for research-creation, meeting space for symposia and archive parties), and staffing for technical and administrative support. Projects receiving staffing support will include research-creations from our ‘artist-in-archives’ residency, artist-to-artist interview series, and an archives work experience program for students (see Contributions Plan).
In addition, these institutions support the project by providing access to their own collections/public engagement spaces (for example, the University of Victoria supports student and researcher access to the Archives and Special Collections, including the TransArchives; Dalhousie University facilitates connection to the Dalhousie Art Gallery, already scheduled for an exhibition from Co-Director Seika Boye). These institutional partners will ensure the project’s sustainability, especially with respect to support for the digital preservation of materials. In-kind support for preservation will come from all institutional partners; but in the first phase of this proposal, we will benefit from the University of Victoria’s Digital Scholarship librarian, and the University of Toronto’s Critical Digital Humanities Initiative. These tools are also valuable for our national partners, who have already been developing their own digital approaches to the dissemination of performance history. The participation of these university partners makes a range of institutional resources available to artists and artistic partners (for example: technology/equipment, meeting space, performance space), who are often without the resources to document and preserve significant performance histories. At the same time, such relationships allow academic institutions to become aware of, and learn from, the practices circulating in the professional industry, ensuring a reciprocal benefit across the partnership.
Co-Directors, Co-Investigators, and Collaborators affiliated with these institutions will also act as liaisons supporting the participation in the project of (currently) 10 confirmed heritage and artistic sector partners that are specifically relevant to each Co-Investigator’s individual research programs. These partners facilitate access for Gatherings researchers–to archives, collections, research materials, and communities for the purposes of archival and oral history research. Artistic sector partners also foster relationships with artistic communities for our project’s programs. We have some participants already in place (see figure above), but have left room in the project design for additional partners throughout the project, all of them fundable according to our financial plan. As individual research team members develop their research programs further, these additional partners will support local and regional programming, add to the project’s culminating national exhibition, and be featured through the project’s website and publications. All of the project’s partners are selected to involve people and organizations most impacted by the research in the co-creation, design and ownership of the research.
Statement of Partnership Intent: Many of the organizations we wish to support with this project are themselves engaged in active fundraising-for-survival at the best of times and even more so post-pandemic. With our seven-year funding plan in place, Gatherings can responsibly invite further involvement from a wider range of Partners, and provide in-kind services. These conversations have already begun.
Partners To Date: The following lists the range of newly added Formal Partners engaged through the project, and the liaison to support the Partner’s ongoing involvement in the project. Each Partner has in its collections and its archival practice records of diverse performance experiences, materials on performers and audience responses to performance, and/or an expertise in the preservation of ephemeral material and oral histories. All Partners have a pre-existing relationship with the Gatherings Liaison, and we have limited our list of formal partners in an effort to provide adequate support to each. Embedded links provide information on each organization.
The ArQuives: Canada's LGBTQ2+ Archives: (Dr. Jenny Salisbury, Partner Liaison) The ArQuives is the largest independent LGBTQ2+ archives in the world and since 1973 the only LGBTQ2+ archives in Canada with a national scope. The ArQuives was established to aid in the recovery and preservation of LGBTQ2+ histories, and includes material on both performers and audiences.
Dalhousie Art Gallery: (Dr. Seika Boye, Partner Liaison) The oldest public art gallery in Nova Scotia, Dalhousie Art Gallery enjoys a national reputation for the exceptional quality of its exhibitions, research, publications, and outreach. The Gallery is an academic support unit within the educational and research context of Dalhousie University and serves as a public art gallery and vital cultural resource for the whole community.
Directors Lab North: (Dr. Jill Carter, Partner Liaison) A sister laboratory to the Lincoln Centre Theatre Directors Lab in New York City, the goal of the DLN is to foster a national and international exchange between a community of emerging, mid-level and established career directors. It provides access to a strong pool of performance practitioners with archives and the resource for oral histories.
Elgin County Museum and Archives: (Dr. Maria Meindl, Partner Liaison) The Elgin County Museum exists to promote Elgin County’s rich historical and agricultural heritage by acquiring, preserving, exhibiting and interpreting artefacts pertaining to the history of the County of Elgin and to provide leadership and support to County museums in the promotion of a heritage partnership.
Fort Edmonton Park: (Dr. Heather Fitzsimmons Frey, Partner Liaison) Fort Edmonton Park is 158 acres of wooded parkland along Edmonton’s river valley. Begun as a Canada Centennial project in 1967 to reconstruct the old Fort Edmonton, the Park now includes the 1846 Hudson’s Bay Fort as well as the Streets of 1885, 1905, and 1920, depicting the evolution of Edmonton’s early history. As a living history museum, it provides interactive performance environments in particular for young people.
Nozhem First Peoples Performance Space: (Dr. Jenn Cole, Partner Liaison) Housed within Trent University’s Chanie Wenjack School for Indigenous Studies, Nozhem First Peoples Performance Space is the only publicly funded Indigenous performance space in Canada.
Inuit Art Foundation: (Dr. Mark Turner, Partner Liaison) As the only national organization dedicated to supporting Inuit artists working in all media and geographic areas, the Inuit Art Foundation has sought to empower and support Inuit artists’ self-expression and self determination, while increasing the public's access to and awareness of artists’ work for more than 31 years.
Nanaimo Museum: (Dr. Alexandra Kovacs, Partner Liaison) The Nanaimo Museum is located in downtown Nanaimo on the traditional territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation. It is a dynamic community facility offering diverse interpretive programming exploring the history and heritage of the Nanaimo area. The museum offers award winning exhibits and popular meeting and reception spaces.
OKâlaKatiget Society: (Dr. Mark Turner, Partner Liaison) In English, OKâlaKatiget means “People who talk or communicate with each other”. Stationed in Nain, Labrador the Society provides a regional, native communication service for the people on the North Coast and the Lake Melville region of Labrador. A primary part of the Society’s mandate is to preserve and promote the language and culture of the Inuit within the region.
School House Museum, Deep River: (Dr. Jenn Cole, Partner Liaison) The Rolph, Buchanan, Wylie and McKay Historical Society own and operate the School House Museum and have been in operation for more than 30 years. The Museum contains unique collections of records, artefacts and photographs, some dating back over a thousand years. The collection preserves and showcases the history of the Upper Ottawa Valley.
