Exploring Community Outreach Initiatives for Artist-Run Centers: A Case Study Using Anti-Racist Feminist Pedagogies to Create Inclusive Spaces for Knowledge Exchange

In a city like Montreal, where language, race and class divide the city into visible and not so visible ways and geographical patterns, it is important to analyze the often unquestioned positions of privilege held both by individuals and institutions. The need to create spaces where critical thought and reflection may take place is therefore important. Based on an anti-racist feminist framework rooted in a thorough literature review, I undertook a case study based on action research, to experiment with the possibilities of opening accessible and inclusive spaces for knowledge creation and exchange in a diverse society. The evidence presented in this thesis brings together my personal experiences with outreach programming, and the acquired information and feedback from a two day Recognizing Privilege & Oppression Workshop carried out with the board of directors and staff of articule, an artist run community centre. Data were collected utilizing both ethnographic and auto-ethnographic approaches as well as through participant worksheets, recorded notes from the workshops including key points and decisions taken, as well as the centre’s strategic plan documents. The research questions addressed are: What changes can artist-run centres implement to be more connected to the communities in which they are located? Are notions of access and privilege being addressed on a continuous basis? How can changes be actualized under budgetary constraints? In what way should curatorial, programming, and display practices be challenged and/or modified? And what can museums and larger civic institutions learn from community run centres

Intimate Pedagogy: Visual Explorations of Race and the Erotic

This project looks at what centering intimacy in learning can bring to racial justice and decolonial practices. The site of study is the shared colonial histories and knowledges between the Caribbean and Canada. It asks: can an intimate pedagogy help us transgress divisionary boundaries to produce transformative outcomes of accountability to ourselves, each other, and the planet? To explore this question, I draw on Caribbean and Black feminisms, queer theory, and decolonial feminist scholarship, including Indigenous feminism and ecofeminist critique. Audre Lordes (1984) theory of the erotic is a foundational pillar in defining an intimate pedagogical practice. Using visual methods, I look at the work of visual artists to study the intangible matters of intimacy that escape language in how we understand learning and knowledge. Through three case studies, that include interviews with three artistsMichle Pearson Clarke (Toronto), Annalee Davis (Barbados), and Nadia Huggins (St. Vincent)and autoethnographic narratives and photographs, I consider how theory, the visual and sensorial, and embodiments of knowledge impact how we learn together and create change. Through the work of Davis I explore how ghostly colonial matters held in the land can teach us about reparative learning in post/decolonial life. I then offer a queer Caribbean reading of the sea as a space of instability through the work of Huggins to find examples of transformative healing and learning. Finally, questioning my own body as a white researcher, I look at the potential learning offered through resistance and refusals of intimacy through the work of Clarke. I conclude with an interrogation of the human/non-human divide to argue for a relational framing to social justice. The principal contribution of this research is the introduction of the concept of intimate pedagogy. I define intimate pedagogy as the learning that happens with others in intimate moments, but also the learning that comes from the relationship we have with ourselves and the intimacy we create with knowledge. Intimate pedagogy prioritizes the understanding of relational life and opens sites for different transformative possibilities with others. It offers a tool to transcend disciplinary and interpersonal boundaries in studies of race and decoloniality

My body. My politics. An exploration of body image and health in Barbadian sexual minority women

There is a dearth of research on how pervasive Western stereotypes of the ideal body affect non-heterosexual women, and this body of research shrinks even further when considering sexual minority women in the Caribbean. This study aimed to uncover how negotiations between identity, desire, and body politics are being navigated and experienced by sexual minority women in Barbados, along with examining concerns about body image, the impact of societal expectations, and the consequences of these expectations on physical and mental health. Using a qualitative methodology that employed a semi-structured guide, thirteen women were interviewed over the course of a year. Thematic analysis revealed three major themes that centered around the interconnectivity of desire and presentation as it related to body image; distancing from Western influences and grappling with local body ideals; and the ways in which layered events and identities have resulted in complicated relationships with food. A selection of identified community needs is also offered in conclusion