Making positive change with Student Life Grants

by | Jun 21, 2021 | Award, School of Music, Undergraduate, Visual Arts

When Black fourth-year School of Music saxophone major Baylie Adams wanted to make a community impact during February 2021’s Black History Month, she looked to her own instrument for inspiration. “We were only hearing about Black composers in terms of jazz music, so I read up on Black composers to find a more diversified repertoire,” she explains. “I’d never even thought about it in terms of classical saxophone.”

 Adams’ research led her to American classical composer William Grant Still—the first African-American to conduct an orchestra in the US, and the first to have his Afro-American Symphony performed by a mainstream American orchestra.

From there, it was a short step to gathering fellow Music students to record an online recital. In Appreciation of William Grant Still: A Virtual Benefit Concert, which you can watch on YouTube, featured a number of Still’s compositions, including one written specifically for the saxophone, performed with accompanist Yousef Shadian.

Photo: Genesiis Media Productions

Educating herself and others

As well as educating herself and her audience, Adams’ recital with the Quartet Cantabile (right, Alex Tiller, Baylie Adams, Ayari Kasukawa, Cole Davis) raised over $900 for the Blue Marists of Aleppo, a benefit fund directly supporting those affected by the ongoing war in Syria. Adams’ efforts and the recital was also covered by the Martlet student newspaper.

Adams, who received a $1,500 Student Life Grant to finance the project (more on that below), was glad to have stepped up in this fashion. “Putting work into an event like this made me feel better about all of the injustices over the Black Lives Matter summer,” she says. “I also wanted to engage people to learn about this Black composer, as well as listen to the recital.”

Turning thought into action

People all over the world are talking about anti-racism, anti-oppression, anti-discrimination and decolonizing work. But interdisciplinary PhD student Matilde Cervantes says it’s time to move beyond conversation. She’s leading a project with HREV to encourage action at UVic through visual storytelling. “That’s the really cool thing about art,” says Cervantes. “It can be one small move from thought towards real action in meaningful ways.”

The UVic Human Rights Education Volunteers Group (HREV) invites students, staff and faculty to their creative movement for an inclusive and welcoming UVic campus by creating a visual artwork proposal (e.g. photo, painting, or any visual) that evokes social change towards a respectful, healthy and peaceful UVic campus.

Remember to include a caption that explains how your image connects to the project themes. The artwork collected will form a virtual exhibit that celebrates anti-racism, anti-oppression, anti-discriminatory, decolonizing efforts at UVic this fall.

Submit your artwork for social change to mcervantes@uvic.ca by July 30, 2021. A $25 honorarium is available for current students, faculty and staff at UVic.

About Student Life Grants

Since 2011, UVic’s Office of Student Life has provided grants to current undergraduate and graduate students in order to support extracurricular activities or unique opportunities. Applicants for Student Life Grants can receive up to $1,000 to fund student-led initiatives that engage and positively impact the UVic campus community, plus an additional Anti-Racism Supplement (up to $500) to prioritize and support initiatives that focus on addressing racism utilizing anti-racist strategies.

For her part, Adams was thrilled to receive a Student Life Grant. “It was a really simple process and it helped me pay everyone who was involved in this project,” she says. “It was a good thing to apply for.”

“The Student Life Grants are a good way to encourage us all to get more involved in promoting these positive values in our community,” adds Cervantes.

Learn more

Interested in learning more about Student Life Grants and current projects? Sign up for one of the upcoming info sessions:

  • • Friday, June 25, 2021, 11am-12pm
  • • Monday, June 28, 2021, 12-1pm

The next Student Life Grant deadline is 11:59pm Wednesday, June 30.

Donor creates livestream learning opportunity

by | Jun 16, 2021 | Theatre

During the COVID lockdowns when we weren’t able to have audiences in our theatres, filming and livestreaming the work of our students was one of the only ways we could share their efforts with both the general public and our on-campus community.

Thanks to the support of donor Anne McLaughlin, sponsor iA Financial Group and UVic’s academic equipment allocations, the Department of Theatre was able to obtain professional-quality equipment (including cameras, gimbal and switcher) to livestream two plays this spring: Caryl Churchill’s Love & Information and George F. Walker’s Problem Child. While the first was more of a test run for faculty and students, nearly 700 households watched Problem Child in March 2021.

Since the arrival of the equipment in fall 2020, production staff have been busy instructing students in the art of filming, switching, live camera direction, video editing and other skills, offering our students advantages that will take them into the future of theatre.

“True livestreaming for theatre—where the performance is filmed live while you are watching—is challenging,” says Theatre’s assistant technical director, Simon Farrow. “We wanted the viewer’s expectation of the video production to be as polished as every other element of our usual Phoenix productions.”

“A good livestream theatre experience requires all the other elements of the production to contribute as well,” he continues. “The set design needs to offer access for good filming angles. Costumes need to translate over the screen. The lighting needs to be adjusted for camera exposure, the sound design needs to integrate well into the livestream mix and, of course, the actors need to adjust their blocking, already distanced for COVID guidelines, for the camera. All of the students working in these areas are reframing their work to the camera lens, rather than the auditorium.”

While livestreaming was a necessity in the COVID era, there’s no doubt that this technology will continue to be a key part of theatre outreach, even when we are able to return to our seats in the theatre. Without the generous support of our donors, out students would not have had this invaluable learning opportunity.

Writing MFA Kim Harvey wins GG Award for Drama

by | Jun 2, 2021 | Alumni, Award, export, indigenous, Writing

On June 1, Syilx & Tsilhqot’in playwright & director Kim Senklip Harvey became the first Indigenous woman to win the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama for her play Kamloopa: An Indigenous Matriarch Story (Talon Books)—less than a week after receiving her MFA in Writing from UVic.

“I am delighted and energized to learn that Kim has received the 2020 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama,” says Acting Dean of Fine Arts, Allana Lindgren. “Kamloopa ​resonates—particularly at this moment—with courage and hope. I deeply admire Kim’s artistic voice and look forward to following her promising career.”

Amplification of power

“It’s always been about the amplification, it’s always been about the fact that I just want people to read a play with characters of women who are full and funny and sexy and particularly brave and courageous in figuring out what it means to be Indigenous in this era,” says Harvey in her acceptance speech.

“I wrote Kamloopa to ignite the power that was within Indigenous people . . . to ignite journeys with Indigenous women that allow us to be exactly who we are in all of fullness and all of our fallibility and all of our fucking brilliance.”

Brilliant & irreverent

“Brilliance” is also a word the Governor General’s jury panel— Catherine Banks, Andrew Moodie and Kenneth T. Williams—used to describe Harvey’s work in their citation.

“The brilliance, the irreverence, the fire of Kamloopa sweeps us into the world of three Indigenous women on a mind-bending quest. The audience is seduced by the love, humour and depth of these matriarchs as they embrace and celebrate who they are in the world and with each other. A play that will encourage you to re-evaluate your relationship with Canada.”

Kamloopa had its world premiere in 2018 with a three-city tour under Harvey’s own direction. Kamloopa was subsequently nominated for eight Jessie Richardson awards, winning the 2019 Jessie for “Significant Artistic Achievement for Decolonizing Theatre Practices and Spaces”. Kamloopa was also the first Indigenous play in the history of the Jessies to win Best Production and was the 2019 recipient of the Sydney J Risk Prize for most outstanding emerging playwright. Kamloopa was published by Talonbooks in the fall of 2019.

Indigenous theorist

An Indigenous theorist, cultural evolutionist and an award-winning writer and director whose work focuses on igniting Indigenous power by creating comedic and joy-centered narratives that nourish her people’s spirits, Harvey also hosts a podcast that explores these same topics: The Indigenous Cultural Evolutionist.

She has worked across Turtle Island as a performer (highlights include the national tour of Where the Blood Mixes and the world premiere of Children of God at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa) and has participated in the Banff Residency  “Writing in a Racialized Canada”, which brought together Canada’s most exciting emerging BIPOC writers. She was then appointed as one of two artists to take part in the National Theatre School’s inaugural Artistic Leadership Program, which aims to steward in the next generation of artists to lead the major artistic institutions in this country, and participated in the Rumble Directors Lab as well as the Banff Playwrights Lab.

Harvey continues to work on innovating new methodologies for engaging and creating Indigenous stories that honours the multi-dimensionality of having our ancestors tell stories with us. She is the innovator for the Fire Creation Methodology and Salish Plateau Earthing.

Media coverage

Harvey’s GG win has been attracting a fair bit of attention, with her speaking to CBC Radio’s As It Happens in this June 1 interview. As she says to host Carol Off, her award-winning play Kamloopa shows “the power and perseverance and tenacity” of Indigenous Peoples.

“Our plight and pain is often what the narratives are structured around, but that’s not my life,” she says.

Her win was also covered in these articles by CBC Books, Vancouver Sun, Quill & Quire, Georgia Straight and others.

“I think something quite mystical is happening right now, with [fellow Governor General’s Literary Award winner] Michelle Good being from Kamloops and Kamloopa winning,” Harvey told the Vancouver Sun. “I believe this is the time to bring attention to Indigenous peoples’ lives and our stories. And to celebrate the resistance and the continued living of Indigenous peoples.”

Next steps

Harvey is currently working on the development of two television series: her Salish love story, On the Plateau, and the adaptation of her play, Kamloopa. She is also completing her first prose and poetry book, Interiors: A Collection of NDN Dirtbag Love Stories, and is in pre-production to film a musical feature of her next artistic ceremony, Break Horizons: A Rocking Indigenous Justice Ceremony.

She will also be starting her PhD at UVic Law in the fall of 2021.

“Everyone in the Faculty of Fine Arts is incredibly proud of Kim,” says Acting Dean Allana Lindgren. “Watch out! I am confident that this young woman is going to shake up theatre and society with her wise words.”