COVID-19 Anxiety: Location, Refuge and Loss is a collaborative creation research project led by Dr. Pam Patterson, Assistant Professor, TIS, Faculty of Art, with Daniel Payne, OCAD U Library and Joanna Black, University of Manitoba. It is being funded by an OCAD U Seed Grant, a Canada Council Strategic Initiatives Digital Futures COVID-19 Grant, a University of Manitoba Creative Works Grant, and Ontario Arts Council Exhibition Assistance Grants. Researchers have been exploring the generative potential of working in joyful, vulnerable, and committed communities of practice. Accepting anxiety as a given, as inherent in creative making, and during this pandemic, they are exploring mutually supportive pedagogies among themselves, with Gallery 1313, Toronto, and with OCADU and University of Manitoba students. Creating a resource rich environment for learning, they are developing curricular resources and teaching and learning models that are being articulated as individually expressive research results.
Since June 2020, COVID-19 Anxiety has generated three OCADU Speaker Series. It has also completed a dedicated research creation website for Canada Council for the Arts Strategic Initiatives: Digital Futures. The research team is in the process of developing a COVID-19 Pedagogies Libguide site and an exhibition with Gallery 1313, Toronto, with both to be launched early April. Of the project, PI Dr. Pam Patterson says, "Our students and student researchers have been provided with opportunities for professional development through hands-on research, production experience and through parallel creation activities. We have benefitted from the generative potential of working alongside such students and we would hope that they too will have learned from us."
We invite faculty and graduate students to submit grassroots creative resources/papers/visual work/videos/links to curated exhibitions to be included in our COVID-19 Pedagogies Libguide Resource site at the OCAD library. These resources-to-date have included: a researcher/student exhibit, a video poem performed by Lillian Allen, and videos from our COVID-19 Pedagogies speaker series. We are not only looking at innovative tools you are developing but also the content you are using to address the pressing issues and conversations of this time. The site will be launched April 6, 2021.
Submissions may be sent to Dr. Pam Patterson: ppatterson@faculty.ocadu.ca. Submissions are due March 30, 2021.