2010: THE CANADIAN CENTRE ON SUBSTANCE ABUSE CHAIR LECTURE SERIES TO BE HELD IN SASKATOON

The Bill Deeks lecture will be initiated in Saskatoon in 2010. Focusing on the subject of youth and substance abuse, the lecture will take place in partnership with the University of Saskatchewan.  Planning is underway for a Spring lecture. For more information, click here.

2009: IMPLICATIONS FOR WOMEN’S HEALING FROM PROBLEMATIC SUBSTANCE USE

Custody & Caring International Conference, September 30 – October 2, 2009, Saskatoon Pre-Conference Event – Implications for Women’s Healing from Problematic Substance Use, September 30, 2009, Delta Bessborough Hotel, Saskatoon, SK

This one-day pre-conference workshop will explore issues of substance use in the lives of Canadian women and how they heal. The workshop objectives are:

• To provide an understanding of why sex, gender and diversity must be accounted for in any attempt to understand problematic substance use in women’s lives
• To facilitate dialogue on the intersections between identity, stigma and social location in women’s healing from substance abuse
• To showcase and exchange ideas about research-based approaches to healing for women

This workshop is designed as a multidisciplinary educational opportunity for health care professionals, community/facility youth workers, early childhood educators, teachers, police, policy developers, and all other interested health care and service providers in addictions and mental health services, child welfare, education and the criminal justice system.

A 3 minute stop motion video created by participants at the event is available by double clicking ABOVE. A variety of techniques and approaches are used to create stop motion video. Originally, the technique was used to create an animated sequence, such as how cartoons are made. More recent, video has been used to tell a short story. Central is that each frame is created and photographed (or digitized) independently. This video also part of the lookinginspeakingout.com website to give voice to topics like healing from substance abuse.

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Pre-Conference Presenters Reflecting on the Day

Nancy Poole, BCCEWH; Alison Davis, Crossing Communities Art Project; Colleen Anne Dell, University of Saskatchewan; Sharon Acoose, First Nations University of Canada;  Tanya Tabobondung, Crossing Communities Art project;  Edith Rieger, Crossing Communities Art Project; Cindy Lee Sherban, RPC. Missing: Elder Rita Parenteau

2008: PICTURES OF SELF-HARM

Pictures of Self-Harm Video Screening and Community Discussion, June 2, 2009, Kenderdine Art Gallery, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK Pre-Event Workshop – Art as Social Development, June 2, 2009, SCYAP, Saskatoon, SK

In the film, courageous women reflect on their self-harm and society’s response to it. An unblinking look at drug addictions, cutting, the sex trade/sexual exploitation, eating disorders and suicide.

In the workshop, participants are provided a hands-on introduction to the idea of art as social development facilitated by the Crossing Communities Art Project.

The event was organized by the office of the Research Chair in Substance Abuse, University of Saskatchewan, and held in collaboration with the 2008 Innovations in Qualitative Research Conference, SCYAP, Elizabeth Fry Society of Saskatchewan, and the Indigenous Peoples’ Health Research Centre.

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Background on the film “Pictures of Self-Harm”

Pictures of Self-Harm is an intense and frank look at the disturbing action of self-damage and the social response to it. The film was made by the Crossing Communities Art Project – an art for social change project where artists meet with women and youth who are on the margins of society and are often in prison; they create films and photos that shift participants from the margins into the centre of public dialogues and decision making.

Pictures of Self-Harm was produced out of a five year exploration by artists together with sociologists, prison guards, the Elizabeth Fry Society, medical practioners, and women who self-harm. The women in the project used video cameras to portray and reflect on their drug addictions, cutting, the sex trade/sexual exploitation, and eating disorders. They are the authors, interviewers and directors of the film. They give us an unblinking look at what is more often seen as shocking and more commonly responded to with denial. They pose direct questions to people on the street about public perceptions of self-harm and its place in our society.

In the first half of the film, Darcie talks courageously about her motivation for self-harm “I cut to cope not to kill” then tragically in mid-film she commits suicide. In the second half of the film, Tonya speaks to medical staff, service providers and government staff about her self-harm and ends her presentation with the statement that “she feels she is on an instalment plan for suicide” and “that she will die out there”.

The film portrays academics, correctional staff, nurses, psychiatrists, and counselors, discussing and looking for answers to what is happening and how to respond to this very difficult and what appears to be a primal response to deep-seated pain and trauma. A response that is reaching epidemic proportions in marginalized populations.

If art is a language and self-harm is a language, can one replace the other was the question that initiated the Pictures of Self-Harm project. Women who came to Crossing Communities art studios were saying that making art met some of the same needs as self-harm. This aligned with the findings of the report by Dr. Cathy Fillmore and Dr. Colleen Dell for the Elizabeth Fry Society titled, Prairie Women Violence and Self-Harm where criminalized women stated that one of the main reasons that they self-harmed was to communicate.

In 2002, Videographer Erika MacPherson started to document Crossing Communities’ participants talking about their self-harm, she trained the women in scriptwriting, camera work, directing, interviewing and editing. Pat Aylesworth who began as a workshop participant became a main videographer and completed the final edit together with Erika in 2007.

Pictures of Self-Harm is part of Crossing Communities’ ten year history of investigating art as social change, exploring how art intersects with sociology, medical practises, government, education, civic responsibility and prisons to engage a social response to the marginalization and increasing incarceration of women and children.