Since February, I've been working at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax. While I was a student at Dal and a staff member at SMU, I always thought of the Mount as that other, smaller university. In other words, for eight years, I didn't give this place its due.
I could gush about my new place of employment--I really could. And maybe I'm still in the honeymoon phase. Maybe there are things about the Mount that I won't like after a while. But right now, me and my job, we're twitterpated. I mean, the Mount has a long-standing commitment to the advancement of women. To social justice. To community involvement. And to alternative research methods. And this isn't just a marketing strategy. The values really do shape the way the place operated.
Don't worry. I promised I wouldn't gush about the Mount, and I swear I won't. I just had to work in that bit about alternative research. See, I've been researching research at the Mount--going to thesis defences and research events, talking to profs, students and alumnae, and meeting with the AVP research. And everyone has this crazy idea that you can do research outside of the library and the lab. They do community research, and they do arts-based research.
Arts-based research. It's badass. I met one student, Kwesi Firempong, who wrote a play as part of his Education thesis. A heavily-researched play that was intended to educate and to entertain. And, judging from the exceprt that was read at his defence, it is a beautiful play. I went to this incredible installation at the campus art gallery that was a collaboration between Dr. Marnina Gonick, a prof and researcher, and her brother Noam Gonick, a filmmaker. Incredible.
I'll admit--I'd never heard the term "arts-based research" before. The term may be new--or maybe it isn't; I don't know--but the idea isn't. For instance, I saw some killer documentary theatre at the Edmonton Fringe Festival back in 2004. My gorgeous, amazing friend Heather Fitzsimmons-Frey wrote and directed a lovely play about E. Pauline Johnson.
And guess what--I've done some arts-based research, too. When I was doing my PhD coursework, Dr. Dean Irvine let me write an "essayplay" instead of a regular old essay. Laura Thorton directed a later version of that essay play for Bad Marlowe Theatre in Halifax.
And hey, I am such a hipster that I was doing arts-based research back in high school. My friends Nesta, Kim, Mandy, Amy, and Glen and I created this amazing music/poetry/photography piece for our social studies class. To this day, it's the only poem I've ever written that I think was any good. And I really think it was good. And Glen, Mandy, Amy, Kim, and Nesta wrote a song. A gorgeous frickin SONG.
I remember getting an A+ on that project. Obviously. But then I wound up with a B on my essay in that class. I tried to talk the teacher into weighting the project higher than the essay. I mean, it was just a project, but the essay was an essay. Serious academic work. She turned me down, of course. I never really expected her to go along with it. Because I knew that an essay is more serious, harder, more valuable than artistic project. How did I know? Because the essay was harder. And writing a poem, working on a song, and putting together a sideshow of photos was fun.And if it's fun, it's not serious work.
Here's the truly amazing thing about working at a university--here's why I needed so badly to get back into this environment: working in the Ivory Tower means learning. All the time. It means learning that you're wrong. Challenging your assumptions. Finding new ways to look at things. If I could take what I've learned at the Mount back in time, I wouldn't have taken "no" for an answer from that truly excellent Social Studies teacher. I would have talked to her about arts-based research. I would maybe even have quoted from my own PhD dissertation about the kinds of things that art can do. And I would have smacked myself upside the head for thinking that loving the work you do doesn't make it less valuable. It makes it far, far more important.
