2024 – Wingspan Launches Canada’s Dis/Deaf Artist Residencies in K-12 Schools in 3 provinces
Building on Wingspan’s success in launching Canada’s first dis/deaf artist residency in BC Schools K-12, in 2024, Wingspan has now murmured into three Canadian provinces, placing artists in K-12 schools.
2024 Schools
Delta Schools and Vancouver School Board, B.C.
Winnipeg School Division, Manitoba
Toronto District School Board, Ontario
2024 – Building on Wingspan’s success launching Canada’s first dis/deaf artist residency in BC schools K-12, Wingspan has now murmured into three Canadian provinces, placing artists in K-12 schools who work alongside licensed teachers teaching about disability/Deaf inclusion, accessibility and pride.
“No solitary wing can rise. It may flap its rage and pain, but all that rises is dust. For travel, forprogress, for lift, we summon not a single wing, but an articulation of wings. In the naming of our gathering, we affirm that the span of wings is the measure of working together.”
Catherine Frazee
(Frazee 2017) (original emphasis) Former distinguished Professor Emerita of Ryerson’s Disability Studies programme and former Human Rights’ Commissioner for Ontario
Frazee, Catherine (2009), ‘Unleashed and unruly: Staking our claim to place, space and culture’, Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal, 5:1,7–9.
—— (2017), BECAUSE WE ARE: Anthem for Disabled Country, Canada: Digital Video, Wingspan
We focus on the often-overlooked artful dialog between the humanities and sciences on what distinguishes visible from invisible disabilities. Some impairments become visible or hyper-visible (e.g., blindness becomes visible when a white cane appears; deafness, when a person signs), while others are hidden or oppressed (e.g., the stigma that can accompany the disclosure of a mental illness). This coming year, we will highlight the social markers of disabilities or Deafness as visible or invisible—proudly included or inequitably marginalized or excluded—when artists attempt to break the barriers that prevent their access to and inclusion in the arts, education, and waged work.
Wingspan continues to perform research-creation and showcase pan-disability/Deaf artists’ lived experiences to challenge and transform stereotyping: blind artists doing visual arts, physically impaired artists dancing, Deaf artists creating music, and so on, in ways that exceed public imagination. While this work has been going on for about three decades now in Canada and elsewhere in the Global South in NGOs, it has not been formalized as part of both sustained artistic residencies in schools and in the NGOs. Our work is to traverse and connect these two spheres as public pedagogical contexts, bringing—for the first time—these two educational contexts into sustained dialogue.
Overarching Goals: Scale the Artists-in-Residence Program and Amplify its Impact
Our work tackles stereotypes of, and barriers encountered by, youth and young adults with disabilities or Deafness through an innovative eight-week dis/artist-in‐residence program that places experienced professional artists with disabilities in public K–12 schools and post-secondary institutions (6 weeks) and in NGOs (2 weeks) that work with youth and young adults. As we scale nationally and globally, we are developing a connective weave of formal and informal public pedagogies of dis/ and Deaf arts. The questions we will tackle through research-creation are:
- How may dis/arts research uncover and shed light on the new barriers for people and youth with disabilities in a globalized world with great economic disparities, both within Canada and between the Global North and South?
- How may a dis/arts movement for accessibility led by youth with disabilities and with the mentorship of experienced or professional dis/artists open new possibilities for social innovation in Canada, across teacher education and educational leadership programs for schools, teachers, policy‐makers in the arts, government, NGOs and the private sectors?
- How can Wingspan unsettle and positively transform stereotypes of pity, tragedy and deficit‐thinking by providing powerful role models in the schools and in the media?
- What curricular resources, workshops and best practices exist for accessible and inclusive dis/arts, performing & visual arts, and digital media that could improve the pedagogies, policies and legislation governing the lives of youth with disabilities and thus contribute to their enfranchisement?
To see what Wingspan is bringing to a school near you see:
2019 – Wingspan Launches Canada’s First Dis/Deaf Artist Residencies in K-12 BC Lower Mainland Schools
About Wingspan’s Dis/Deaf Artists-in Residency Program
Wingspan became an Established Cluster as part of the Vice-President, Research & Innovation Office (VPRI) in January of 2019. This means we are spreading our Wings into Canada’s public schools in the BC Lower Mainland, as a pilot to a hopeful national initiative. This project is timely because Canada has recently tabled Federal legislation to become accessible with bill C-81, The Accessible Canada Act. We have taken our program into the schools so the movement of artists with disabilities and Deafness can encourage students to become leaders in the dis/and Deaf arts around accessibility and inclusion, transforming what it means to listen to and learn from all youth.
Seven schools in two districts, Vancouver School Board and Delta School Board have partnered with Wingspan and are hosting Canada’s first fully accessible and inclusive Dis/ability and Deaf Artists-in-Residence Program in K-12 schools with artists working with all students as role models and mentors, telling their stories in first-person narratives and encouraging their students to do the same. Moreover, innovative teachers and educational leaders have stepped up to work with the artists and are developing curricula with the artists to meet Wingspan’s learning objectives and serve the needs of their students and schools. See artist bios here.
Vancouver School Board:
- Elsie Roy Elementary K-7
- Lord Roberts Elementary K-7
- Lord Roberts Annex K-3
- Cross Town Elementary K-7
- King George Secondary 8-12 (School Assemblies only).
Delta School Board:
- Dellview Secondary 8-12
- École Ladner Elementary K-7.
Wingspan has been inspired in part most recently by Federal Minister Carla Qualtrough’s earlier national consultation and call for accessibility and inclusion. Equally, we have taken our cues from the disability arts and culture movement and NGO’s from the last two decades led by visionaries such as Geoff McMurchy, Catherine Frazee, Bonnie S. Klein and David Roche. From the Unruly Salon at UBC in 2008 till Wingspan 2017-present, we have moved from the margins to the mainstream. We have taken our program into the schools so the movement of artists with disabilities and Deafness can encourage students to become leaders in the dis/and Deaf arts around accessibility and inclusion, transforming what it means to listen to and learn from all youth.