On June 9, 2017, the members of community organization and ACT partner Respecting Elders: Communities against Abuse (RECAA), along with Le Groupe Herencias and Encounters Project, organized a public walk comprised of moving art installations in downtown Montreal.
This event was organized to mark World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, which takes place on June 15 2017.
Tricia Toso met with Shannon Hebblethwaite to discuss her most recent research and to learn a little more about the complexities of family communications, in particular the challenges grandparents experience.
“Fingers on the line,” a short film by Line Grenier, Véro Leduc and Pamela Witcher, won the the prize for best short documentary film at the Toronto International Deaf Film & Arts on May 27, 2017. The film explores some communication technologies of yesterday and today, and brings to the fore some reflections on technologies and ageing from deaf seniors. “Fingers on the Line” is part of the ACT-funded research-creation project Les aînés Sourds et la technologie, and has been screened as part of various events Montreal and beyond. You can view the English version of the film here.
During the same festival, affiliated researcher Véro Leduc also won a prize for best experimental film for the “C’est tombé dans l’oreille d’une sourde,” a film she created as part of her recently completed PhD project.
Caregivers and the general public are invited to view the pilot and nine other pilot episodes and vote for their favourite between May 1-19th. The number of views and votes will influence the TELUS Fund’s decision on which 3 projects get the greenlight to go into production. You can vote multiple times for CARE REBELS but only once per day per device. Make it a daily thing!
This opportunity is open to ACT-affiliated students who have not had the chance to participate in the school. Interested students need to apply to ACT. Applications should be sent to application@actproject.ca by April 12, 2017 and should include:
1) a 500-word letter on the student’s motivation to attend Graz International Summer School Seggau 2017 and why the topic of the lectures and seminar model is of value to them. The student should especially explain how their research fits within ACT and how they will benefit from courses in the module of (Re)configuring Age and Ageing: Critical Mediations in Critical Times.
2) A C.V.
3) The ACT student support form signed by a co-applicant or collaborator (form attached)
Successful candidates will be asked to provide more information to the GUSEGG, including academic transcripts and a copy of their passports.
The team for the ACT-funded research project Smartwatches, adoption(s) and appropriations(s) has recently completed one year of fieldwork.
The fieldwork extended from Winter 2015/16 to Winter 2016/17. During this amazing period we conducted bi.monthly semi-structured interviews with participants, and performed a usability test. Interviews were recorded and transcribed and we are now analyzing them to bring the results into discussion in conferences, and to publish journal articles.
The project involved nine participants: five in Barcelona (three women, two men), four in Rome (one woman, three men). With ages between 65 and 80 at the beginning of the study, the average age was 71.1 years old. We provided participants with a smartwatch: they could choose from among the Moto G 360 models available on the market during the recruitment process.
The project is led by ACT co-applicant Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol of Open University of Catalonia’s (OUC) IN3 in Barcelona, and includes other ACT members Francesca Comunello of Lumsa University in Rome, Simone Mulargia of Sapienza University of Rome and Núria Ferran-Ferrer of OUC.
Ressources ethnoculturelles contre l’abus envers les aîné(e)s (RECAA) and ACT invite you to their POP-UP Restaurant at Place Commune on March 25th, from 12pm to 2pm in Montreal.
This event is part of a food blog project, Food Talks, À table with RECAA and friends, developed in partnership with ACT. The project has unfolded through four main types of activities: cooking sessions and food forums that invite conversation, participation and inclusion; intergenerational digital skills workshops that focus on the skills required to write blog posts (photography, audio and writing workshops); the production and publication of blog posts and printed promotional cards; and cooking and eating events with partners and friends to favour discussion and raise awareness through community about RECAA’s concerns and mandate. Through this food blog project, RECAA, as an activist organization, strives to develop agency within a contemporary “food culture”.
Come to enjoy recipes from our food blog at foodtalks.recaa.ca and find out more about the project on the ACT project page.
Where: 7669 Querbes, Parc Extension – Wheelchair accessible (Metro Parc, 80 Bus)
When: Brunch will be served on March 25th, from 12pm to 2pm
How much: $8 for a plate; $2 for tea/coffee
ACT members will be alongside partners Respecting Elders Communities against Abuse (RECAA) on the Older Women Live (OWL) radio programme on CKUT in Montreal. They will discuss the recent food blog project, and will talk about the longstanding collaboration between ACT and RECAA that spans creative and research projects. Listen in on Wednesday, March 8 at 6pm on CKUT (90.3) in Montreal.
Join us later this week, as several members of ACT present at the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) Conference as part of panels organized by NWSA’s Caucus on Ageing and Ageism. The conference is being held from November 10th to 13th at the Palais des congrès de Montréal. The full conference program is available here.
PANEL I: Unsettling the Linear Logic of Age: Narrating Complexity in Later Life (Friday, November 11, 11am – 12:15pm)
Captives of Care: Margaret Atwood’s “Torching the Dusties”
Ulla Kriebernegg, University of Graz
This paper analyses Margaret Atwood’s short story “Torching the Dusties” as a representation of the fourth age as exile. In Atwood’s story, in which a violent anti-elderly mob sets out to burn down nursing homes, the care home as a space of exclusion is a spatial metaphor for the experience associated with old age. A metaphorical reading of such narratives can take us from the concrete to the abstract level, and allow us to think about life on a radical and existential level, leading us to ask the question whether there is an “ideal place” to live and grow old.
PANEL II: Re-Imagining Aging: Creativity in Later Life (Saturday, November 12, 1:45 – 3:00 pm)
Resistance of the Gaze: Women’s Self-Im/Aging
Magdalena Olszanowski, Concordia University
Our ostensibly ubiquitous image-based technology culture is an affront to the aging population. Its image/inary of older women depends on lack of access to technologies for these women and their hyper-invisibility (Meagher 2014). What tactics are women using to resist this ageist culture? For this presentation, I will foreground the multiplicity and incoherence of the gaze by asking how aging women challenge conventional patterns of looking and subsequently demonstrate pleasure in being looked at via image-based technologies. I will use two examples: 1) the feminist resistance of aging self-imaging artists 2) feminist activist imaging work with elders in Montreal.
From PAR to CARR: Media-making and the Art of Activist Ageing
Kim Sawchuk, Concordia University
This paper explores media-making with communities of older adults and institutions (public libraries, social housing groups, and activist organizations) in Montreal to re-imagine what it means to age as an activist in a digitally networked society. Drawing on feminist methods for community engagement through the arts (Cohen-Cruz 2006), PAR/participatory action research (Blair and Minkler 2009) I build on Virginia Eubanks’ CARR or Collaborative Action and Reflection Research (Eubanks 2011) and add “creative” as an essential element to her methodological reflections.
PANEL III: Borders of Belonging in Later Life: Old Age in Indigenous, Minority, and Resistant Communities (Sunday, November 13, 8:00 – 9:15 am)
Ageing Across Species Boundaries
Constance Lafontaine, Concordia University & David Madden, Concordia University
Our paper seeks to emphasize the multiplicity and the connectedness of ageing bodies and life courses by conducting interviews with older women in Montreal, Quebec who share their lives with cats. We seek to explore and vex the notion of “cat ladies,” a term that connotes an older single woman who shares her life with a multiplicity of cats, but a term that also entails the dismissal of a later life lived outside of heteronormative expectations. We explore and record dismissed personal narratives of interspecies love and co-aging that exist through time and across species boundaries.