Call For Papers

WHOSE SHOW IS IT, ANYWAY?

COMMUNITY-ENGAGED PERFORMANCE AND EXHIBITION ARTS
IN THE SMALL CITY

A Conference at Thompson Rivers University, March 26-28, 2009

 

In collaboration with Canadian Studies and Western Canada Theatre, the Small Cities CURA is organizing a Conference at Thompson Rivers University, March 26 - 28, 2009. 

The small city in Canada today typically has a wide range of artistic performances and exhibitions, variously including professional, one or more amateur, and perhaps several alternative groups. Many of these groups claim to engage their local community in important ways, whether by means of highly artistic, up-to-date professional shows, such as might be seen in a big city, or by activist works on political or social themes—and less frequently the showing of works depicting local historical characters, narratives, and issues. This conference will broadly explore the claims and possibilities of community engagement—interrogating the desire and effectiveness of artistic and performance groups in following Lucy Lippard’s dictum that the arts need become part of “the social multicentre rather than the elite enclave.” (The Lure of the Local)

We invite students, scholars, and practitioners to explore ways—historical, ideal, operational, critical—in which artistic performances and exhibitions intersect with community. Specifically, we are looking for papers, panels, performances, exhibitions, or workshops that address the following kinds of questions and topics—as they apply to small cities and towns in Canada:

• Historical meanings of community-engaged performance and artistic exhibition.
• Essential theories/principles underpinning community engagement in the arts.
• The range and functions of community-engaged arts.
• Changing models of community-engaged arts.
• Is the small city especially conducive to community-engaged arts?
• Issues in creating community-engaged arts.
• Staging community: engaging on-site and alternative spaces.
• The professional arts: how engaged can they/should they be?
• Patrons: are audiences different in the small city?
• Critically engaging? The role of criticism in small city arts.
• Creating and designing the arts for community engagement.
• Engaging the arts with other civic entities.
• Re-examining paradigms of amateur and professional arts.
• Intersections between the performance and exhibition arts.
• Disengaging the whiteness of Canadian performance and exhibition arts.
• Indicators of cultural and social engagement.

Submissions: If you wish to present, please send a 350-word abstract by WORD attachment to the following address: petts@tru.ca.  Inquiries welcome.  Publication of selected papers and works is planned.

Deadline for submissions: January 23, 2009.