Creative Resilience

Exploring Arts & Health

Creative Resilience: Exploring Arts & Health is a short series of events taking place between Nov. 2019 – Jan. 2020, exploring the intersections between arts and health.

Curated by: Emily Enhorning and Lital Khaikin

Over the past year, ELAN has wanted to engage more proactively with the specific barriers artists face in relation to health. In 2014, our YEAH! (Youth, Education, Arts, Health) project allowed us to begin documenting resources and connecting artists with health practitioners. More recently, surveys (conducted between 2018-2019), focus groups (2019), and anecdotal conversations with members (documented from 2016-onward), have shown the need to resume interrogation of the overlapping effects of precarity, isolation, and lack of resources on artists’ health.

These conversations have highlighted that the health care needs of artists are often specific and unique, and can be informed by:

Precarious labour, gig economies, and low (or no) pay force artists into an ever-greater dependency on subsidies, and demand of them the commodification of their work.

Many freelance artists have less access to insurance, and even for those who do, the care that artists require is often specific (ex: chiropractors, massage therapists), and expensive.

Stereotypes around artists’ labour (ex: burn-out, sleep deprivation, and over-work) normalize harmful practices, while neoliberal self-care narratives put the onus on the individual artist to just “be less stressed”.

Gentrification and a lack of affordable housing exacerbates socioeconomic inequity, forcing working artists out of their homes and studios, or out of their cities entirely.

These structural impacts cause individuals to burn out and communities to fragment, imposing limits on creative being.

Despite all of this, there doesn’t seem to be a clear pool of resources or organizations in Quebec to help artists navigate health. We are interested in building community resilience by connecting artists with tangible tools and resources, while also situating these networks within broader conversations about structural barriers to health care.

Past Events

Access & Alternatives

Panel Discussion

Thursday January 30, 2020

6 – 7:30 pm at MAI’s Café-bar

3680 Jeanne Mance St, Montreal, Quebec H2X 2K5

This event is FREE to attend!

RSVP by sending an email to admin@quebec-elan.org

In January, we are bringing together the threads of these conversations in a panel discussion that will connect artists with tangible community resources. This panel addresses scarcity and access to resources, as well as creative solutions that foster space for individual and community well-being.

Joining the panel is Tiger Lotus Co-operative Wellness Centre, whose work frequently intersects with artists and artistic practices, and considers the structural impacts of wealth inequality and privatization. The panel also features Aimee Louw, a journalist and community activist working on topics of accessibility, disability justice, sexuality, and undoing settler fantasies.

Also on the panel is Lisa Ndejuru, who works with survivors of organized violence to create accessible, non-medicalized, scalable strategies for healing and change after trauma and dislocation. Lisa Ndejuru is a transdisciplinary PhD candidate at Concordia University and is a member of the Ordre des psychologues du Québec, with certifications in Moreno psychodrama and third-party neutral conflict resolution. She is a skilled practitioner of playback theatre and co-founded the Montreal-based Living Histories Ensemble. Born in Rwanda, she has served the Rwandan diaspora in North America for more than 20 years as an organizer, researcher and activist. Her extensive experimentation with storytelling, play and improvised theatre aims for individual and collective meaning-making and empowerment in the aftermath of large-scale political violence.

Creative Resources: A Mindfulness-Based Approach to Self-Care

Sonia Osorio

Sunday, January 26, 2020

11 AM – 1 PM at Studio 428

3680 Jeanne Mance St, Montreal, Quebec H2X 2K5

$10 for ELAN members | $15 for public. Please send payments via Paypal to: admin@quebec-elan.org. (To do this: sign into your Paypal account and press “send money”). 

If you cannot pay via Paypal: please contact Membership Services Coordinator, Emily Enhorning to arrange an alternate method: membership@quebec-elan.org.

Our primary creative resource is our own body-mind. We need to connect to this on a daily basis in a way that is healthy, nurturing and supportive, particularly during times of stress and tension, when support and resources may not always seem readily available. This workshop will explore self-awareness and awareness of our environment as a model for self-care. We will use mindfulness-based practices to bring awareness to how we move through – and are moved by – life, and to how we can resource all that presents itself as potential material for creative change, within ourselves and through the work that we do. Practices will include seated and walking meditation, dyad work and group exercises.

Sonia Osorio has a Master’s level training homeopathic medicine and naturopathy. She is also a massage therapist and a certified yoga instructor and meditation practitioner with over 20-years’ experience in mind-body approaches to health and well-being. For several years, Sonia worked as a writer and editor in medical and health care publishing, and she has also helped develop and facilitate teaching curricula for various organizations. She has worked with individuals in areas related to physical and emotional trauma, addiction, women’s health, and gender issues. Her work is individualized and collaborative, encouraging us to broaden our perspective of what constitutes well-being – for ourselves and for our communities.

Resilience Theatre Workshop

Lisa Ndejuru and Joliane Allaire

Wednesday, January 22, 2020 

6 – 8 PM at Studio 428

3680 Jeanne Mance St, Montreal, Quebec H2X 2K5

$10 for ELAN members | $15 for public. Please send payments via Paypal to: admin@quebec-elan.org. (To do this: sign into your Paypal account and press “send money”). 

If you cannot pay via Paypal: please contact Membership Services Coordinator, Emily Enhorning to arrange an alternate method: membership@quebec-elan.org.

Lisa Ndejuru and Joliane Allaire will be leading a workshop informed by Social Presencing Theatre, Playback Theatre and Moreno psychodrama, whose creative methods are used to explore storytelling and movement through trauma. By sculpting what it is that makes us feel stuck in the creative process, participants in the workshop will engage with the question: where does movement begin?

This workshop is open to the public: no prior performance experience necessary!

Fascial Topologies

Facilitated by Csenge Kolozsvari

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

5 to 7 PM @ SenseLab
1515 Sainte-Catherine W.
E.V. building – Room 10-785.

FREE / Open to everyone!

Inspired by the ways of moving-with the fascial planes (connective tissue) of the body, we invite participants to explore this deeply relational layer together. How can it lead to a rethinking where a body begins and ends, an attunement to a field beyond our perceived limits? In what ways can we agitate the paths that often lead to exhaustion; not only of humans, but of the world?

Click here to learn more about this event.

Performative Discussion: burn-out

Studio 303

Friday, November 15th, 2019

5 p.m. to 7 p.m. @ Studio 303 – FREE

Free child care (booking required)*

We’re opening the Creative Resilience: Exploring Arts & Health series with Studio 303 by holding a Performative Discussion on topics of burnout and precarity. By starting with this open, participatory format, we hope to learn more about the specific needs and confusions artists have around health, and then respond to them in the subsequent events.

Studio 303 and ELAN are co-hosting a Performative Discussion on the topic of “Artist Burnout”. This event’s playful format (borrowed from Lois Weaver’s Long Table), preserves a space for intimate dialogue (anyone seated at the table is a guest speaker/performer) while an unlimited amount of observers may gather around the table.

*Free child care: offered by Ruby Kato Attwood, a childcare provider with Red Cross Certification who provides a gentle, inclusive approach, using non-violent communication and play-based co-operation strategies. For more information, please visit our website or contact ruby.attwood@gmail.com. To BOOK please contact Studio 303 at info@studio303.ca.

Studio 303’s accessibility – Consult this page for detailed information.

, ,

Access and Alternatives: Community Resources

Tony Alfonso from AMI-Quebec. All photos by Nasuna Stuart-Ulin. The Access and Alternatives panel brought together the threads of conversations held throughout the Creative Resilience series, addressing the issues of scarcity and access…
, ,

Access and Alternatives: Panel Summary

From left to right: Lisa Ndejuru, Courtney Kirkby, Aimee Louw, Emily Enhorning, Lital Khaikin. All photos by Nasuna Stuart-Ulin. January 30, 2020. Introduction to Access & Alternatives Creative Resilience was a series of events that…
, ,

Resilience Theatre: Workshop Reflection

Stills from videos by Daybi. On January 22, Lisa Ndejuru and Joliane Allaire facilitated the Resilience Theatre workshop, the third event in the Creative Resilience series. Through this workshop, participants confronted the ways in which…
, ,

Creative Resources: Mindfulness-based Approach to Self Care Workshop Reflection

Sonia Osorio. Photo by Nasuna Stuart-Ulin. Throughout the Creative Resilience series, we explored the ways in which stereotypes around artists’ labour ⁠normalize harmful practices by creating a sense of inevitability around burn-out,…
, ,

Discovering and Playing with Fascial Topologies: Workshop Summary

Photo by Lital Khaikin. “What institutionally sanctioned therapies fail to critically engage with, is the political operation of how the brain becomes subject. Perhaps unconsciously, or perhaps out of willful blindness, the dominant medical…
,

How Can We Repair? Strategies for Resilience from Performative Discussion on “burnout”

Last week, we published a summary of the first event in our Creative Resilience: Exploring Arts & Health series, the Performative Discussion on burnout at Studio 303. The discussion dealt with key issues such as how to cope with burnout…
,

Everything is Work: Summary on Performative Discussion about “burnout”

Photos by Lital Khaikin. On Friday, November 15, we held the first event in our Creative Resilience: Exploring Arts & Health mini-series at Studio 303. The Performative Discussion on burnout drew a crowd of 35-40 people, with a steady…
, ,

Fascial Topologies – a schizo-somatic session

  Still from Senselab / 3 Ecologies Institute video. Tuesday, December 3, 2019 5 to 7 PM @ SenseLab Facilitated by Csenge Kolozsvari 1515 Sainte-Catherine W. E.V. building – Room 10-785. FREE / Open to everyone! RSVP…
, ,

Performative Discussion: burn-out

Image courtesy of Studio 303. What is burn-out? We are beginning Creative Resilience, our new mini-series on arts and health, with an open discussion on burn-out. Burn-out, a word increasingly familiar in creative industries, is not just…
PreviousNext

Resources

Find the health resources you’re looking for on our Community Links page:

View Health & Wellness Resources

Land Acknowledgement

ELAN is an official minority language organization within a country that recognizes two languages as official. ELAN is located in Tiohtià:ke, the original name for Montreal in Kanien’kéha, the language of the Mohawk—also known as Mooniyang, which is the Anishinaabeg name given to the city by the Algonquin. While we are based in this city, our projects have also taken place in many regions across Quebec.

We acknowledge the colonial origin of English and French in Canada, and recognize that both languages benefit from official status throughout the land. The province that we know as Quebec is an amalgamation of the traditional territories of the Innu and Inuit nations, Algonquian nations, as well as the Mohawk nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Kanien’kéha and Anishinaabemowin are but two of the original languages of this province; Atikamekw, Cree, Inuktitut, and Innu-aimun are also among the many Indigenous languages spoken across Quebec as majority languages, all well before French and English.

ELAN acknowledges the important work being done by First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples to revive the traditional languages of these territories, and their advocacy for the official status of Indigenous languages.

ELAN logo with orange graphic and white letters
Heart-empty Heart-empty

Thank you for visiting ELAN. Please note that in using this platform you agree to abide by our code of conduct. This applies to all visitors, regardless of whether or not you are a member.  

460 Sainte-Catherine West
Suites 714 & 708
Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3B 1A7

Copyright © 2023 english language arts network

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.