Director's Message November 2016

Photo by Amy Macdonald: CALQ Information Session with Laurent Rozencwajg, October 26, 2016.

ELAN’s Arts, Community, Education (ACE) Initiative is entering its second phase. Back in June, more than 50 artists and educators gathered together for the ACE Jam, a brainstorm day to imagine projects that would incorporate art and education in new ways. The goal was to think beyond ideas from existing cultural education programs, for example by pairing schools that don’t normally work together, combining elementary and high school classes, working with more than one artistic discipline, and linking schools with the larger community. ELAN circulated an ACE Initiative Projects Applicant Guide in August to solicit partners to bring projects to life. In October, five partners were selected.

Laura Teasdale, a well-known Eastern Townships artist, will coordinate a multidisciplinary, intergenerational project to take students from three local schools into seniors’ homes. Christina Croce, from St-Lambert Elementary school, presented a project for grade 5 and 6 students to study their family histories in collaboration with schools in a remote region of Quebec. Deirdre Potash, a visual artist in Vaudreuil-Dorion, will collaborate with nine local schools which are neither urban nor rural and are often passed over for cultural opportunities. Ana Osborne, of the Lower North Shore, will increase opportunities for youth and community members to access professional arts and culture experiences in the remote communities of Chevry, Harrington Harbour and Unamen Shipu. François Couture and Bob Matthey, from the Cedar Street and St-Lawrence schools in the Montérégie, will integrate arts in developing students’ awareness of the need for reconciliation with local Indigenous communities.

These ACE project coordinators will develop their projects over the current school year and document their experiences so that other artists and educators can learn from these ambitious projects. ELAN’s ACE Initiative seeks to create a community of like-minded artists and educators who value collaboration between art and education. If you wish to receive regular reports about the progress of ACE projects – or share your own experiences in arts and education – please email ace-initiative@quebec-elan.org with ACE Updates in the subject line.

Guy Rodgers

Executive Director

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.