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Creative Connections for Change |
Welcome to October! Thursday, October 10 is World Mental Health Day. With that in mind, we're thinking about recent and upcoming activities that centre the importance of mental health through creative thought and practice.
Dr. Sandra Smeltzer (Western's Faculty of Information and Media Studies) will be speaking with SASAH's second-year cohort this semester on the topic of research as public advocacy. Smeltzer is co-author with Amala Poli and Maria Kouznetsova of the recent Leonardo article, "Artistic Creativity, Community, and Well-Being." They detail a survey-driven research project held here at Western and its affiliated colleges. They asked 3,000 survey participants about how they felt about creativity in their own lives, as well as how creativity could inform their academic careers. The authors share:
"The most significant result emerging from this two-part research project is that participants want more joy in their on-campus lifeworlds and that having additional time, space, and freedom to engage in creative, artistic activities—regardless of potential outcomes—would significantly improve their overall health and well-being. Nurturing artistic creativity for its own sake is not incompatible with the roles it can play in opening pathways for research, pedagogy, and praxis-oriented discoveries and undertakings. Indeed, well-being and productivity are not mutually exclusive."
Smeltzer, Poli, and Kouznetsova's article ends with a powerful call to action: "Based on our findings, we contend that universities must support transdisciplinary communities of practice for artistic endeavors to foster well-being, which can, in turn, shift a prescriptive view of artistic endeavors in favor of the whole person."
Such thinking is the guiding ethos of the SASAH community—within the classroom and beyond. Read on for stories of how our program is fostering creativity, community connection, and well-being in the coming weeks. |
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Teaching Assistant Profile: Tanner Layton (ft. Marx the bird)
In each of my three years as a doctoral student—now candidate!—at the Theory Centre, I’ve served as a TA in SASAH. My love for teaching brought me to London, Ontario from Lethbridge, Alberta, where I was fortunate to teach Writing and Sociology at three postsecondary institutions, including the University where I did my undergraduate and graduate work in Psychology and Sociology; to this day, I teach online at Mi’kai’sto Red Crow Community College, which, with its specific and spiritual approach, continues to shape how I understand not only myself but the purpose of education. London, in turn, has brought me so many lovely gifts: people, pups, books, research opportunities, and infinite occasions for laughing, crying, and smiling—in short, for poetry. These gifts have provided the conditions for me to try, in vain, to live the life of the mind, and to share that inevitable failure—the beautiful messiness of living and learning—with my students. My intellectual work centers the relationship between our conceptions of ourselves and our conceptions of how to live—between subjectivity, epistemology, and ethics. I’m interested, that is, in theory and philosophy as everyday practices, particularly in our post-pandemic context that’s found a renewed cultural concern in questions of living meaningfully and authentically. These ancient existential questions have shifted to a new vocabulary that is informed by mental health and wellness strategies today, and I critically explore the ethical and political consequences of this shift with reference to theories of love, Otherness, fidelity, and relationality with an eye on how we might “generatively refuse” the imperative to live authentically and be open to other forms of relating to ourselves and our lives.
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The Western Gazette Op-Ed: Watch Western Theatre
This year's Theatre Western Fall musical is Cabaret! Its creative team includes SASAH students Jaya Sinha as Director and Georgia Helverson as Musical Director. SASAH student Hannah Teicher is Director of Theatre Western's Fall Play, Little Women, adapted by Nithila Shyam.
Second-year SASAH student Radhika Ram and Theatre Studies student Lauren daSilva co-author this recent opinion piece for The Western Gazette on the value of campus theatre. Here's an excerpt:
Since 1982, Theatre Western has been tearing down the barriers that keep students from enjoying live theatre — and you should be taking advantage of it. [...]
With affordable high-quality performances, accessible venues and productions targeted at the student community, Theatre Western gives students the best reasons to support live performances at Western University. [...]
Theatre has historically been a tool for cultural awareness, political engagement, education and self-expression. Theatre is where boundaries are pushed, norms are challenged and empathy thrives — and isn’t that what university is all about?
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SASAH Student Plant Swap Wednesday, October 9 6:30 in the SASAH Lounge
SASAH students! As the warmer season ebbs away, how about acquiring some plant friends to keep you company through the winter? Join us for a SASAH Plant Swap on Wednesday, October 9 at 6:30 PM in the SASAH lounge. |
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Cabaret: The Musical Nov 1, Nov 2, Nov 3 Mustang Lounge
Our beloved SASAH students are all-the-way-involved with Theatre Western's productions of Cabaret and, later in November, Little Women! |
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Understanding Mobility Justice: Luis Patricio in Discussion Monday, October 28 4-5:20PM, FIMS 2220
Luis Patricio is a PhD student (Dept of Geography & Environment) and professor focused on urban mobility and environmental sustainability. He has worked in the public, private and nonprofit sectors, with several cross-sector collaborations. This talk is open to the public and hosted by ARTHUM 2291F: Cultures of Advocacy. Learn more here. |
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From the archives, we present the Arts & Humanities' 2024 Robert and Patricia Duncanson Lecture. Britt Wray is a growing voice around the mental health effects of climate change. In this lecture, Britt demonstrates the emotional and existential effects of living in a warming world—and how we can get through them together. Working through these anxieties can unlock a deep capacity to care for and act on climate issues. |
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The School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities (SASAH) offers an enriched undergraduate learning experience that is unique in Canada. Students gain practical experience in many career fields in a range of sectors—including arts and culture, non-profit, for-profit, education, and information technology—and undertake opportunities in the London community and beyond. We are grateful for our community: our students and alumni, our teaching fellows, our valued Advisory Council, our community partners and our supporters.
SASAH acknowledge that Western University is located on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak and Chonnonton Nations, on lands connected with the London Township and Sombra Treaties of 1796 and the Dish with One Spoon Covenant Wampum. With this, we respect the longstanding relationships that Indigenous Nations have to this land, as they are the original caretakers. We acknowledge historical and ongoing injustices that Indigenous Peoples (First Nations, Métis and Inuit) endure in Canada, and we accept responsibility as a public institution to contribute toward revealing and correcting miseducation as well as renewing respectful relationships with Indigenous communities through our teaching, research and community service.
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