Held over 3 days from January 20 – 22, 2022

What is Practicing the Social?

Practicing the Social: Entanglements of Art and Justice was a FREE online arts-based gathering that merged an artistic and scholarly program in engaging and accessible ways. We strive to promote social justice, via critique and creative engagement, and to explore creative possibilities and innovations by disrupting the methodological challenges and tensions that define our social practices. 

This gathering showcased artistic and scholarly practices, performances, and works that engage in non- or anti-normative art and cultural production (fat art, aging art); decolonizing and Indigenizing themes/processes; gender and sexuality; difference and identity; Indigenous, Black, queer, trans, and crip pasts, presents and futures; Black feminism and intersectionality; crip and queer culture, access, and activism; and more.

Our programming was entirely virtual and included more than 80 speakers and performances, plus multimedia exhibitions, a Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon, a book launch for The Aging/Disability Nexus, a Remote Access + Arts Everywhere Festival – Nightlife and Dance Party, a screening of films from the Rolls and Race project, a virtual social networking space in Gather Town, and so much more. 

Check out all of our Event Activities!

Hosted by Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice at the University of Guelph with Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology and Access to Life (BIT), this gathering will feature artists, activists, and academics from across Canada, the US, Europe, South America, and New Zealand.

---

For information about how to access the event activities, you can click the link below to view the following document online or download for a screen-reader version.

---

Accessibility 

We at Re•Vision and Bodies in Translation are committed to accessibility and to supporting your participation in whatever ways work best for you. Our ACCESS GUIDE offers details on how we work towards this goal to make this event safer and more inclusive for all attendees.

• All keynotes, panel presentations, and live performances included ASL and Audio Description interpretation and live transcription.
• ASL and Audio Description interpreters were present for scheduled portions of Gather Town events. Volunteer Ushers were also available.

We are committed to developing our accessibility capacities. We are grateful to those who offer us feedback, suggestions, and critique so that we can continue to make the world a better and more accessible place for all.

---

Land Acknowledgement

We find ourselves here, living, creating, working, learning and loving, on Sacred Land. Guelph is located on the ancestral homelands of the Anishinaabeg Nations. This is treaty land, steeped in rich Indigenous history of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Through Treaty 3: Between the Lakes Purchase, we also acknowledge the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory — the Onondaga, Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Seneca, and Tuscarora — whose granted lands extend for six miles on both sides of the Grand River, from its mouth to its source. Land acknowledgements assert the land rights of Indigenous peoples to what is now called North America. They call attention to First Nations and other Original Peoples unique relationship to their ancestral territories and on-going governances as treaty signing independent nations.

Land acknowledgements disrupt the routine unthought occupation of indigenous lands by settlers. These land recognitions point to the need for reparation and force us to think about what changes are needed in settler societies in order to make that happen. We acknowledge that we live and work on ancestral lands and that Original People continue to be dispossessed to the benefit of all settlers.

We, the members of the Re•Vision and Bodies in Translation teams, are committed to surfacing historical truths, to understanding the complexities of our present-day communities, and to working collaboratively and co-creatively toward our collective future. We are committed to strengthening our relationships with the Original Peoples of Turtle Island, as we move forward together in the search for collective truth and healing.

Not sure whose land you reside on? Visit Native Land Digital at Native-Land.ca to learn more.

Image description: A circle with a multitude of overlapping colours that show the territories and ancestral lands of the Indigenous peoples in the area also known as Ontario and bordering US states.

---

Thank you to …

• Carla Rice, Re•Vision’s Academic Director, and Ingrid Mundel, Re•Vision’s Managing Director, for their passion, vision, and dedication to making incredible things happen!
• All the presenters and performers who generously shared their wisdom, experiences, and time.
• Our partners and partner organizations who dedicated planning time, creative input, and funding to bring this event to life.
• All the access coordinators, interpreters, and live transcribers who supported us throughout the duration of the event.
• Cripping the Arts, Into the Light, MSFOC: Midwest-Southern Fat Organizing Convening, UofG’s Accessibility Conference, and X University for their amazing access guides and online resource materials, all of which informed the making of the Access Guide pages on this website. 
• Eliza Chandler and Jess Watkin from X University for coordinating the live and pre-recorded performances.
• Lilith Lee from Re•Vision for her creative design of the Gather Town spaces.
• Marnie Eves and Jodie Salter from Re•Vision for managing all event coordination and logistics.

And thank you to everyone who attended! We were thrilled to gather with you all. What a success it was!

---

Contact / Comments or Questions?

This website was developed by Jodie Salter (Re•Vision Research Associate). If you find any part of this site inaccessible to you, if you notice any coding errors for screen readers, or if you have any suggestions for how we might make it more accessible in content, language, tone, style, etc., we would love your feedback.

For any comments, questions, or assistance, please email Marnie Eves or Jodie Salter at revision@uoguelph.ca. 

If you have any challenges accessing any of the events or activities, support staff can be contacted at revision@uoguelph.ca.

---