Author: Admin

WalkingLab is a SSHRC funded International research project with a goal to create a collaborative network and partnership between artists, arts organizations, activists, scholars and educators interested in walking, movement, and sensory knowledge.

The Ped­a­gog­i­cal Impulse is a SSHRC funded research-creation project at the inter­sec­tions between social prac­tice, knowl­edge pro­duc­tion, ped­a­gogy, and school. As a site for artistic-research in art and edu­ca­tion it has ini­ti­ated a num­ber of exper­i­men­tal, crit­i­cal, and col­lab­o­ra­tive projects.

Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life (BIT) is a SSHRC-funded project (PI Carla Rice) intended to establish a community-university research program that builds and expands upon a working relationship between Project Re·Vision and Tangled Art + Disability, Ontario’s leading disability arts organization that cultivates disability, d/Deaf, and Mad arts in Ontario. Stephanie Springgay is a Stream Leader 'Mobilizing Artistic and Activist Methodologies' on the grant.

The Artists’ Soup Kitchen served more than 500 people For six Mon­days – Jan­u­ary 9th to Feb­ru­ary 13th, 2012. During the project, artists were invited to come to the Artists’ Soup Kitchen for a free hot lunch. Different artists hosted the lunch each week and brought their cre­ative prac­tices to the Soup Kitchen.

Year 2016-2020
Type SSHRC Insight Grant
Role Principal Investigator
Source SSHRC
Amount $220,137
Title/Purpose: Contemporary Art Practice as Pedagogy: Innovation, Impact and Student Learning. This project is linked to the earlier The Pedagogical Impulse SSHRC funded grant and examines the history of 1960s and 1970s radical pedagogy in the arts, and current manifestations in higher education. The historical component focuses on the teaching practices of Fluxus and Happenings artists and other unorthodox pedagogues employed in art colleges, universities, and free schools across Canada and the US. These educators produced and distributed printed matter and other multiples as expressions of radical pedagogy in the form of posters, booklets, games, alongside other kinds of educational ephemera. In recent years there has been a renewed interest in collecting, reprinting, and reactivating these more obscure projects and reappraising the merits of a Fluxus-based pedagogy within postsecondary education. Despite the rise of digital culture and online platforms for working and communicating, multiples, printed editions, and other types of instructional ephemera continue to be important strategies for contemporary artists engaged in social practice. The grant will use historical/archival research and a case study research-creation model to research 30 examples of contemporary art as pedagogy in University classrooms, documenting work, interviewing artists and students, and assessing how this shifting paradigm is changing art, student learning, and university programs.

• 2 co-applicants (University of Guelph; Independent curator)
• 30 artists
• 15 post-secondary artist-teachers

Year 2017-2024
Type SSHRC Partnership Grant
Role Co-applicant and Co-Stream Lead (Methodology Stream)
Source SSHRC
Amount $2.5 million (matching funds $2.5 million)
Title/Purpose: Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology and Access to Life.
This grant will establish a community-university research-creation program. It builds and expands upon a generative working relationship between Project Re-Vision, a dynamic research program on disability and bodily difference (PI: Carla Rice) and Tangled Art + Disability, a non-profit arts organization that cultivates disability, d/Deaf, and Mad arts in Ontario (Artistic Director: Eliza Chandler). In partnership with Ontario's leading disability arts organization, 12 community-based organizations, and operating across 12 academic institutions, Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life will set in motion a vibrant creative and intellectual wave of leading-edge artistic creation, interdisciplinary research, technological innovation, and critical inquiry within and beyond Ontario. By engaging a multi-pronged approach to thinking about access to the arts for art producers/audiences, this project allows for tackling negative representations of people with disabilities alongside considering ways to expand structural pathways for engaging art.
• 5 streams
• 100 co-applicants
• 100 community collaborators and community partners

Year 2014-2017
Type SSHRC Partnership Development Grant
Role Principal Investigator
Source SSHRC
Amount $199,400
Title/Purpose: Performing Lines: Innovations in walking and sensory research methodologies was a partnership development grant (Insight) between three universities, four co-applicants, and three community partners/collaborators. Its goal was to formalize and solidify a network of collaboration through a focus on walking research-creation methodologies. The partnership comprised of university and community partners in the arts who are actively involved in artistic research related to walking (through graduate programs, exhibition practices, residencies, and research dissemination activities). The central aim of the project was to study and develop walking as a form of knowledge production, to explore the theories and methods of walking as a research methodology, and to foster its practice internationally.
• 3 co-applicants (Penn State University, University of Queensland, University of Southern Queensland
• 100 networked international partners
• 30 artists
• 5 community partners

Year 2014-2016
Type SSHRC Connection Grant
Role Principal Investigator
Source SSHRC
Amount $37,500
Title/Purpose: New Materialism and Educational Research brought 50 researchers together, to foster critical and rigorous dialogue and exchange, and to mobilize the transfer of knowledge to graduate students and new scholars interested in conducting feminist new materialist educational research and research-creation methodologies.
• 3 co-applicants (University of New South Wales)
• 2 community partners

Year 2012-2013
Type SSHRC Public Outreach and Dissemination Grant
Role Principal Investigator
Source SSHRC
Amount $31,300
Title/Purpose: Publics and Performance Art was a community-university alliance that undertook series of dissemination activities using the arts as a form of knowledge mobilization, in order to broaden access to scholarship and to foster ongoing debates, discussions, and future actions.

Year 2011-2014
Type SSHRC Standard Research Grant
Role Principal Investigator
Source SSHRC
Amount $188,940
Title/Purpose: The Pedagogical Impulse is a research-creation project at the intersections between social practice, knowledge production, pedagogy, and “school.” Although this grant has finished the project continues. As a site for artistic-research in art and education it has initiated a number of experimental, critical, and collaborative projects including a series of artist residencies in K-12 classrooms, in order to examine how and why artists are engaging with educational concepts and/or educational methods in their art practices, and how this shift in art practice is related to current theories and practices in art education and policy.
• 12 public schools
• 2 community partners
• 8 teachers
• 5 artists

Year 2009-2012
Type SSHRC Research and Creation Grant
Role Co- Investigator (Diane Borsato, PI)
Source SSHRC
Amount $196,300
Title/Purpose: The Institute of Walking: Research and Creation in Relational and Interventionist Arts Practices was the culmination of a series of new relational and interventionist art works that considered walking as a theme and as a practice by Diane Borsato and several other Canadian and International artists. The objective of the study was to examine the ways artistic practices reflect the inventive processes at work within everyday life and the kinds of inter-personal, social, and pedagogic relationships walking can enact.

Year 2009-2010
Type NAEA Foundation Grant
Role Principal Investigator
Source NAEA (National Art Education Association)
Amount $5,000
Title/Purpose: Youth, pedagogy and an aesthetic of civic engagement examined how youth involved in an afterschool arts programs use contemporary art practices as forms of civic engagement and social justice youth development.

Year 2008-2011
Type SSHRC Standard Research Grant
Role Collaborator (Rita Irwin, PI)
Source SSHRC
Amount $147,600
Title/Purpose: Being with A/r/tography investigated how a/r/tography—an arts based methodology-- is uniquely situated to enact, develop and problematize becoming pedagogical in a teacher education program.

Year 2004-2007
Type SSHRC Research and Creation Grant
Role Collaborator (Rita Irwin, PI)
Source SSHRC
Amount $190,000
Title/Purpose: The city of Richgate: Research and creation within community-engaged arts practices examined and documents through community-engaged art multi-generational immigrant understandings of identity and place, in relation to concepts such as “home” and “away”.

Internal Funded Research
Year May 2017
Type Jackman Humanities Institute
Role Principal Investigator
Source Jackman Humanities Institute
Amount $9,700
Title/Purpose: Indelible Refusal: Bodies, Performances, and Walking Resistance. Working with VK Preston, Assistant Professor at the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, the project was activated as a 2-week artist-residency program. Two performance artists were commissioned to create new works alongside events such as: 2 panel discussions, a series of workshops, walking tours, and performances.

Year March 1, 2013
Type SSHRC SIG Institutional Grant
Role Principal Investigator
Source SSHRC
Amount $2,000
Title/Purpose: Artist's Soup Kitchen and Food Pedagogies intersects social need with creative/artistic investigation into performance art, pedagogy, and food. While acknowledging the extensive history of artist restaurants, the sensory experience of performance and food, and the collective and pedagogical experience of community kitchens, the Artists’ Soup Kitchen examined the space between art and labor.

Year March 1, 2011
Type SSHRC SIG Institutional Grant
Role Principal Investigator
Source SSHRC
Amount $1,952
Title/Purpose: Maternal Pedagogies examined the ways that feminist academics and contemporary feminist artists understand the intersections of feminist pedagogy and mothering. To do so, we interviewed individually and in small groups 18 feminist academic/artists.

Year 2008-2010
Type Research Grant
Role Principal Investigator
Source College of Arts and Architecture Penn State
Amount $18,300
Title/Purpose: Youth, pedagogy and an aesthetic of civic engagement in an afterschool arts program

Year 2008-2009
Type Research Grant
Role Principal Investigator
Source Children, Youth and Family Consortium Penn State
Amount $5,000
Title/Purpose:Youth, pedagogy and an aesthetic of civic engagement in an afterschool arts program

Year 2005-2007
Type Research Grant
Role Principal Investigator
Source College of Arts and Architecture Penn State
Amount $10,500
Title/Purpose: The city of Richgate: Research and creation within community-engaged arts practices.

Year 2004-2005
Type Research Grant
Role Principal Investigator
Source College of Arts and Architecture Penn State
Amount $7,500
Title/Purpose: The city of Richgate: Research and creation within community-engaged arts practices.

Year 2004-2005
Type Research Grant
Role Principal Investigator
Source Institute for Arts and Humanities Penn State
Amount $2,750
Title/Purpose: The city of Richgate: Research and creation within community-engaged arts practices.

Grants received for teaching

Year 2006-2007
Type Collaborative teaching grant
Role Principal Investigator
Source Institute for Arts and Humanities Penn State
Amount $6,500
Course titled: Curriculum and the cultural body.
Grant supported the development of a new course on embodiment and curriculum theory. Course was developed across disciplines and co-taught by myself and Dr. Freedman.

Year 2006-2007
Type Teaching grant
Role Principal Investigator
Source Institute for Arts and Humanities Penn State
Amount $7,500
Title/Purpose: Artist in residence grant for Rebecca Belmore.
Funding supported a teaching collaboration between Dr. Springgay and artist Rebecca Belmore.