Creative Projects

Students who complete the Creative Project within the MA in Social Justice Studies enter the program with an established creative practice. They find a project supervisor, develop a proposal, and get approval from the Academic Review Committee. Some creative projects even require Research Ethics Board (REB) approval.  Students will typically spend two semesters researching and developing their projects; many will show their final products in a Thunder Bay art gallery.  

2024 Completions

Sam Cousin, “End of Radio: An Experiment of Cultural Reproduction About the Inherent Powers of Technology, Autonomy, and Creativity.”

Supervisor: Max Haiven 

End of Radio is an ephemeral web radio consisting of over 45 hours of progamming split accross more than three dozens segments. Ranging from original interviews, to ambient music and experimental audio narratives, the content has been curated and created as part of a broader reflection on the structuring power of digital technology and its relationship with capitalism, surveillance, and fascism. End of Radio is also a playful, creative experiment in cultural reproduction that nods to anarchist, post-Marxist, and autonomist methodologies, as well as engage with recurrent themes in social justice studies.



Emily Faubert, “You Are Not Alone: Art, Alienation, and the Accessible Future.”

Supervisor: Sandra Jeppesen 

This research-creation project engages with multiple mediums–written, drawn, and recorded–to interrogate the mental health implications and experience of individualism, which is reinforced through neoliberal imaginaries at a time when collective action is needed. In slicing the world into specific chunks–physically, emotionally, and spiritually–while allowing a privileged few to enact methods of scientific management to determine how these chunks will grow, technologies of whiteness and femininity are interrogated alongside practices of factory production. Poetry, especially ‘instapoetry’ is recontextualized through a critical access critique, finding value in the expansion that accessibility offers. Science fiction, so often illustrating dystopias, is engaged with as a method of futuring–what does it mean to constantly consume visions of dystopia that seem inevitable, and how can the future become aspirational? 

 

Stella Lawson, "Mutual Aid: The Game and Imagination Collaboration."  

Supervisor: Max Haiven

This project explores the role that participatory art can play in raising awareness and cohering communities of action to confront climate chaos and the related social justice issues from a theoretically-informed position. In particular, it explores the potential of radical board games to address the issues of our times. It also looks at the way these might encourage and support people to develop a deeper understanding of what many theorists argue is a root cause of climate change: settler colonial ideas of private property. As such, this project draws on an interdisciplinary range of literature and methods and aims not only to assess the potential of such games, but to further establish collaborations to design, test and distribute them.

2023 Completion 

Christopher Petersen (2021-23), "Pop Music and the Problem with the Nostalgia Industry." 
Supervisor: Dr. Max Haiven 

Prior to 2023 Completions.  

Dear L: Narrative Inquiry of a Queer Woman's Survivor Experience

Stephanie Simko (2016-2018)
Supervisor: Dr. Pauline Sameshima

Embracing My Body: A Journey

Valeria Panina (2016-18)
Supervisor: Dr. Connie Russell

Equity in Birthing Experiences and Outcomes

Barbara Benwell (2017-2019)
Supervisor: Dr. Pauline Sameshima

In the first phase of the Equity in Birth Experiences and OutcomesResearch Project, “Facilitators and Barriers to Positive Birthing Experiences and Outcomes for Mothers in Thunder Bay,” mothers from Northern Ontario with diverse backgrounds were interviewed to discuss their birth stories. Birth is something that is not widely discussed, analyzed, or made public, aside from the very narrow lens offered in popular media. This lens and systemic structures perpetuate birth stereotypes and reinforce the notion that birth needs to be highly medicalized, private, and unseen. Birth Stories #1 is an examination of these ideas through the interviews. 

The wearable art work consists of paper, fabric, glass vials, cloches, lights and antiques copper piping. The cloches are used to transform the body from person to specimen as pregnant and birthing women become. The lights around the head and in the ‘belly’ are used to show the connection between mother and child. The copper piping is a representation of the sound birth makes: loud and beautiful. Inside each pipe is rolled paper, symbolic of each of the stories the women shared. The glass vials are dangling delicately, filled with ‘blood.’ The fake blood draws attention to the presence of blood and the realities of birthing, aspects society has kept hidden. 

I make this art piece to challenge systemic norms and to draw attention to the limited options women are given when they prepare to birth. This is an attempt to make the private public and create dialogue around what needs to change.

Anonymous Stories of ‘Sousveillance’ from the Thunder Bay Moccasin Telegram

Ivory Tuesday (2017-19)
Supervisors: Dr. Lana Ray, Dr. Lori Chambers, Dr. Jennifer Chisholm

Mothering and COVID-19: Narratives of Pandemic Life as Art

Ashley Walter (2020-22)
Supervisors: Dr. Lori Chambers, Dr. Kristy Holmes, Penelope Smart 

My Master of Social Justice Studies work is a Creative Stream art-as-research project aimed at exploring the experiences and narratives of motherhood during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Seven mothers were recruited to participate, each with one or more children under the age of 12. I conducted interviews based on a set of 10 questions about their experiences of motherhood during COVID-19.  The data was coded to find themes within each interview and between participant narratives.  Each participant was asked for a personal object to inspire or be incorporated into a work of art. Participants gave me: empty pill bottles, a balloon, an Airpod box, a laptop, a piece of paper, a bottle of hand sanitizer, a toothbrush, and I submitted  LEGO bricks.  The mediums I used were drawing, found object, sculpture, and printmaking. The intention of the art is to aesthetically express the themes shared in the interviews and to disseminate the experiences of mothers to a wider audience. 
While the actual cost to mothers’ mental and physical health and overall well-being may not be seen until years of post-COVID studies have been completed, the works of art that I have created reflect information provided by participants through interviews.  My research aims to offer a snapshot of the lives of women as they learned to navigate domestic challenges in the “new normal” pandemic landscape.  I am offering qualitative evidence through art as social education to enrich our understanding of the experiences of mothers during Covid.  My hope is that giving voice to a small group of women to share their stories will positively affect their mental health and provide the opportunity for the larger public to be informed on the experiences of women during COVID-19. 
Islands of Memory: Making feminist meaning of a miscarriage through art and writing.

Stacey Hare Hodgins (2016; 2020-22).
Supervisors: Dr. Jennifer Chisholm and Dr. Lori Chambers.

 
Stacey Hare Hodgins is a facilitator, writer, maker, and social worker who works for a feminist non-profit by day and guides self-reflective writing sessions on the side. She believes deeply in the transformative power of writing and storytelling to help us re/connect with ourselves and each other and make meaning of our individual and collective experiences. Her multimodal creative project, “Islands of Memory: Making feminist meaning of a miscarriage through art and writing” is an evocative autoethnography that explores lived contradictions. Stacey will share a bit about how this project transpired, what she created, and what she learned in the writing and making.
Fundamental Human Right: To Care in Northwestern Ontario.
Kasia Peach, MFA. (2021-22).
Supervisors: Roland Martin and Dr. Miranda Niittynen. 
 
Artists have the ability to comment on the society in which they live. The intent of my work is to play with certain societal themes such as religion, morals, ideals, humour, beauty, disability, and the grotesque. This new series is a body of work focusing on disability, creating assistive devices like canes, walkers, and wheelchairs out of porcelain and paper, to start a needed conversation about the fragility of life and the fundamental human right to care in Northwestern Ontario. The work I usually create is ceramic, which in some cases is visually abject due to its surface qualities; however, this new body of work includes mediums of ceramic and paper. The ceramic pieces are unglazed surfaces creating a bone-like appearance.
 
Concurrently, I am creating a body of work that focuses on play. Mindfulness and self-care are the new buzzwords. The conversation around one’s gifts and everyone having a gift to contribute to society; through the mindfulness of play, one will get closer to the true self and the practice of self-care and hence the discovery of one’s gifts.