Learning Matters: a Bridge to Practice

Today we have with us Benjamin Hunter discussing curiosity, flow, alchemy and music.

Learning Matters series on convening methodologies for holding space for hope, healing and restoration.

Benjamin has been busy cross pollinating multiple artistic disciplines for more than a decade, the Seattle based polymath and multi-instrumentalist has dedicated his life to transforming the world’s stale status quo into a vibrant, inclusive, communal, and compassionate society. Hunter’s first tool was the violin accompanying him on laps around the world. Playing since age 5, he was fortunate to travel the world and absorb various musical styles at a young age. Receiving his degree in Performance Violin, with keen interest in politics and philosophy, Hunter set his sights on the intersection between art, community, and a rapidly evolving clash of culture. Touring with his band mate Joe Seamons in the internationally acclaimed, award-winning blues duo, Ben Hunter & Joe Seamons, Hunter’s stirring instrumentation and timbre brought tales of the slave trade, reconstruction, racial reconciliation, and America’s still broken promises to the uninclined.

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Seeking to formalize the education he received in school and delivered in music venues across the world, Hunter then founded Community Arts Create. In a time when music and arts education is being surgically extracted from school curriculums, the non-profit seeks to create space and opportunity for people of all ages and backgrounds to engage with their individual and collective creative identities, using that as a lens to view their connection with social justice. However, schools only provided a temporary sanctum for Hunter’s gospel of changing the world through art. He needed a headquarters that existed for the sole purpose of bridging divides, filling knowledge gaps, and fostering a community around those ideals.

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The Hillman City Collaboratory was soon formed. Housed in South Seattle’s Hillman City neighborhood, the “social incubator” has brought and maintained camaraderie, inclusiveness, education, and social wellbeing to the residents in and around an area that is seeing rapid shifts due to unrelenting displacement. His ultimate wish is to inspire a Collaboratory in every underserved community in the nation, showcasing the collective might of community members defying precarious economic circumstances through creativity, engagement, and dialogue. That still wasn't enough for Hunter, and in 2016 he co-founded the Black & Tan Hall, a co-operatively owned restaurant and performing arts venue, shifting the for-profit paradigm to an alternative platform that is hyper-local, built by and for people rooted in community, and serves as an anti-gentrification model that combats displacement and sustains good jobs. More specifically, B&TH supports and elevates arts that give voice, agency, and power to those too often ignored. A place where art and the artists are dignified, valued, and heard!

To find out more about Benjamin’s work, check out: www.benjaminhuntermusic.com

Community Arts Create collective education

Hillman City Collaboratory social incubator

Black & Tan Hall co-operatively owned restaurant and performing arts venue

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Learning Matters series on convening methodologies for holding space for hope, healing and restoration.

Today we have with us Martha Diaz discussing the creation cyphers of inquiry and becoming dealers of hope.

Martha Diaz (MD) is a community organizer, media producer, archivist, curator, and educator. MD is one of Women’s eNews distinguished 21 Leaders for the 21st Century whose work has traversed the hip-hop entertainment industry, the public arts and education sector, and the academy over the last 25 years. Her passion is advancing human rights and transforming communities through Hip-Hop media, technology, and social entrepreneurship. She has associate produced and consulted on numerous hip-hop documentaries including, Where My Ladies At? by Leba Haber Rubinoff (2007), Black August: A Hip-Hop Concert by Dream Hampton (2010), and Nas: Time Is Illmatic by One9 (2014). In 2002, MD founded the highly acclaimed Hip-Hop Odyssey (H2O) International Film Festival, the first and largest festival of its kind. She was invited to curate the first Hip-Hop movie series presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and served as a guest curator at the Museum of the Moving Image.
In 2010, MD formed the Hip-Hop Education Center to research, cultivate and formalize the field of hip-hop-based education. Through her publications of research reports, books, and curricula, she has chronicled hip-hop history to preserve its cultural value and memory. A graduate of New York University’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program, MD has worked on archival projects with Parkwood Entertainment (Beyoncé Knowles-Carter), Tupac Shakur Estate, and National Jazz Museum in Harlem, to name a few. She was a Senior Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History – Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, Fellow at Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation Program in Social Entrepreneurship, Curator/Scholar at The Schomburg Center, Community Scholar at Columbia University, and Nasir Jones Fellow at Harvard University. MD is currently completing the New School Creation Fellowship at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education.

Hip Hop Education Center

https://hiphopeducation.com/author/martha/

Hip Hop Education Guidebook

http://hiphoparchive.org/scholarship/bibliography/the-hip-hop-education-guidebook

H2O Newsreel Film Catalog

https://www.twn.org/h2o/responsive/h2ocatalog.aspx

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On this episode of Learning Matters, Sandy Cioffi discusses being present: embodied learning, blockchain and story.
Sandy Cioffi is the founder and executive director of fearless360o, a new media and virtual reality production company in Seattle. Sandy recently founded and directed SIFFX 2016, a showcase of the most current and creative thinking in virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and 360° immersion. As a 2016 Stranger Genius Award nominee, Sandy has been recognized as a cultural innovator.

Sandy has produced and/or directed several films as a film and video artist, including the critically acclaimed Sweet Crude, Crocodile Tears, Terminal 187, and Just Us. She has worked with human rights organizations in using video as a documentation and verification tool - specifically providing video evidence during the 1998 Marching Season in Northern Ireland. She documented the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride in 2003. Sandy was also a frequent guest on the NPR show Rewind which ended production when host Bill Radke left Seattle for Los Angeles. Sandy has also created media design for live performance at the Annex Theater, Hugo House, The Seattle Repertory Theater and On the Boards.

Sandy has worked with young people extensively as an artist in residence and through the mentor/apprentice film program at the Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center. As a long-time educator, she has also taught film at Seattle Central Community College, Seattle University, and Cornish College of the Arts.

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Today we have with us Erica Grimm, Joshua Hale, Alysha Creighton, and Patti Victor, to talk about the opening their exhibition at the Langley Centennial Museum, titled "Upstream/Downriver: Walking the stɑl̓əw̓ Watershed," a collaborative research-creation project that addresses climate change at the local scale of the lower Fraser River watershed.

TWU faculty partnered with experts from a wide range of science, humanities, and Indigenous knowledge backgrounds to walk the stɑl̓əw̓ Watershed, experts including Dr. Heesoon Bai (SFU), Dr. Katharine Bubel, Dr. David Clements, Dr. Tim Cooper (UFV), David Jordan, Dr. Maxwell Ofosuhene, Dr. Sam Pimentel, Dr. Bruce Shelvey, Annelyn Victor (Xwchíyò:m Nation), and Chief Andrew Victor (Xwchíyò:m Nation).

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On this episode of Learning Matter, Barb Astle, Angela Wolff and Colin Madland discuss COVID-19 and completing the semester well.

Dr. Barbara Astle, PhD, RN, has focused her academic career in the field of Global Health and Health Equity. Dr. Astle’s research focuses on: Nursing and Global health education: competency-based curriculum in global health (undergraduate / graduation / host competencies); principles for global health research; global educational partnerships; human rights and albinism in Africa; knowledge translation; and research literacy. She uses critical perspectives, and Qualitative/Participatory Action Research (PAR) methods.

Dr. Angela Wolff, formerly Director – Clinical Education, Professional Practice at the Fraser Health Authority, has collaborated with the TWU School of Nursing in various ways since 2008. She joined TWU School of Nursing in the Fall 2018. Dr. Wolff’s expertise and contributions to both the practice and discipline of nursing, and to healthcare services broadly in the region, are remarkable. Dr. Wolff has worked in all sectors of practice: education, regulatory, research, and practice. Passionate about undergraduate, graduate, and ongoing post-licensure education, Dr. Wolff has sought to support new graduate nurse transition, educator/clinical teacher development, specialty education, and practice changes. In her Director role, she delivered regional strategic planning, development, implementation, tracking, and evaluation of inter-professional clinical education programs / services for healthcare professionals and health sciences students. Dr. Wolff is a Certified Health Executive with the Canadian College of Health Leaders.

Colin Madland, MEd (Distance Education) is the Manager of Online Learning and Instructional Technologies at Trinity Western University, and formerly the e-Learning Facilitator and Coordinator for Educational Technologies for Thompson Rivers University. Colin is currently a PhD student in Education Technology at the University of Victoria and co-chair of the inaugural conference of OTESSA, the Open/Technology in Education Society and Scholarship Association, currently planned for Congress 2020 in London, Ontario.

Resources to support faculty with moving online may be found at https://create.twu.ca/help/online-learning-on-ramp/multi-access/moodle

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