Below the Radar

Dalannah Gail Bowen reflects on a lifetime of making music and convening community in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. A passionate singer, community arts administrator, and activist, Dalannah shares her philosophy of walking compassionately through the world and how she aims to make space for — and remove barriers to — finding connection through art making.

She and Am Johal discuss her work in community arts, her career as a musician, and how she interprets our political moment during the COVID-19 pandemic as a widespread awakening to social inequities. Dalannah gifts us with a song to close the episode.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/90-dalannah-gail-bowen.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/90-dalannah-gail-bowen.html

Resources:

— Downtown Eastside Centre for the Arts: https://www.dtescentreforthearts.com/

— Videos of Dalannah Gail Bowen in concert: http://www.dalannah.com/music/videos.html

— Heart of the City Festival 2020: An Evening with Dalannah Gail Bowen: https://vimeo.com/473661581

— Germaine Tremmel on the Rise of Women Warriors at Standing Rock: https://www.sfu.ca/sfuwoodwards/community-engagement/blog/2017/germaine-tremmel-on-the-rise-of-women-warriors-at-standing-rock/

— The Issue of Mr. O’Dell: https://vimeo.com/251717171

Bio:

Born of African-Canadian/Cherokee heritage, Dalannah Gail Bowen has been music-making for forty years in the Canadian blues, rock and soul scene. Bowen started her musical career with the all-female group The Feminine Touch who toured Canada and the USA opening for acts such The Monkees and The Guess Who. As an in-demand vocalist, she has performed with or opened for other major artists including Led Zeppelin, B.B. King, Willie Dixon and many more. Her 2007 CD recording, Mamma’s Got The Blues, was released to wide acclaim and rave reviews from across the globe. Then in 2015, her Been Around A While CD was selected by Downbeat Magazine as one of the Best Albums of 2015. Dalannah Gail Bowen’s live performances are known for their powerful and energetic delivery while taking an old-school approach, as well as adding contemporary elements. As a versatile and knowledgeable artist, Bowen can also be heard performing in a wide- range of musical collaborations, including traditional drum group The Snowy Owl Drummers, Songs of Mahalia Jackson, a tribute to the world-renowned gospel singer and East Van Morrison, a jazz group that performs selections from Van Morrison’s repertoire.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “Art and Politics — with Dalannah Gail Bowen.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, November 19, 2020. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/90-dalannah-gail-bowen.html.

Below the Radar unpacks ethics in community-engaged research and experiential learning with Kari Grain, who has been working with host Am Johal at SFU’s Community-Engaged Research Initiative. Kari speaks to her dissertation on the impacts of international service learning on local community partners. Centering ethical relationships and the unlearning of harmful biases about expertise and knowledge, Kari talks about teaching courses at UBC on community-based participatory research. She and Am also discuss barriers to meaningful and ethical community-engaged research at the institutional level, and the importance of reciprocity and bringing community in through the doors of the university.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/89-kari-grain.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/89-kari-grain.html

SFU’s Community Engaged Research Initiative:

https://www.sfu.ca/ceri.html

Experiential Education at UBC:

https://blogs.ubc.ca/experiential/

Bio:

Kari Grain is a practitioner-scholar at the intersection of higher education, social justice, and community engagement. She earned her PhD in Education at UBC as a Vanier scholar, where her research focused on local community impacts of international service-learning in Uganda. For the past five years, she has worked as an educational consultant, focusing on experiential education, community-engaged research, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Her research has been published in the Journal of Experiential Education, the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, and the Canadian Journal of Studies in Adult Education. She is currently a sessional instructor in UBC’s Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Education and has been collaborating in varying capacities with SFU scholars since 2017's Community2University Expo.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “Ethics in Community-University Partnerships — with Kari Grain.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, November 17, 2020. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/89-kari-grain.html.

Community-engaged scholar and filmmaker Lyana Patrick joins Am Johal to discuss how an Indigenous approach to community-building can positively impact the health and wellness of communities. Combining a diverse interdisciplinary background with her own lived experience, Lyana’s work addresses the ongoing colonial impacts of governance and urban planning on Indigenous community health.

In this episode, Lyana also speaks to the importance of relationships and reciprocity in filmmaking and telling community stories, making the distinction between telling stories for communities, not simply about them.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/88-lyana-patrick.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/88-lyana-patrick.html

SFU’s Community-Engaged Research Initiative:

https://www.sfu.ca/ceri.html

Blog: Announcing Lyana Patrick as CERi Researcher-in-Residence:

https://www.sfu.ca/ceri/blog/2020/meet-researcher-in-residence-lyana-patrick.html

Lyana's films "A Place to Belong" and "The Train Station" played at VIFF 2020:

https://bit.ly/3eL8PJX

https://bit.ly/32vVgZU

Bio:

Dr. Patrick received her BA and MA from the University of Victoria, where she specialized in Canadian history, film studies and Indigenous Governance. She went on to study Indigenous documentary film at the University of Washington through a Canada/US Fulbright Fellowship. Dr. Patrick completed her PhD at the University of British Columbia in 2019. Her doctoral studies brought together research interests in Indigenous community health and well-being and self-determination in urban health governance models. These interests were informed in part by three years spent completing pre-requisites for medical school and several years working in the BC Government in treaty negotiations. She joined the Faculty of Health Sciences in 2019.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “Decolonial Planning and Community Health — with Lyana Patrick.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, November 10, 2020. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/88-lyana-patrick.html.

Since the onset of the COVID-19, WISH Drop-In Centre Society has rapidly expanded its efforts to support street-based sex workers. Am Johal is joined by executive director, Mebrat Beyene, to discuss how WISH and other Downtown Eastside service providers are collectively responding to the pandemic, which has restricted services and exacerbated many pre-existing crises facing the community.

Mebrat speaks to new WISH initiatives, such as opening a new 24/7 shelter for sex workers, increasing access to bathrooms and showers, and finding new ways to accept donations of essential items. She also calls on policymakers at all levels to swiftly address access to emergency income relief for sex workers, to provide a safe supply of drugs, and to house people as quickly as possible.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/87-mebrat-beyene.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/87-mebrat-beyene.html

Resources:

WISH Drop-In Centre Society: https://wish-vancouver.net/

The Courage Campaign: https://wishcouragecampaign.squarespace.com/

Donate to WISH: https://wish-vancouver.net/about/our-board/get-involved/donate/

Bio:

Mebrat is an Eritrean, born in Ethiopia and raised in Montreal. She is a mother, community developer, teacher, and singer known for her passion, enthusiasm, and energy. As executive director of WISH and co-chair of Living in Community, Mebrat supports women and initiatives related to the health and safety of women engaged in street-based sex work. She has worked in social justice, and non-profit management and community development for over twenty years. Mebrat has worked closely with women and women-serving organizations as a Programs Officer with Status of Women Canada; and served as executive director of PeerNetBC. In a volunteer capacity, Mebrat sits on the boards of MATCH International Women’s Fund and Pivot Legal Society; serves on the City of Vancouver’s Black History Month Planning Committee, and also volunteers with the Vancouver Youth Choir. She lives in East Van, doing as much singing, adventuring and plotting with her son…much to their cat’s chagrin.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “Supporting Harm Reduction through Covid-19 — with Mebrat Beyene.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, November 6, 2020. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/87-mebrat-beyene.html.

Am Johal is joined by Derek Woods, an assistant professor of Media Studies at the University of British Columbia. They discuss Derek’s intersecting expertise in media studies and ecotechnology, examining what he deems the three defining characteristics of ecotechnology: artificial ecosystems, media archaeology, and the cultural imaginary through science fiction. They also problematize the term ‘Anthropocene,’ which proposes a new geological epoch marked by the significant impact humans have had on Earth’s geology and ecosystems, including climate change. Derek takes issue with the idea as it universalizes the human species, ignoring how colonialism and capitalism drove the transformation of the earth system.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/86-derek-woods.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/86-derek-woods.html

You can read some of Derek Woods' writing here:

https://ubc.academia.edu/DerekWoods

Bio:

Derek writes about ecology, technology, and modern narrative in relation to the history of science. His book in progress is about the distinction between harmful and "symbiotic" technologies and the influence of cybernetics on ecology and Earth system science. He shows that the terrarium and terraforming are topoi across literature, science, and film that play a dynamic role in the construction of ecological consciousness and visions of what green technology might become. He's also working on a book about the mediation and aesthetics of scales too big or too small for our senses to perceive. He's currently assistant professor of media studies in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “Ecosystems and the Cultural Imaginary — with Derek Woods.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, November 4, 2020. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/86-derek-woods.html.

A visual artist who grew up in Vancouver’s Chinatown, Gwen Boyle’s work explores movement, history, and place. The granddaughter of a Pender Street jeweller, Gwen draws inspiration from the sights and sounds of her childhood — the clinking of beads on an abacus, the hammering of jade, the melting of gold.

Gwen is in conversation with host Am Johal about experiences from her Chinatown upbringing. She shares what led her to pursue a lifelong career in art, and her fascination with the Arctic. She also speaks to some of her particular works, including the public art installation, “Abacus (Suan Phan),” an interactive sculpture symbolic of the “merchants and old social fabric of Shanghai Alley and Chinatown.”

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/85-gwen-boyle.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/85-gwen-boyle.html

Gwen Boyle’s website:

https://gwenboyle.com/index.html

Abacus (Suan Phan):

https://gwenboyle.com/public-art/abacus-suan-phan/index.html

Bio:

Gwen Boyle is originally from Vancouver and after many years of living and working in the Yukon returned to that city to study art while raising a family. She received her diploma from the Vancouver School of Art – now Emily Carr University of Art + Design – in the early 1970′s, and after further sculpture studies under Jack Harman, graduated with honours in bronze casting in 1975. While she has made smaller works, her interest has always been in large scale, interactive sculptures and she has explored this most extensively in my public art commissions. She enjoys the challenge of making public art – from the historic research of site, to engineering problem solving, to the knowledgeable and enthusiastic specialists she works alongside during the long creative process. In 1989 she was fortunate to spend time again in the North, this time travelling to Resolute in Canada’s high arctic to make art. This was a significant experience in her life and career, and the memory of that landscape and human relation to it has stayed with her ever since. She currently lives and works in Vancouver, near to the ocean and a different kind of inspiring natural and urban expanse.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “Remembering Chinatown — with Gwen Boyle.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, November 2, 2020. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/85-gwen-boyle.html.

Working at the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, Jen Sungshine collaborates with fellow Love Intersections artists to celebrate diasporic narratives of queer identities. Jen joins host Am Johal to discuss art making and storytelling as a tool to address systemic racism and build understanding in conversations about gender and sexuality. She shares some recent Love Intersections projects, including Yellow Peril: Queer Destiny, a short documentary following Vancouver drag artist Maiden China and a subsequent visual art installation — both inspired by the Chinese five elements as a framework to explore the artists’ experiences of Chineseness and queerness.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/84-jen-sungshine.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/84-jen-sungshine.html

Jen Sungshine:

https://www.jensungshine.com/

Love Intersections:

https://loveintersections.com/

Documentary: Yellow Peril: Queer Destiny:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4LvRXTtrq4

Visual art exhibit: Yellow Peril; The Celestial Elements:

https://loveintersections.com/yellowperil-celestialelements/

Bio:

Jen Sungshine speaks for a living, but lives for breathing art into spaces, places, cases. She is a queer Taiwanese interdisciplinary artist/activist, facilitator, and community mentor based in Vancouver, BC, and the Co-Creative Director and founder of Love Intersections, a media arts collective dedicated to collaborative filmmaking and relational storytelling. Jen's artistic practice is informed by an ethic of tenderness; instead of calling you out, she wants to call you in, to make (he)artful social change with her. In the audience, she looks for weirdos, queerdos and anti-heroes. In private, she looks after more than 70 houseplants and prefers talking to plants than to people.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “Queering Diasporic Narratives — with Jen Sungshine.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, October 27, 2020. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/84-jen-sungshine.html.

Urban Indigenous youth are taking the lead, advocating for policies that uphold the rights of Indigenous peoples on and off-reserve. Host Am Johal is joined by Jessica Savoy and Edgard Villanueva-Cruz from Aboriginal Life in Vancouver Enhancement Society (ALIVE). They discuss their recent report, Our Place, Our Home, Our Vision: Youth Voices of East Vancouver. The report contains Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth-generated recommendations for bringing urban Indigenous voices to the table, applying UNDRIP across different levels of government, and creating new models of self-governance for Indigenous people living off-reserve or in urban centers.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/83-jessica-savoy-edgard-villanueva-cruz.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/83-jessica-savoy-edgard-villanueva-cruz.html

Aboriginal Life in Vancouver Enhancement Society (ALIVE):

https://alivesociety.ca/

ALIVE Report: Our Place, Our Home, Our Vision: Youth Voices of East Vancouver:

https://alivesociety.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/alive-youth-policy-report-V02.pdf

B.C. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act:

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/indigenous-people/new-relationship/united-nations-declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples

United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples:

https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html

Bio:

Jessica has personal experience and education developing and implementing engagement and empowerment initiatives for Indigenous peoples, youth and the greater community. Over the past several years, she has worked with ALIVE and the City of Vancouver as a program assistant. She recently completed the 12-month Indigenous Youth Internship Program (IYIP) with the Provincial Government. During her time with the IYIP Program, she spent 9 months in Victoria with the Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation as a Policy Advisor, and 3 months with ALIVE. EDGARD VILLANUEVA-CRUZ Edgard has experience both on and off-reserve advocating and leading. Edgard began working with ALIVE at the age of 16 and has spent his days activating Urban Indigenous peoples to the goals they wish to achieve. He works to educate and empower a team of indigenous and non-indigenous youth to decolonize, create systems change and produce meaningful outcomes.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “Youth Voices of East Vancouver — with Jessica Savoy and Edgard Villanueva-Cruz.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, October 22, 2020. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/83-jessica-savoy-edgard-villanueva-cruz.html.

Below the Radar explores unfolding the enfolded with Laura U. Marks, an SFU professor, and scholar who works on media art and philosophy with an intercultural focus. She is in conversation with co-hosts Am Johal and Paige Smith about her research into experimentalism and aesthetics in Arab cinema and the connections between Islamic art and philosophy and new media art. Laura talks about co-founding the Substantial Motion Research Network, tracing cultural and artistic genealogies, and de-westernizing artistic practices. They also discuss the concerns around the environmental consequences of streaming media that led Laura to create the Small File Media Festival.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/82-laura-marks.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/82-laura-marks.html

Read more about Laura’s work:

http://www.sfu.ca/~lmarks/

Substantial Motion Research Network:

https://substantialmotion.org/

Small File Media Festival:

https://smallfile.ca/

Bio:

Laura U. Marks works on media art and philosophy with an intercultural focus. She programs experimental media art for venues around the world and is the founder of the Small File Media Festival. Laura's most recent books are Hanan al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image (MIT, 2015) and Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art (MIT, 2010). With Azadeh Emadi she is a founding member of the Substantial Motion Research Network of artists and scholars working on cross-cultural approaches to media technologies. Marks is Grant Strate Professor in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am, and Smith, Paige. “Unfolding Artistic Practices — with Laura Marks.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, October 20, 2020. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/82-laura-marks.html.

Ta7talíya Nahanee joins Am Johal to discuss her work in creating social change through decolonial facilitation, rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing and chenchenstway, the law of lifting each other up. Ta7talíya shares her journey of founding Decolonizing Practices, developing Sínulhkay and Ladders, and how she engages people in conversations about redress, land equity, privilege, and resisting the comfort of complacency in neocolonial systems. She also speaks to Indigenous language resurgence, decolonizing identity, and the idea that decolonization is an ongoing and personal process of self-actualization.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/81-ta7taliya-nahanee.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/81-ta7taliya-nahanee.html

Decolonizing Practices:

https://www.decolonizingpractices.org/

Find the Decolonize First workbook, Sínulhkay and Ladders game and more online:

https://www.nahaneecreative.com/

Bio:

Ta7talíya Michelle Nahanee, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, is a decolonial facilitator & strategist catalyzing social change to transform colonial narratives & impacts. She works within the intersection of class, culture and creativity focusing on social change through communications and engagement. Ta7talíya’s collaborations have influenced opinions, changed behaviours and mobilized community action. She is the designer of a life-size board game called Sínulhkay and Ladders which she uses in her workshop Decolonizing Practices. Her approach earned her the 2019 City of Vancouver Award of Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion. Ta7talíya is also a 2020 Dialogue Associate with the Simon Fraser University Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue. She is the author and designer of a decolonizing workbook called Decolonize First, a liberating guide and workbook for peeling back the layers of neocolonialism. Ta7talíya also recently co-founded a Squamish-led non-profit called M̓i tel'nexw Leadership Society to work with organizations and individuals who want to activate decolonizing practices, indigenization and commitments to reconciliation led by Squamish ways of seeing, knowing & being.

Cite this episode:

Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “Decolonizing Practices — with Ta7talíya Michelle Nahanee.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, October 13, 2020. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/81-ta7taliya-nahanee.html.