Past winners

Since his arrival at Concordia in January 2016, Fabio Balli has explored knowledge commons and the collaborative production of freely accessible knowledge and technologies. With the support of the Center for Teaching and Learning, he has organised three “Breathing Games” events. These events bring together young patients with breathing issues, their families, doctors from Sainte-Justine Hospital and students, teachers and staff from multiple universities to work together on the development of open source games that promote breathing health and healthy behaviors for children.

For various reasons, children with breathing and lung-related issues do not always have access to pertinent health care, effective medications or appropriate ways to take care of themselves. Thus, there is a real need for free and open solutions. Fabio and his collaborators develop new software, devices and experiential teaching methods that can then be appropriated by anyone in the world. Fabio’s efforts strive to give every institution and individual, particularly those from developing countries,the autonomy they require to improve children’s health.

Educator, author, and theatre maker, Dr. Edward (Ted) Little has built his career at Concordia on the principle of community-engaged creation. He has been a mentor to students and colleagues alike, and a tireless champion of working in sustained collaboration with external communities and partners.

From 2005 to 2012, Dr. Little was a pivotal member of the award-winning Montreal Life Stories project that recorded the life stories of Montrealers displaced by mass violence and which then staged these stories in order to open up reflexive spaces within survivor communities and to bring these stories to wider publics.

Starting in 2012, Dr. Little created The Neighbourhood Theatre (TNT), a highly innovative course in which students work as “artists in residence” through placements obtained by the Atwater Library with grassroots community organizations.

Since 2014, Dr. Little has also been a core member in the Right to the City (RTTC) pedagogical initiative, which has brought students from four disciplines into a place-based learning initiative in Pointe-Saint-Charles. Dr Little’s spirit, generosity, clear-sightedness, and his great wealth of experience in community engagement has been central to the RTTC’s success.

Annie is an Inuit woman from Iqaluit, Nunavut. She moved to Montreal over 30 years ago and has worked tirelessly on behalf of Inuit in the city ever since. In 2015, Annie jumped at the opportunity to host Nipivut — a radio show that helps build an inclusive Inuit community in the greater Montreal area.

Nipivut, which means ‘Our Voice’ in Inuktitut, was born out of a SSHRC funded research project led by Concordia’s Dr. Mark Watson. This action research project aims to help facilitate community based or driven projects that seek to improve the wellbeing and social situation of Inuit in Montreal.

Through Nipivut, Annie connects southern-based Inuit to a Northern audience while disseminating timely information on services specific to Inuit within Montreal. The use of Inuktitut on the radio encourages an endangered language while empowering community members who contribute to a show "for Inuit, by Inuit" in a collective capacity. Annie’s leadership and commitment to Nipivut simultaneously strengthens a marginalized community and contributes significantly to research at Concordia University.
 

Amy, Adjani and Casey won the Engaged Scholar Award in recognition of their documentary play, 'On Life and Living', developed in partnership with AIDS Community Care Montreal. Based on interviews of past and present ACCM members, staff and volunteers, ‘On Life and Living’ weaves together a story of the organization’s history using memories as a primary source.

‘On Life and Living’ emerged in 2013 as a concept out of Adjani’s experience volunteering at ACCM as part of an interdisciplinary course on HIV/AIDS. With the guidance of Dr. Viviane Namaste, and the enthusiastic support of ACCM’s volunteer coordinator Andrea Kornacki, Adjani, Casey and Amy embarked on a two-and-a-half year creative and academic journey, which culminated in the play’s premiere run in November 2015.

Throughout the process, these three students worked slowly and closely with community members, soliciting their feedback and involvement to help produce a complex story. The result was a project that honoured ACCM’s legacy, paid tribute to the longstanding relationship between ACCM and Concordia and asked important questions about our cultural narrative surrounding HIV and AIDS.

Dr. Rosemarie Schade recently retired from Concordia after a twenty-seven year career. During that time, she could often be found championing community engaged scholarship and those efforts culminated in several significant achievements during her final years of service.

A long-time supporter of CEED, an innovative international community engagement project (formerly the Concordia Volunteers Abroad Program), Rosemarie assisted with the design of a three-credit course for student participants. She went on to personally lobby key stakeholders to develop a multi-faculty partnership which now houses this important pre-departure learning opportunity.

In her own pedagogical pursuits, Rosemarie developed a cross-continental course, called Sustainability and Community Building, which allowed students to learn on-the-ground from community-driven sustainability projects both in Montreal and in Germany.

Finally, Rosemarie dedicated the last months of her career to serving as Concordia’s first ever Provost Fellow in Community Engagement. As fellow, she laid the ground work for the Living Knowledge research project which will soon have identified the community-based experiential learning opportunities that exist throughout Concordia’s curriculum.

Coop Le Milieu is a cooperatively run café and art hive located in Montréal's Centre-Sud neighbourhood. Their studio is filled with second-hand art supplies and is available on a pay-what-you-can basis to everyone and anyone who’d like to create art as an active participant in their community.

Each semester, Le Milieu hosts several Concordia undergraduate and graduate students who gain hands-on experience with therapeutic art making, social inclusion, sustainable food systems and the social economy. Le Milieu is also a proud member of the Concordia-initiated Art Hive Network. Le Milieu’s co-founder, Rachel Chainey, currently serves as the Network’s coordinator and, thanks to her hard work promoting the movement, organizing symposiums and sharing her knowledge and skills with others, there are now over 70 art hives worldwide.

Since it opened its doors in 2012, Le Milieu and Rachel Chainey have been partnering with Concordia in many important ways. Through their engaged scholarship efforts, they support the research and pedagogical work of professors from three different faculties and provide learning opportunities to students from across the university.

Shyam is currently a drama therapy intern at the McGill University Sexual Identity Clinic (MUSIC), which provides specialized mental health care to individuals, couples, and families with sexual orientation and gender identity concerns. He recently led an adult group as they explored internalized homophobia to address issues of shame and stigma, particularly within immigrant communities. As a result of Shyam’s involvement, MUSIC is the first clinic to offer drama therapy services to the LGBTQ population in Montreal.

Shyam has also reached out to other community organizations, namely Project 10 and the Beaconsfield LGBTQ group to invite them to participate in a new program for transgendered youth. His techniques offer young people the opportunity to explore their gender in non-judgmental, safe and creative ways. His work seeks to address the depression and anxiety that can be experienced by members of this often isolated and underserved community.

Dr. Szabad-Smyth’s contributions to Concordia and the wider community span a quarter century.  As a faculty member within the department of Art Education, she has contributed to the development of the Community Art Education program over the last eighteen years, a program which continues to be unique in Canada.

Thanks to Dr. Szabad-Smyth, the program currently partners with approximately thirty community sites, including schools, art centres, community centres, drop-in centres for the homeless, artist collectives, newcomer associations, and programs for seniors, to name a few.

Her vision has generated a holistic and experiential curriculum, integrating community knowledge in the classroom and shaping generations of learners through a student-centred approach. She has also developed and inspired numerous research projects and guided graduate students as they conduct research in community art education.

Through her generous and caring disposition as well as her innovative approach to community-based pedagogy and research, Dr. Szabad-Smyth exemplifies what it means to be an engaged scholar.

Twelve years ago, a group of elders from diverse cultural communities in Montreal formed Respecting Elders: Communities Against Abuse (RECAA). RECAA practices forum theatre in order to engage people in finding solutions to social problems. They have developed a number of skits over the years, which they present at seniors’ homes across Montreal to audiences that are not always integrated into mainstream Québec.

RECAA’s long-standing engagement with Concordia University has greatly enriched the institution’s research and has directly contributed to the academic, professional, and personal development of students and faculty alike.

In partnership with Professor Kim Sawchuk in Communications Studies, RECAA has collaborated on numerous initiatives, including the Ageing Communications Technologies project. As active-players in this large-scale partnership, RECAA’s members have contributed to every step of the research process and have provided tremendous opportunities for students. Their involvement has allowed undergraduate and graduate students to work extensively with an activist community organization and discuss ageing and elder abuse in constructive ways.