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Creative Science Shop presents a Special Open House on Creative Solutions for SICK! Social Innovation through Creative Knowing Problems

Thursday, June 17, 2021, from 12:00 to 4:00 pm 

Please Zoom-by, and come and go as you like, for a special Open House version of the Creative Science Shop.

This event will present project ideas from a class of students, both undergraduates and graduates from a variety of disciplines who all took part in an online summer intensive at Concordia University called: SICK!: Social Innovation through Creative Knowing. The innovative solutions that students will present are a result of their identification, examination, and creative responses to “wicked” social or environmental health challenges. The projects were also informed by their experiences using the creative arts as well as student involvement in a variety of community-based learning.

This special Creative Science Shop will have two parts, from 12:00-1:30 and 2:30-4:00, with a one-hour break featuring 23 students, who will present their creative ideas of how to increase health and wellbeing in times of COVID.

This conversation will begin with an introduction by the instructors, Dr. Satoshi Ikeda, professor of sociology, and Dr. Janis Timm-Bottos, professor of creative arts therapies.

Each hour of student presentations will be followed by a 30-minute community discussion. We want to hear your responses, ideas and experiences related to the topics presented.

Age on the Stage. The adventure of digital storytelling

Engage Living Lab Créatif – Online event

Join us for a conversation about art and mental health with Anne Ramsay-Piérard and Maryse Ménard from “Les Impatients” Center.

Ms. Ramsay-Piérard, in charge of partnerships, will present the center and its creative activities for almost 30 years. Les Impatients’s mission is to help people with mental health problems through artistic activities.

Ms. Ménard, a nurse by profession and participant in the center’s art workshops, will share with us the benefits of creation for her, and in the context of an intergenerational group.

Come join us in a discussion on how artistic creation adds to our well-being. What would art bring to the health and mental health care system based on our experience?

We were delighted to host a conversation about the power of singing and to hear how the community is promoting stronger older voices. Barbara Lewis, Anne Caines and Louise Jack shared their work in the community that encourages personal and collective well-being through song.

Barbara Lewis is a singer, speaker, and inspirational vocal coach who offers concerts, talks, and voice lessons, both online and in a Montreal studio. Barbara believes that singing is a powerful doorway to our happier, more peaceful selves. Check out her free YouTube Channel: Singing After 40.

Louise Jack and Anne Caines are members of Ressources Ethnoculturelles Contre l’Abus envers les Aîné(e)s, Respecting Elders Communities against Abuse (RECAA), an initiative of community workers, organizations and individuals from the ethnocultural communities. The RECAA Choir was formed in September 2019 out of interest and need to expand RECAA’s artistic contributions to the community and to improve the health and wellbeing of its members. They have performed twice and most recently have been working online on a project entitled Songs that Connect Us.

Watch the beautiful performance by Barbara, who closed this fun session with a song.

Everyone is welcome to participate in any of the engAGE Living Lab activities. To get instructions on how to join, please send an email to engagelivinglab@concordia.ca

Join us on Thursday, May 13 from 2:30-4:00 pm EST for the Creative Science Shop, Virtual Care: What do we want it to be? How do we want to engage with it?

Sandra Smele, Coordinator of Expertise in Inclusive Aging, Diversity, Health and Well-Being at the Centre for Research and Expertise in Social Gerontology talking about new trends in health care.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a shift towards the increasing provision of what is now being called “virtual care”. Generally understood as a direct outcome of the need to shift care provision online due to the COVID-19 pandemic (and in some cases even as an “upside” of the pandemic), it is important to recognize and carefully consider the changes that have occurred within the context of both health and social services, as well as in our own every day and community care practices.

Sandra Smele will introduce us to these trends in virtual care, as well as emerging evidence of how these changes may be positively and negatively impacting various forms of inequities experienced by older adults. Come join us in a discussion about what we want virtual care to be and how we want to engage with it.

Sandra Smele is the Coordinator of Expertise in Inclusive Aging, Diversity, Health and Well-Being at the Centre for Research and Expertise in Social Gerontology and a Research Associate of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute. Her research collaborations in social gerontology focus on promoting practices that support wellness in residential homes and supporting social inclusion and participation, including the digital citizenship of older adults.

Everyone is welcome to participate in any of the engAGE Living Lab activities. To get instructions on how to join, please send an email to engagelivinglab@concordia.ca

On Thursday, February 18 from 2:30-4:00 the Creative Science Shop presented researchers Linda Dyer and Stefanie Ruel, accompanied by Concordia student Angel Henchey, to tell the stories of four women in science and engineering who lived and worked during the “Cold War” period in Canada. These remarkable women were pioneers in their fields and their legacies continue in the present day.

Inspired by their stories, we anticipated a lively discussion of how their world is connected to topics as wide-ranging as telemedicine, weather patterns, and the persistent challenges for women in the workplace, and our own relevant life experiences.

The presenters are Dr. Linda Dyer, engAGE researcher and professor at the John Molson School of Business at Concordia, Stefanie Ruel, a faculty member at the Open University in the UK who came to academia after a 20-year career in the space industry, and Angel Henchey, MSc student in Management with a keen interest in women’s experiences in STEM higher education.

Watch the videos of Dr. Linda Dyer’s presentation here:

A woman in my past, part 1: Elsie MacGill

A woman in my past, part 2. Dr Luise Herzberg

A woman in my past, part3: Moira Dunbar

A woman in my past, part 4. Doris Jelly.

Conclusion: Our STEM Supper Party, inspired by “The Dinner Party” by Judy Chicago.

Join us in the Creative Science Shop where Dr. Mahani will present some insights from two post-COVID studies exploring media technologies and stress.

Six decades ago, the Canadian icon Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “The media is the message”. At the time, television was the newest form of communication technology and McLuhan was arguing that the effect of this new medium on our life would not be solely social and political (because of the content), but also physical and physiological (because it touched our nerves).

Simply, McLuhan argued that every form of technology is invented to extend our body and our nervous system. But in order for this extension to happen, we have to replace that body part that we are extending. He argued that this process, of amputation and extension, would stress us as surgery would.

Last year this time, we were suddenly cut off from our communities, and especially from our seniors. Did various Media technologies help us or stress us? Did this process of amputation (social distancing) and extension (Zooming) affect us in the aftermath of COVID-19?

Najmeh Khalili-Mahani is a neuroscientist and biomedical engineer at Concordia University’s PERFORM Centre. She is one of the co-founders of the engAGE Living Lab MediaSpa and her research focuses on screens and stress and specifically, she is interested in developing playful and interactive technologies that assist individuals with chronic health conditions and limited mobility.

Everyone is welcome to participate in any of the engAGE Living Lab activities. To get instructions on how to join, please send an email to engagelivinglab@concordia.ca

What’s Next in a Pandemic and Post-Pandemic World?

Join us at the next Creative Science Shop to hear Dr. Meghan Joy sharing her work related to Age-friendly Cities and Communities.
Our cities and communities are places that have not always been designed and programmed with the needs of older people in mind.

The Age-friendly Cities and Communities (AFCC) agenda is meant to rectify this by making improvements in supports, programs, and infrastructures to meet the needs of older people, as defined by older people in all their diversity. AFCCs have been around for over a decade now and it is time to take stock of what is and is not working with the program, especially in a pandemic and post-pandemic world.

You are invited to a discussion about what more might be needed to make our cities and communities more age-friendly moving forward. Share with us how do you see age-friendly environments in the context of the pandemic and where might creativity fit into the age-friendly policy agenda.

Meghan Joy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Concordia University. Her research interests include the politics of population ageing, theories and practice of progressive politics and policy in cities, and the political economy of the nonprofit sector.

Select publications include her book The Right to an Age-Friendly City: Redistribution, Recognition, and Senior Citizen Rights in Urban Spaces (MQUP, 2020), and article “Beyond Neoliberalism: A Policy Agenda for a Progressive City” (with Dr. Ronald K. Vogel, Urban Affairs Review, 2021).

Watch an excerpt of Megan Joy’s presentation here:

Everyone is welcome to participate in any of the engAGE Living Lab activities. To get instructions on how to join, please send an email to engagelivinglab@concordia.ca

engAGE Living Lab is launching the project Neighbourhood Art and Material Exchange in collaboration with Concordia’s Re-Use Centre (CUCCR), West-End Intergenerational Network (WIN), and Extra Miles senior visiting program.

The aim is to develop a sustainable service to distribute free art materials and offer pop-up Art Hives throughout Montreal during the warmer weather.

You can watch highlights of these conversations here:

Everyone is welcome to participate in any of the engAGE Living Lab activities. To get instructions on how to join, please send an email to engagelivinglab@concordia.ca