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ICASP Staff Changes

It is with mixed emotions that we bid farewell to our Website Content Coordinator, Dr. Elizabeth Jackson, our Outreach and Knowledge Mobilization Officer, Amadeo Ventura, and our Video Producer, Dawn Matheson. Liz, Amadeo, and Dawn have all been vital to the ICASP community, and they will be sorely missed.

Dr. Jackson will leave her position as our Website Content Coordinator on April 27th to take up a postdoctoral fellowship at McMaster University. During her time with us, Liz has been the driving force behind the production of our web-based research collection. This one-of-a-kind research resource contains over 300 specially commissioned multimedia entries, articles, documentary films, keyword essays, profiles, etc., and offers innovative research outputs in video, audio, and print formats. Liz has worked closely with several research team members and students, and she has been a tremendous source of wisdom, generosity, and inspiration for all of us involved with the project.

Amadeo Ventura will leave his position as our Outreach and Knowledge Mobilization Officer on April 26th to focus on his own musical and creative projects. During his time with us, Amadeo (who was hired through a grant from the Trillium Foundation) coordinated, and participated as an artist in, our community outreach programs, with a particular focus on the Improviser in Residence initiative.

Dawn Matheson also recently left her position as Video Producer for ICASP to take on the role of Research Project Manager for the Mobilizing New Meanings of Disability and Difference project at the University of Guelph, a 3-year Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) funded project exploring the efficacy of the arts (digital media and theatre) in transforming cultural and medical perceptions of women with disabilities in Ontario. The amazing videos that Dawn produced for us about the inaugural edition of the Improviser in Residence program (made possible through our partnership with the Musagetes Foundation) are available at www.improvcommunity.ca

Please join me in thanking Liz, Amadeo, and Dawn for their contributions to the Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice project, and in wishing them the very best in their new endeavours.

Ajay Heble
Project Director

...partly because I know that’s the only way that we could solve a creative problem [using improvisation with children ranging in abilities] and what doesn’t work is trying to impose a template on the students who are not able to respond to that template.

– Pauline Oliveros (in working with Abilities First)