OCAD University is pleased to announce an innovative collaboration with the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) to showcase Indigenous culture and history before and beyond Ontario’s 150th anniversary. Ontario’s Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation is investing $200,000 in the project.
Students from OCAD U’s Indigenous Visual Culture program will explore relevant cultural objects at the ROM and use digital and other media to share them with a larger audience. The project will include the creation of an interactive online learning environment that will incorporate gaming, commentary and the exchange of local stories through social media.
“We are very pleased to participate in this important collaboration with the Royal Ontario Museum that will further widen participants' understanding of Indigenous history and knowledge,” said Dr. Sara Diamond, President and Vice-Chancellor, OCAD University. “The project is aligned with OCAD University's deep commitment to be inclusive of Indigenous culture and knowledge.”
The project offers OCAD U students an opportunity to examine, interact with, and respond to cultural objects in the ROM’s Indigenous Ontario collection. “Our students' research into current and historical scholarship about these objects, and their contemporary, speculative, and innovative visual responses to them, will result in an on-line recasting of the stories and trajectories embedded in these cultural treasures,” said Bonnie Devine, Associate Professor, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences & Interdisciplinary Studies, Faculty of Art, and Graduate Studies and Founding Chair, Indigenous Visual Culture Program OCAD University
OCAD University was one of the first art and design institutions in Canada to launch a degree in Indigenous Visual Culture. The university works in tandem with its Aboriginal Education Council, Indigenous Student Association, and with all faculty and staff across the university to support the process to decolonize the institution and to recognize, acknowledge, implement and vitalize Indigenous visual culture.
