Dorothy Lander, MAdEd, PhD is retired faculty from the Department of Adult Education at St. Francis Xavier University (StFX), Nova Scotia (Home Page: http://people.stfx.ca/dlander ). She serves as an adviser to Arts Health Network Canada (www.artshealthnetwork.ca). She brings to the Imagine Antigonish project her lengthy experience in service operations and financial management at St. Francis Xavier University (StFX)—her first career (1976-1994) was as Manager of Residences, Food Services, Cleaning Services, and Conference Services. As an adult educator and advisor to graduate students in adult education—her second career at StFX (1997-2007)—she has brought leadership and evaluation expertise to AHA!’s programs and organizational development. She favours mixed methods of evaluation including 360º observational and reflective logs, quantitative and demographic measures of participation and community support/partnerships, and appreciative evaluation, which adapts Appreciative Inquiry methodology to map organizational values using Inspiration software (http://www.inspiration.com). Inspiration software produces evaluation summaries in both web (diagram) and outline formats; it also maps and holds onto Outliers, i.e., evaluative responses that do not accord with pre-established categories
Dorothy’s arts-based teaching and nationally-funded research practice on the art of popular educators in the women’s movement across three generations, encompasses peace, temperance, alcohol and drug history, suffrage, cooperatives, community resilience, artist-caregivers and care pARTners (Research Blog: http://www.womenmakingwaves.wordpress.com). She has received research funding from Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Workshop & Community Development Programme (Edmonton, 2005) and from Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation (Antigonish, 2006) for an arts-based workshop entitled “An Appreciative Inquiry of Palliative Caregivers’ Best Practices.” She has contributed to catalogue essays for art installations: “Art as Popular Education for Social Change,” for St. Francis Xavier University Art Gallery, Namaste from Nepal: The art of Bhim Prasad Sharma, September 15-September 30, 2004; “OH, Look! See Jane Act: Re-Membering Our First Reader,” Bonnie Baxter’s multi-media exhibition Jane, Toronto, January, 2011.
John Graham-Pole, M.D., MRCP-UK,co-directs the AHA! Education Committee. He is Professor Emeritus from the University of Florida, has been a physician, educator and researcher for 40+ years, and has written/edited six books on art for health. He became a Canadian citizen in May 2013, and is an adviser to Arts Health Network Canada (www.artshealthnetwork.ca). He was co-founder in 1991 of Shands Hospital Arts in Medicine (www.shands.org/aim) and in 1995 the Center for Arts & Health Research & Education (www.arts.ufl.edu/cahre), both of which he co-directed. He was a founding member and advisor and ambassador for the Global Alliance for Arts & Health (www.globalartsandhealth.org), and in 2012 won its Outstanding Leadership Award.
The expertise he brings to Imagine Antigonish is based on his numerous arts-based projects and research over the past 25 years. His practice, research, and teaching in this area has focused on how the expressive arts can enhance the physical, psychological, and social health and wellbeing, not only of the sick but of our whole society. His work has included arts-based projects at Shands Hospital, University of Florida, Gainesville and Medstar Georgetown University Hospital, Washington, D.C., and in several primarily urban communities.
The Shands Hospital permanent collection he helped to initiate includes high quality fine art and photography from all over the world, as well as installations resulting from a longstanding collaboration between artists-in-residence, patients, families and health staff. His work with Medstar Hospital arises from his ongoing research collaboration with faculty of Georgetown University, and Aldine Fine Art, a consultant on the proposed project. The latter study is exploring perceptions of patients to expertly restored and enlarged vintage photographs, which have been shown to evoke a host of memories and personal stories, and to greatly enhance the quality of life of hospitalized patients.
For the past year, his work has focused on several AHA! projects with the Antigonish community, involving presentations, hands-on teaching workshops, consulting, mentoring, and project evaluation.