I adore small utopian ventures that inspire change. Here are select favourites.
For more on collaborating, follow me on Substack @wateronstone.
Writing Workbook
Using life stories to connect with other people, cultures, and traditions.
When Connex Publishing founder Steve Sutherland asked me to create a guide for people writing about faith, I teamed up with West Coast writer Lana Cullis and American writer Sharon S. Hines. Together, with the help of illustrator Kathy Nutt, we created this handsome, stair-stepped workbook based on religious literacy–the need to represent human experience in authentic ways that honour all cultures, voices, and traditions.
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Social media documentary on Native Immigrant’s culture work in Quebec and Chile (2013-23).
As a founding member of the Native Immigrant collective, I worked with writers Gina Hara & Cailleah Scott-Grimes and team to document this decade-long innovative project.
Boundless thanks to NI’s founder and artistic director, Carolina Echeverria, and to participants in the global north and south who entrusted the project with their stories.
Languages: English, French, Mohawk, Spanish
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Rockin’ the Coffin CBC short doc by Cailleah Scott-Grimes
A contrarian’s guide to the good death.
A CBC-commissioned project that morphed into a family collab with Cailleah Scott-Grimes (director and illustrator), Bryn Scott-Grimes (music), and Ron Grimes (subject). I served as story editor.
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“Sleeping with the Author,” in conversation with Ron Grimes, a New Quarterly Online Exclusive
An editor (me) confronts the author (my husband) about going public with brutal family stories.
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A glimpse of the writer’s life, video project with Bryn Scott-Grimes.
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Our Visions, Our Voices literary tour of the American West
Putting women’s voices on the map.
Spearheaded by award-winning scholars Joanna Brooks and Holly Welker, with support from participating institutions Arizona State University and the Mormon Studies Program at Claremont University.
Documentation: The University of Utah’s Marriott Special Collections Library now houses the writings collected on this historic tour of public universities in Arizona, California, and Utah. Archived authors include progessives, lapsed and mainstream Mormons, as well as plural wives.
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Environmental Humanities + Community Arts
“’Out of Hand’: The Life and Times of Rural Water” prints exhibit, part of the Ontario Society of Artists 2003 province-wide Water Project, followed by We in Glass Houses and Urban-Rural Link interdisciplinary arts projects.
These sprang from collaborations begun in Walkerton, Ontario–site of the devastating water tragedy.
Walkerton Water Stories Project (WWSP) and its offshoot The Stories Project (SP). Award-winning Community Arts projects responding to the 2000 E. coli outbreak–the environmental crisis that changed the course of Canada’s water history.
Documentation: see the projects’ hands-on resource guide here
Projects co-founded with storyteller, Mary-Eileen McClear, and visual artist, Wesley W. Bates, in partnership with Walkerton Healthy Community Initiative; supported by the Ontario Arts Council and Walkerton Community Foundation.
Featured artists with the WWSP included renowned water activist, Basia Irland (The Water Library), and celebrated local singer-songwriter, James Gordon.
See also “The Barn and the Lab” with Ron Grimes in Rite out of Place: Ritual, Media, and the Arts (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Awards include:
2004 Community Arts Ontario Best Practices Award
2003 Community Arts Ontario’s inaugural Entering into Print Dialogue Award
2001 Ontario Arts Council Community Arts/Artists in the Workplace Grant
Legacy:
Community and conference workshops, academic papers, consultations, touring exhibits, storytelling festivals, community water festivals, guest lectures, performances and publications, including The New Quarterly 103 with CD.
Today:
The 34 Water Stories Prints are on permanent display at the Walkerton Clean Water Center (WCWC), where water managers the world over are trained in best practices.
Ask for the projects’ ethnographic materials (interviews, etc.) at the archives in the Bruce County Museum and Cultural Centre in Southampton, Ontario.
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Community-based Oral History Project: Opening New Doors in the Waterloo Region
Two years collecting life stories of adults with developmental disabilities (1998-9) culminates in the “My Heart is Full” storytelling gala at the Maureen Forrester Hall, Wilfrid Laurier University.