The Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars Notice of Meeting   Date:  Thursday, October 20th, 2016 Time:  7:30 pm Place:  Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC Campus, 515 West Hastings Street (between Seymour and Richards Streets) in the Diamond Lounge Speaker:  Melodie Flook Topic:   Storiquilture Outline: Storiquilture is a community-engaged art project that is currently running at the Newcomers’ Centre for Children and Families in Burnaby. New Canadians, refugees from countries such as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Syria, are working together to learn new skills associated with making a quilt.  As they learn and create their “blocks,” they are sharing skills and stories from their lives, and we hope to capture these stories in fabric on the quilt so that other Canadians can appreciate the experiences and continue to show tolerance and compassion for, and acceptance of these new Canadians.  She will describe the project, the lead team, the participants, project goals and timeline, and the outcomes achieved (and stories which have surfaced) so far. Brief Biography: Melodie is a fibre artist who delights in creating functional art through community engagement. She was therefore most amenable to Paul Boissonnault’s suggestion that she lead a community quilt project with MOSAIC, a non-profit organization which helps immigrants and refugees settle and integrate into Canadian society. The project “Storiquilture” was born out of their discussion, and engages newcomers to Canada in depicting, in textile form, stories from their lives. The project name is derived from the 4 elements that comprise the undertaking: participants are telling their stories in a quilt which is folded like origami and displayed as a sculpture. Melodie has a wide range of interests, as portrayed by her credentials and experience:  she holds 2 undergraduate degrees, one an Honours BA in English and French from the University of Waterloo, the other a Bachelor of Physical Education from UBC. She also has 2 diplomas (Crafts and Design, and ESL), a teaching certificate, and has thus far completed 2 semesters towards her Master of Applied Arts with Emily Carr University. She is currently on a one-year exploratory study leave which has allowed her to lead this and another community-engaged project. She is submitting “Storiquilture” for approval as her interim thesis project, to be presented in July 2017. Welcome Back:  We have gone back to having our meetings on Thursday nights; the return to Wednesday night proved to be more confusing than anticipated. We have meetings set for November 17th and December 8th. Stay tuned...    Copyright © 2016 Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars, All rights reserved. Thank you for being a current member of the Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars. Our mailing address is: Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars Simon Fraser University 515 Hastings Street Vancouver, Bc V6B 5K3 Canada

From: Simon Fraser University's Community web page
http://www.sfu.ca/archive-sfunews/Stories/sfunews06200801.shtml

Canadian essayist addresses independent scholars

June 20, 2008

 More than 350 people turned out to hear Canadian author and essayist John Ralston Saul’s keynote address to the Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars’ (CAIS) symposium held at SFU’s Vancouver campus in May.

Saul, the husband and vice-regal consort to former Governor General of Canada, Adrienne Clarkson, is a distinguished patron of the academy, which is an SFU-based national network of independent scholars.

He spoke passionately about issues including:

• An education system that focuses on the elite post-secondary sector instead of the more important and larger Kindergarten to Grade 12 sector
• Scholarship and intellectual resources that are based solely on English and French studies, leaving out vast banks of ideas from other countries and civilizations
• Our incapacity to build the importance of First Nations into our curriculum and culture
• Our lack of will to end poverty and homelessness, a profound Canadian failure that is "an embarrassment beyond belief and a human tragedy."

He said it is the role of both community and university scholars to find solutions to these problems. “It’s thinking and acting. The job of the scholar and the intellectual is to watch out for our society, to think, to be heard to think, to be seen to think and therefore to act in public.”

Yosef Wosk, director of interdisciplinary programs with SFU Continuing Studies and founder of CAIS, says, “Saul is a champion of giving oneself permission to think out loud and to write even louder. He is not content with thought alone, but transforms it into emotion and persuasive action.”

For more information on CAIS contact: 778.782.5215