DodoLab continues in Charlottetown, commissioned by the Confederation Centre. This iteration will include a full week of creative field research and three days of public activity involving a diverse team of students and professionals. Inspired by the Charlottetown’s Experimental Farm, this DodoLab has been designed to engage with a variety of issues including evolving ideas about farming and agriculture, public and common space, guerrilla and urban gardening and concepts of what is “green,” sustainable and “natural”. DodoLab will engage the public in playful creative exercises in order to investigate, document, and share ideas inspired by a particular local situation that has deep relevance nationally and internationally. Findings from this community-based project will be published on line and presented in the fall. DodoLab is an ongoign collaboration of RENDER and the Musagetes Foundation.

DodoLab Charlottetown will include the following core group:
Andrew Hunter and Barbara Hobot of RENDER, University of Waterloo www.render.uwaterloo.ca
Alice Angus and Giles Lane of Proboscis, London, UK www.proboscis.org.uk
Lisa Hirmer, Masters in Architecture, University of Waterloo
Laura Knapp, Masters in Architecture, University of Waterloo
The DodoLab team will be joined by students working with Dr. Shauna McCabe (Canada Research Chair in Critical Theory in the Interpretation of Culture and Director of CHARTS, the Centre for Humanities and Arts Research in Transdisciplinary Space, Mount Allison University) and staff from the Confederation Centre Art Gallery. DodoLab Charlottetown will also include contributions from Justin Langlois of  www.brokencitylab.org.

Schedule
The DodoLab team will be in Charlottetown from August 24-30 and will run public events from a “base-camp” at Confederation Square on August 27th and 28th, and at the Farmer’s Market on Saturday August 29th.

RENDER has just completed a week of workshops working with highschool students participating in the Shad Valley Program at the University of Waterloo. The first series of workshops involved a small group designing a creative engagement for the entire program to take place at RARE. Working in groups, students engaged in a photo scavenger hunt for plants, animals, geological features and signs of human presence.

For the past year we’ve been following the amazing work of Windsor-based Broken City Lab and we are very pleased to be working on a variety of collaborations for the coming year.

And& is an interdisciplinary collective of students from Waterloo Collegiate institute with an interest in alternate production methods, socially-situated practise, ideas, and mischief (as their artist/teacher/mentor Kyle Bishop says: “(And& is kind of a RENDER junior really).

Kyle: “During the first year there were lots of meetings, lots of wheel-spinning, some atrition and lots of experimentation. This show/event at RENDER attempts to package the activities
and contains a cross-section of media including: Photography, Drawing, Intervention, Performance, Sculpture, Psychogeography, Installation, Animation, Interactive Audio, Guerrilla Gardening, Video, and Food

Loosely based on the idea of invasive species, (natural, corporate, human) pieces that will find their way into the gallery are:
An And& How-To
Take-out Weed(s) Farm
Sport Utility Bicycle
Waterloo Parkour Primer
Different Things You Can Do With Pianos
Copious (timbucks) Coffee Stand and in-house coffee brand launch
Puppet Awareness Campaign
Moustaches
Giant Logo
Anti-Bad-Luck Machine
1 Week

There are free gifts for any opening attendees.

Oakridges Moraine Creative Mapping

Originally uploaded by Andrew Hunter1

RENDER Director Andrew Hunter recently lead participants at the Oakridges Moraine For Life Community Well-being Symposium in a creative mapping project designed to identify the links and barriers to progressive change. Participants used traditional mapping tools to create non-traditional maps of the Oakridges Moraine by redefining the map coordinates as Sustainability, Livelihoods, Learning and Stewardship. These maps were then populated with existing organizations, individuals and institutions, followed by the delineation of significant barriers and connectors. The final stage was to begin to visualize concrete solutions, to bridge barriers, build connections and move towards a vision of a sustainable and resilient region. RENDER’s contribution to the Symposium reflects an ongoing commitment to using creative tools to engage with complex problems.

Evergreen/Waste

Originally uploaded by Andrew Hunter1

RENDER has begun the GROUNDWORK project with students from the Kawennio:io School at Six Nations. GROUNDWORK will develop over the course of this year and will take place primarily at the RARE Charitable Research Centre on Grand River in Cambridge. This intitiative will involve youth from throughout the region in a series of co-creative projects including experimental mapping, site installations and photo/video documentation all inspired by the themes of Jeff Thomas’s Homeland & Security exhibition. The image posted here is from a series of images about the concept of “home” by Nathan, a grade 10 student at Kawennio:io School. RENDER’s collaborator’s on GROUNDWORK include the Woodland Cultural Centre, Rare, Proboscis and the UW School of Architecture and the project has received the financial support of the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, Canadian Art Youth Bursary and the Musagetes Foundation.

Jeff Thomas and Haldimand Tract

Originally uploaded by Andrew Hunter1
RENDER has commissioned artist/curator Jeff Thomas to develop an new exhibition/research project titled Homeland & Security that will be presented at the University of Waterloo and throughout the region in the fall of this year. The project has been developed in response to several land disputes along the Grand River that are focussed on the land granted to the Six Nations by the British Crown in 1792. The project features new works by a dozen artists all reflecting on complex issues of home, identity, place and security. Thomas’s project is partnered with the RENDER lead youth project GROUNDWORK that will take place at the RARE Charitable Research Centre in Blair this summer and fall.

Fall Rendering

Originally uploaded by Andrew Hunter1
Phase one of the RENDER lead design seminar involving eight graduate students at the UW School of Architecture is complete with a detailed design concept proposal for a new outdoor learning space for RARE having been presented. Called “The Clearing,” the project emphasizes resilience, natural materials, living matter as architecture and a unique community build philosophy. The next step will be a second seminar that will focus on the engineering and logistics of creating “The Clearing” followed by a first phase of the community build in the fall.

RENDER would like to thank Farid Noufaily for collaborating on running the design seminar and the following MArch students for their commitment and remarkable co-creative efforts:

Pooya Baktash
Liam Brown
Heather Brown
Maryam Karimi
Sean Irwin
Sara Nejad
Prithula Prosun
Mike Taylor

DodoLab planning

Originally uploaded by Andrew Hunter1
The DodoLab team is hard at work plotting and planning for the upcoming World Environmental Education Congress in Montreal. A RENDER collaboration with the Musagetes Foundation, DodoLab will feature four creative research projects and will also showcase a number of innovative design projects and initiatives.

DodoLab logo

Originally uploaded by Andrew Hunter1

RENDER is pleased to present the logo for DodoLab, our creative collaboration with the Musagetes Foundation designed by the renowned Canadian cartoonist Seth. In the coming weeks we will post more details about the DodoLab initiative and will also launch www.dodolab.ca.