Image above: The CSC made name tags for this year’s UAAC-AAUC. Tags are fully compostable — handmade from seed paper with botanical ink, raffia, and wildflower seeds.

The 2024 UAAC-AAUC Conference
October 24-26, 2024 – at Western University.

UAAC-AAUC hosts Canada’s professional conference for visual arts-based research by art historians, professors, artists, curators, and cultural workers. The sessions and panels address issues and subjects in art history, theory, and practice from various methodological approaches.

The CSC has led the drive to make the conference more sustainable.

This year’s conference reflects calls for sustainability in a number of ways:

• Features a stream of research panels that speak to sustainability and the environment through presentations addressing sustainability, extractivism, eco-photography, climate change, environmental humanities, and care, amongst others. 
• Foregrounds sustainability by modeling more intentional practices that draw on fewer resources and are more in keeping with low-impact environmental practices (examples include: a digital conference program guide, the elimination of conference swag, and providing compostable/plantable name tags).
• The conference is limited to two days in order to reduce the financial burden on both organizer and attendees (students in particular). 

Other initiatives spearheaded by the CSC include: homemade name tags, hosting the exhibition Test Site, installing green bins, compostable bamboo plates, cutlery, and glassware, handmade cushions from recycled materials (an accessibility request from the last conference; made by CSC member Amanda White with Lois Klassen).

Image: handmade name tags made by CSC for this year’s UAAC-AAUC. Tags are fully compostable — handmade from seed paper with botanical ink, raffia, and wildflower seeds.

Keynote discussion with Emelie Chhangur and Jamelie Hassan moderated by Sheri Osden Nault.

Thursday October 24, 7 pm in Talbot College room 141 (Talbot College).

The CSC is, along with Department of Visual Arts, UAAC, and Museum and Curatorial Studies, sponsoring this year’s UAAC-AAUC keynote discussion.

Many CSC members and contributors are participating in UAAC-AAUC this year. Make sure to check out these panels with direct ties to the CSC and our focus on sustainability. Full conference schedule.

• Katie Lawson (Chair): Friday, October 25 (10.30am).
  [B.1] Further Afield: Relational Approaches to Extractivism in Contemporary Art [Rm 135, 1st floor, John Labatt Visual Arts Centre]
  
• Kirsty Robertson (Chair): Friday, October 25 (2pm).
  [C.1] Breaking Down: Tracking Extraction in the Museum and Gallery [Rm 100, 1st floor, John Labatt Visual Arts Centre]
  
• Amanda White (Chair): Saturday, October 26 (10.30am).
  [F.1] Ecologies in Practice: Creative Response in Urgent Times [Rm 100, 1st floor, John Labatt Visual Arts Centre]