Seeing The World As It Could Be Otherwise
Last month, my teaching partner, Walter White Bear, and I embarked on an unforgettable journey to Auckland, New Zealand, for the seventh International Teaching Artist Conference (ITAC07). The experience promised to be incredible, but it turned out to be so much more—an inspiring gathering that deepened our connection to the global teaching artist community.
We first heard about this conference back in May 2023, when one of my mentors, Jean Taylor—Director of the Teaching Artist Program at the Lincoln Centre—visited Calgary as part of the Arts Commons ReImaginED program, led by Karen Youngberg. I distinctly remember turning to Walter and saying, ‘We have to go. We need to see what’s happening at Arts Commons, and you have to meet Jean Taylor. She’s the real deal.’
“We have to go. We need to see what’s happening at Arts Commons, and you have to meet Jean Taylor. She’s the real deal.”
At the time, neither of us fully understood what she was going to bring to our world, but from my past experiences with Jean Taylor and Eric Booth at the Lincoln Centre’s Summer Forum Leadership Lab in July 2017, I knew it was bound to be something we wouldn’t want to miss. On the final day of the teaching artist workshops, Jean shared a video about ITAC07 that resonated deeply with all of us.
From this video, Selena Tusitala Marsh’s voice rang out, inviting us into a space where we would be celebrating the arts as the centre of life and their power and beauty to awaken our senses. Her words spoke directly to us. Aotearoa was waiting, and we had to do everything we could to be there.
Fast forward a year and half, and on September 1, 2024, Walter and I were on our way to the land of the long white cloud. We had high expectations for this experience, but nothing could have prepared us for how profoundly life-changing it would be. From the friendships we were about to forge to the breathtaking beauty of this incredible country, the conference exceeded anything we could have imagined.
When we arrived at the University of Auckland, Peter O'Connor and Selena Tusitala Marsh, the conference organizers, greeted us warmly with hugs and the traditional Māori gesture of touching noses and sharing breath. Shortly after, we were welcomed into a marae, where we were invited to unite as one for the duration of the conference. It reminded me of the feeling I get when playing with a group of musicians—how we must become one to play well together. It was incredible to experience that same sense of unity in a completely different setting, halfway around the world. Following tradition, the women entered first, with the men seated in front of them. When Walter entered, there were no seats left, but a Māori visual artist, Ercan Cairns, graciously noticed and offered his seat to Walter.
The serendipitous meeting between Ercan and White Bear created a ripple effect that touched everyone around them, setting the tone for our entire conference experience. We found ourselves learning just as much during the workshops and presentations as we did during the meals and tea breaks in between.
Walter and I attended some workshops together and some apart but the highlights for us were:
How welcomed we felt by everyone
How many people spoke fluent Māori, even if they were not Māori
Spending time in the Art Room with Donn Ratana, Dagmar Dyck, Ercan Cairns, Tevita Latū & Taniela Petelo
Contemplating the meaning of the label ‘Teaching Artist’ with other teaching artists
Spending our second entire day at a marae learning traditional Māori games and music and playing the beautiful instruments
A cloak-making workshop called 'Cloaked in our love' where we learned about the stories woven into a possum cloak by the women who made it and how this cross-cultural collaboration between Australia and New Zealand was used as an opportunity for social justice and community transformation. We also learned the meaning of the face tattoos in this workshop
Participating in the Pop-up Office of Kindness created by Jean Taylor and Zoey Peacock-Jones
Eating lunch with the men from the Pasifika countries and hearing their incredible passion for their cultures through their stories
Taking a workshop on Create Sensory Experiences for Young People with Neurodiversity’s
Learning the Hula and how Pūpūkahi Ke Aloha Unite to Move Forward with Love: A Comprehensive Approach to Arts Education in Times of Disaster
Performing at the Conference Dinner with each other and some of the other artists at the conference
Listening to the musicians perform at the welcome reception
Learning that in a city the size of Calgary there are 76 schools for Pasifika students to attend that address there Indigenous ways of knowing
Attending a Haka competition at one of these schools and seeing 4 houses and their teachers compete. Observing that 95% of the teaching staff were Māori or of Pasifika ancestry
Meeting the younger teaching artists from other countries and observing how ITAC is making a conscious decsion to foster the next generation of teaching artists
On the third day of the conference, Walter and I presented our workshop: ‘Wandering with Wonder: Music, Storytelling and a Cross-Cultural Approach to Teaching Artistry,’ to a wonderful group of 11 teaching artists from Tonga, Aotearoa, Fiji, Great Britain, Australia, Germany, and the United States. We performed on the trumpet and the guitar to open our workshop, then Walter shared some of his cultural teachings, and we used our remaining time together to create stories with each other.
The reflection portion of this workshop was especially powerful. Tongan poet, Dr. Okusitino Mahina, moved us deeply by sharing a poem he wrote for us, Ānau kihe Pea, Ode To A Bear. He gifted us this beautiful work, and with his blessing, we shared it with 1,200 students upon our return to Canada.
Presenting to an international audience for the first time was a milestone for both Walter and me—a moment in our careers we will carry with us always.
We ended our time in New Zealand by giving back to the community that had given us so much. Through our connections in the music world, we had the honour of presenting at a local high school with the incredible music teacher, Dr. Opeloge Ah Sam, where we met 50 high school students, all of Polynesian ancestry. They expressed their gratitude by singing a beautiful song for us. Walter also had the chance to visit a preschool class, where he captivated the children with one of his traditional songs, their eyes lighting up as they were enchanted by his spirit.
“Become different if you like, contagiously different...
empowered to move in that “urgent and more fertile” realm of meaning,
a realm infused with passion, fringed with joy.”
In July 2017, when I was in New York with Jean Taylor and Eric Booth, they spoke of their mentor, Maxine Greene and her work. Maxine Greene was the philosopher-in-residence at the Lincoln Center and believed imagination and wide-awakeness are necessary for us to critically and deliberately make choices that impact our world; she loved the idea that we could imagine things as if they could be otherwise and to encourage that in our students. I can only imagine how proud Maxine Greene would be of the work Jean Taylor and Eric Booth, her students, have done as they live out this work.
Their work has directly led to these International Teaching Artist Conferences, where an international fellowship occurs validating the integral work teaching artists do in their communities. When we come together, we learn from each other and integrate and adapt each other's strengths into our practice. We look critically at the work we do in our communities and share our best practices. What stood out most about the people we met at the conference was their genuine kindness, which was beautifully highlighted by Jean Taylor and Zoey Peacock-Jones’ Pop-up Office of Kindness. This spirit of compassion was matched by their shared commitment to using their art to make the world a better place.
As Walter and I move forward in our work, we will be looking to create many more partnerships and collaborations, as it is through people and experiences that we grow as a community and can become ‘generators of change, significant and humane change.’ Greene, Maxine. Variations on a Blue Guitar (pg 161). Teachers College Press, 2001
Thank you to all the people who work hard to bring these International Teaching Artist Conferences to fruition; it is through you that we are inspired to imagine the world as it could be otherwise.
We would like to express our deepest gratitude to Jean Taylor, Natasha Harwood, Karen Youngberg, Jennette Miller, Tim Shantz, Peter O’Connor, Selena Tusitala Marsh and their team in Auckland, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the National Arts Centre of Canada’s Arts Alive Program, and the Calgary Arts Development for supporting this opportunity. Without your support, this opportunity would simply not have been possible.
Walter White Bear and Samantha Whelan Kotkas with artwork by Ercan Cairns
“When I think of partnerships, whatever form they take, I cannot think of institutions in collaboration. Rather, I think of individual persons - teachers, artists, arts administrators, art supervisors, parents. ”
