3.3. Sticky, Sick, Stuck: Researching equity in the Canadian public arts

Source: SBernicky

Seminar on the 4 December 2023

Sticky, Sick, Stuck: Researching equity in the Canadian public arts

In this seminar, Shanice Bernicky discusses her work as a researcher-in-residence with Mass Culture, a Canadian national arts support organization.

How do we balance funder expectations and our ethical commitments to our research collaborators? In this session, PhD student Shanice Bernicky (Carleton University, Canada) discusses her work as a researcher-in-residence with Mass Culture, a Canadian national arts support organization. As part of her residency, she developed a qualitative impact measurement framework to disrupt the current equity, diversity, and inclusion policy landscape in public arts. In order to do so, Shanice facilitated conversations with arts organization representatives from myriad intersections, many experiencing marginalization in their fields. As researchers, we sometimes feel sticky, sick, and stuck but feel there is no venue to discuss these feelings. Join Shanice as she thinks through the complexities of using creative research methods such as reverse maker-space gatherings, photo elicitation, feminist manifesto and the anti-colonial methodological framework of research-creation to honour the contributions of the folks who work on the ground day in and day out.

Download Shanice’s presentation script in PDF.
Download Shanice’s slides in PPTX.
Download Shanice’s slides and integrated script in PDF.


Shanice Bernicky (she/her, elle) is a media maker and fourth-year PhD student at Carleton University’s School of Journalism & Communication. She completed a Master’s research-creation thesis in Media Studies at Concordia University, as a non-linear documentary exploring themes of domestic violence, heritage, and multi-racial identity from the axis point of natural Black hair. As a freelance video editor, she has worked on a myriad of projects on rich topics such as Indigenous laws and practices outside the settler-Canadian legal framework, feminist commentary on science and technology studies, and environmental issues connecting the East and the West. At Carleton, Shanice researches equity practices in the settler-Canadian public arts institutions. When she’s not working, she can be found knitting or with her hands in earth.

Subscribe to the recordings:
Video hosted on the PAR YouTube channel.
Audio hosted on the PAR Buzzsprout channel and can be listened to on Spotify, Apple podcasts or on other RSS podcast apps.

The Practice As Research network with its resources is free and always will be, but it does of course incur costs to run and to keep it running. If you use it and benefit, enjoy it and would like to keep it going, please, consider leaving something in the tip jar. Thank you!