Mary's Path

I first met Jenny during a summer visit to Nova Scotia, about the time that she was doing her thesis research. Our paths continued to cross during the 1990s at conferences and through a national project to facilitate workshops about teaching literacy from a feminist perspective (Nonesuch, 1996). In my work as a coordinator and facilitator at The Learning Centre, I was aware of the presence of violence in learners' lives and had followed Jenny's writings on the topic. Getting involved in Jenny's research was an opportunity to reflect and learn, with others, about how to shape my practice to account for experiences of violence.

Meanwhile, I had met Moon Joyce, a Toronto-based singer, educator and artist, whom I later contracted to facilitate a two-day "Getaway" for participants at The Learning Centre. On the first day of the Getaway, I participated and watched, amazed, as Moon drew 30 people together in song. The next day, during a writing workshop, I noticed how readily people wrote and rose to share their writing with the group. I became curious about how singing seemed to have prepared people for the writing. I resolved to find out more about possible connections between singing and learning.

By this time, I had started to sing again myself, sparked in part by meeting Moon. I had grown up singing and had introduced singing in my earlier work as a children's librarian, but I had sung less and less as I moved into other work and studies. Following the Getaway, I facilitated a new Challenges group with women at The Learning Centre. The participants identified "speaking up" as an issue they wanted to address. I took on the challenge of leading singing with the group and, later, with the group's support, at a second Getaway.

By now I had met Judy, who coordinated the Alternative Learning Program (ALP), and we had begun to run together. During our runs, we explored our respective interests in using singing and art as avenues for learning, and the idea for a Drawing out the Self (Norton and Murphy, 2001) project came together. In 2000, Judy and I introduced a bi-weekly Drawing out the Self² course with women from The Learning Centre and ALP. That course and a subsequent one, in the fall of 2001, provided context to research how singing, art and movement help women explore different ways of knowing and learning. In interviews, women who had completed the course talked about how art helped them think and see things more clearly, express themselves, and open up. They commented that singing boosted their self-esteem and how, in some cases, songs became mantras for getting through tough times or provided words to express feelings.