Component Evaluation: An Activist Scrapbook Timing: 60 Minutes, flexible Mode: In-class; Online Making Madness Political is based on the argument that politicizing mental health can lead to real gains for people living with mental health difficulties. Have your students use the archive of Reville’s personal scrapbook attached to his piece and visual thinking software to …
Component Evaluation: Visualizing Ideas Timing: 45 Minutes, flexible Mode: In-class; Online Use the Learning Lens and Components in Context unit sections to introduce this component to your students and to discuss the difference between advocacy and activism. Then have students view the Toronto Activists video either in-class or online, instructing them to watch it purposefully …
Go Nuts! Unit Takeaways Appreciate the diversity of perspectives within the mad community Value a radical service user perspective which celebrates mental diversity, simple pleasures, and alternative treatment modalities Component This component is a short video called Go Nuts! – an entertaining 4-minute homage to mad culture and a provocative critique of normalcy and its …
Making Madness Political Unit Takeaways Understand activism as pragmatic and strategic rather than just ideological and/or dogmatic Appreciate the personally transformative impact of community change work Explain between the role of media and popular culture inside marginalized groups and outside the mad movement as shaping broader societal attitudes Components David Reville’s dynamic scrapbook displays his …
The Toronto Scene Unit Takeaways Understand that mad activism is a social and cultural movement which fosters positive individual and community identity Appreciate that advocacy and activism function differently to promote social change Component This component is a fifteen-minute video featuring oral history interviews shot in 2009. Secondary student Lily Ross-Millard used the footage to …
Component Evaluation: Deconstructing Madness Timing: 40 – 50 minutes Mode: In-class; Online Although it is extremely important to challenge depictions and false representations found within film and other media, we should not discount the benefits of fiction and non-fiction narratives to participate in practices of bearing witness and truth-telling needed to combat stigma and produce …
D Components: Self-Guided Timing: 15 Minutes Mode: In class; On-line In-class or online, students can read or listen to Lanny Beckman’s memoir, a compelling consideration of the distance between mental health practitioners and people who live with mental health diagnoses. Ask students to use the following themes to guide their consideration of this component: Professional …
Component Evaluation: Intersectional Analysis Timing: 30 Minutes Download Beckman’s piece titled “What If? …Cancer Prisons” as a prompt for your students in a creative writing or cartooning exercise. Ask your students to respond to Beckman’s satirical treatment of the criminalization of mental difference and substance use. Encourage them to use humour (carefully!) to delve deeper …
Component Evaluation: Getting to Activism Timing: 30 Minutes Mode: In-class Pat Capponi and veteran Vancouver activist and writer Lanny Beckman have never met each other, but wouldn’t they have an interesting conversation if they did? Imagine the two talking about the life moments and influences that helped push them from personal dislocation to empathy and …
Components: From Stigma to Action – Self-Guided Learning Timing: 30 Minutes Mode: In-Class; Online Living on the frontlines of community mental health during her stay at the Parkdale boarding house, Pat Capponi found an identity and a purpose there, creating coherence out of the chaos of early deinstitutionalization. What makes her story such an excellent …
Français