Introduction by Robert Clarke and Chris Cavanagh, with Ferne Cristall
An opening glimpse of the life, work, and influence of dian marino--of what she called the "rain forest of moveable relations" that made up her personal history--considering the background and the nature of her work as educator, artist, and community activist.

1. Landscape for an Easily Influenced Mind: Reflections on My Experience as an Artist and Educator Dian considers her own formation as an artist and educator working for social change and challenges her audience to reflect on the patterns of their own social construction. With a little help from Antonio Gramsci and the idea of "cracks in consent," combined with a misquoted Bertolt Brecht and Nicaraguan poetry, she explores the intimate connections between critical thinking, creativity, and art. With humour and irreverence, dian intertwines the intuitive and the ideological to link the political languages of consent, persuasion, silence, resistance, and transformation. From a paper delivered in July 1989 to an Adult Education and Art Conference, Oxford University.

2. Thoughts on Teaching and Learning

Emphasizing a feminist perspective, dian argues that teachers must be open to challenging themselves if they intend to challenge their students. Paradoxically, she sees teaching as both creating safety and promoting risk-taking--with her firm belief that "we cannot not learn." She considers the teaching value of making mistakes, the importance of uncovering hidden connections that serve those in power ("equivalencies"), and the inspiration of collective and participatory dreaming (even if those dreams involve the odd nightmare). Based on excerpts from an interview by Annemarie Gallaugher, 1987.

3. Willowdale Worldview: From Old Mold to a Winter Poem

A visual exploration of everyday domestic life just outside of Toronto, loosely mixed with dian's reflections on art, teaching, and living in this world. Dian produced these silk-screens of such things as old mould, a bird on a colander, a stove top, flowers with an ashtray, and a window frame in the late 1960s and early 1970s: a feminist honouring of the ordinary, an artist playing with space and the spaces in between, an environmentalist's love of the details of her surroundings. "Artistic work ... can reflect and re:frame how we see our experiences."

4. Drawing from Action for Action: Drawing and Discussion as a Popular Research Tool

Dian offers provocative and practical exercises on how to assess and use drawing as a tool for critical reflection and action. Starting from a theoretical framework influenced by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, she considers the role and function of participatory research and critiques individually based research. The discussion ranges from exploring a McDonald's restaurant "participatory" advertising campaign to looking for ways of demystifying the production of art. Emphasizing the production of socially critical materials--art that is community-directed or rooted in specific historical and cultural contexts--she suggests ways of metaphorically integrating "head and hands." Originally published as "Working Paper No. 6" by the Participatory Research Group, Toronto, 1981.

5. Obstacles to Speaking Out

When dian presented this paper she was in the process of taking a closer look at participatory research workshops that had resulted in the production of alternative educational materials. The work had led her into media study and an analysis of the all-pervasive corporate control of advertising, which brought her back to McDonald's and the company's mystique of participation. She considers the intent of two teaching models--"banking" and "problem-posing"--and encourages the push towards a collaborative, emancipatory use of media. Originally presented to the International Investigative Forum of Participatory Research, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, April 12-22, 1980.

6. Re:framing Hegemony and Adult Education Practices

As a follow-up to "Obstacles to Speaking Out," dian begins by asking, "How do we know if we're engaged in producing truly emancipatory materials, or if we're only reproducing colonized patterns?" Her focus becomes "re:framing" as she rejects the metaphor of the discovery of knowledge in favour of the construction of knowledge, with students and teachers working together. Adult educators (herself included) are often in a precarious position: working to avoid messiness and flatten conflict in order to produce workable results. Scrutinizing corporate ads that co-opt the environmental movement by shifting resistance into a dominant ideological frame, dian reminds us about the crucial role of secret story-lines and buried questions. Originally presented to the Conference on University Teaching and Research in the Education of Adults, fifteenth annual conference, University of Leeds, England, 1984.

Dream Horse, Moose Balls, and An Earth Blanket (colour insert following page 128)A selection of dian's silk-screen, watercolour, and paper collage art that spans over three decades, with intermingling quotations from the text.

7. Revealing Assumptions: Teaching Participatory ResearchersDian discusses her firmly held belief that participatory researchers must learn to become mutual teachers/learners and leaders/participants. She describes her own discomfort with the idea of herself, as teacher, lurking behind a bush and jumping out when someone "gets it right" and with the paradox of offering a course on "resistance" and then being expected to work at managing, controlling, that same resistance in the classroom, with the teacher in a position of power. Considering once again the political languages that stop or enhance our ability to act in our own best interests--the languages of persuasion, consent, resistance, and transformation--she reminds us that if we want to understand and deal with injustice we must listen to the language of silence and deal with conflict. Based on an interview done by Joanne Nonnekes, Toronto, 1990.

8. White Flowers and a Grizzly Bear: Living with Cancer

Dian wrote this article not long after she had learned that her breast cancer had spread to her bones. She describes the sense of loss of control and the disempowering effects of trying to reflect on and then write about the disease, given the prevailing social attitudes--and militaristic metaphors--and the varied responses she received from those around her. In exploring the multiple probable roots of her own cancer, she finds an ecology of causes. Naming the pain was key; only after dian was able to name her pain could her almost irrepressible humour return. Originally published in The New Internationalist, August 1989.

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