NSCAD University Institutional Repository

This repository showcases the archival and scholarly record of the NSCAD community.

Collections exhibited here include a selection of digitized items from the NSCAD Feminist Collective Women's File fonds, a collection of digitized scrapbooks containing NSCAD memorabilia dating back to 1921, a collection of books authored by past principal Elizabeth Styring Nutt, and digitized audio materials including lectures, performances, and sound art.

The repository is also a space for students and faculty to deposit and showcase research, scholarship, and practice in art, craft, and design. Current collections in this vein include graduate theses dating from 1976 to present.

We are currently working on creating a space here for faculty and students to deposit other research and creation outputs including alternative publications and research data.

Terms of use: All items in the NSCAD Institutional Repository are protected by copyright. Please contact the NSCAD Library for inquiries regarding use of digital content.

Communities in NSCAD Repository

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Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Recent Submissions

Access status: Open Access ,
VALUING PRACTICE IN VISUAL ARTS EDUCATION
(2025-04) Chandler, Lesley A.
This thesis explores the transformative potential of studio-based learning in middle school visual arts education, positioning the studio not only as a site of making but as a dynamic space for mutual learning between students and educators. Initially conceived as a study of student engagement, the research evolved into a reflexive and transdisciplinary inquiry, centering the artist/educator’s own practice as both the subject and method of investigation. Through immersive studio exploration, this research embraces the multifaceted identity of the artist/educator, encountering both educator and learner contained within the self. Prioritizing making and exploration as a means of inquiry revealed profound shifts in my pedagogy, personal philosophy, and approaches to assessment. Rather than focusing solely on the development of student outcomes, the research foregrounds the ways in which sustained creative practice reshapes the educator’s understanding of teaching and learning itself. By prioritizing process over product, and embracing the uncertainties inherent in creative practice, this research advocates for a pedagogical shift that recognizes the studio as both a research environment and a catalyst for rethinking the purpose and value of visual arts education. The findings aim to contribute to the discourse on student-centered learning and support the argument that arts- trained educators are uniquely positioned to cultivate meaningful practice-based experiences in the visual arts classroom. Central to this inquiry are the following questions: how can the implementation of a studio in a classroom inform an educator's practice and lesson planning, and how can a transdisciplinary approach serve as both a collaborative and individual endeavor, particularly when engaging with external experiences through personal perspectives. My practice, jotted notes, doodles, and explorations, evolved into the creation of zines; self-published works that serve as both repositories for information and tools for inquiry. This evolution reflects a shift from passive accumulation to active reflection, bridging personal experience with pedagogical practice. Through this process, I have come to recognize the value of integrating artistic practices into educational settings, not only as a means of personal expression but also as a catalyst for pedagogical innovation. The act of creating zines has facilitated a deeper understanding of how engaging with external experiences through a personal lens can inform and transform teaching practices.
Access status: Open Access ,
Art/ificial Intelligence: A Reflexive Inquiry into the Usefulness of AI Image Generation within Art Education via Midjourney
(2025-09) Leadbeater, Calum
This study investigates the reflexive potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) image generation as a tool for the ideation of conceptual thought in art education, focusing on how emerging technologies reshape creative processes for students and researchers. While AI image generators have prompted widespread debate concerning authorship, originality, and artistic value, their capacity to function as reflexive tools within artistic inquiry remains under-explored. This study addresses that gap by examining how participant engagement with AI imagery, generated via Midjourney, fosters critical reflexivity, stimulates conceptual development, and expands dialogue within art-making and research. Employing a grounded theory methodology, qualitative data was collected through a questionnaire and roundtable with art education master’s students in early stages of thesis development. The data set, analyzed through axial coding, thematic recurrence and emergent narratives, suggested that AI image generation provoked unexpected avenues of thought that challenged initial assumptions and encouraged reconsideration of conceptual frameworks, however, AI images were significantly limited by frequent misinterpretation and overtly literal depiction of key terms. In addition, participants had major ethical concerns surrounding authorship, copyright, and prejudice of machine learning systems. The study argues for an art education pedagogy that embraces AI technologies not solely as instruments of production, but as partners in the ongoing negotiation of meaning, perspective, and creativity. Emergent findings suggest that in order for AI image generation to function as a reflexive mirror within artistic/research processes, increased transparency of data archives, categorization hierarchies and algorithmic processes is required. Furthermore, the roundtable emphasized the importance of situating AI tools within a critical pedagogy that foregrounds dialogue, ethical awareness, and self-reflexivity, rather than positioning technology as a replacement for human creativity.
Access status: Open Access ,
Wandering in the West: A Critical Examination of the Curation of Chinese Art(ifacts) and Ideological Lessons at the Royal Ontario Museum
(2026-01-23) Gao, Chang
Based on personal visiting experiences in the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), this research explores how Chinese art(ifacts) are displayed, constructed, and re-constructed to convey specific meanings and ideologies by the ROM. As an immigrant nation that adopted a vision of multiculturalism as official federal policy in 1971, Canada positions itself as a place that upholds values of freedom, equality, and cultural diversity. Functioning as vital educational spaces, museums play a pivotal role in facilitating cross-cultural dialogue around cultural heritage while simultaneously standing as symbols of a nation's cultural and spiritual identity. However, the way Chinese art(ifacts) are displayed in the ROM teaches a kind of unequal and hierarchical relationship, especially between European and Chinese culture. The experience of wandering through the exhibition mirrors an experience of navigating the Western world as an international student from China, where Chinese art(ifacts) and culture are placed in a marginalized position. From a post-colonial perspective, the curatorial strategies in Chinese galleries are not neutral, as they actively disseminate specific ideologies and values regarding power. I engage Eisner’s concept of “three curricula” to explore and analyze how Chinese and European art(ifacts) are displayed, and produce specific meanings through explicit, implicit, and null curricula. This research highlights how a museum functions as an educational space, the institutional responsibility to be consciously aware of the social orders that exhibitions are reifying between different cultures, and the need for a comprehensive and decolonial approach to inspiring cross-cultural understandings in museum education.
Access status: Open Access ,
The Least Nostalgic
(2022-04) Kratz, Matthew
Access status: Open Access ,
Wayfinding Through Waste: A Collective, Living Archive of Coastal Plastic
(2025-04-16) Holm, Signy
Through the transdisciplinary lens of feminist materialism, this research uses counter-archiving to reconsider human-plastic relations and find new ways to live-with the ubiquity of plastic marine debris. Emerging from my solitary practice of beachcombing as an embodied research-creation method, I sought to transform plastic waste into unique artifacts. Through two participatory gallery installations, participants were asked to respond to a series of open-ended, affect-driven prompts encouraging a deeper curiosity towards these artifacts, and in turn they contributed to a collective ‘living’ archive of marine plastic. A responsive postfoundational framework was employed, resulting in a new form of inquiry I refer to as ‘speculative narrativization’. This unconventional methodology led to a collaborative re-storying of each artifact and the emergence of previously unpercieved meaning. This thesis advocates for the use of affective participatory counter-archiving to re-examine our entangled relationship with plastic pollution and proposes the potential adaptation of this model within environmentalism, citizen-science and other cross-disciplinary contexts.