Toronto Living with AIDS Cable Access Video Series (1990-1991), A Guide for Postsecondary Education

Abstract

"ABOUT OUR EDUCATIONAL GUIDES SERIES One of the central goals of Archive/Counter-Archive is to increase public engagement with our partner organizations and their collections through an “activation” of archival materials that foregrounds the pressing need to rethink what archives can/might do in the 21st century. In order to achieve this goal, we have developed a series of Educational Guides designed to accompany film and video from A/CA’s Case Studies and facilitate their integration into K-12 and postsecondary classrooms.

The guides are easily adaptable to different grades and subjects, and educators are encouraged to use these guides as a starting point to create their own lesson plans. Each guide contains important additional context for the materials featured, including information on key participants, essays and reflections, and synopses of selected works for classroom discussion. The guides also include critical discussion questions oriented toward a range of topics to encourage students and teachers to engage critically with A/CA’s archival materials by making connections between their context of creation and contemporary issues and experiences.

Toronto Living With AIDS (TLWA) was a 1990-91 public access cable TV program that provided information about HIV/AIDS directly to affected communities. A series of 30-minute videos were created by artists, activists, and community organizations responding to the AIDS crisis. They drew on ideas and strategies from video and performance art, but also employed innovative methods of communication to meet their community-oriented goals. TLWA was coordinated by Michael Balser and John Greyson in collaboration with numerous artists and community organizations, and was screened on cable access television.

This educational guide includes important contextual information for the series as a whole, including information on key participants, a critical reflection on the social, political and media contexts, a glossary and suggested further reading. It also suggests a list of five films from the series for classroom viewing, offering film synopses and discussion questions focused on this list."