Jennifer Schine is a sound artist, researcher, and psychotherapist-in-training.
she also loves collaborative projects, listening to sounds, and hanging around On boats.
Over the last decade, I’ve worked in non-profits, consulting, conservation, social justice, philanthropy, and the arts. As the Founder and Principal of Pacific Research & Communications, I support community-led initiatives and communication strategies in BC, Canada, and beyond. I am currently studying to become a Registered Clinical Counsellor at Adler University and work as a Counselling Intern at the Adler Centre, a non-profit organization that offers low-cost counselling services in-person in Vancouver and remotely across BC.
As an artist, I’m a big fan of public engagement and have extended my academic work into film, radio, electroacoustic compositions, and art installations. I produce podcasts like Call To Mind and radio, such as Ecology of Sound: Hildegard Westerkamp for CBC Ideas, which has been rebroadcast internationally.
My goal as an educator is to use art and teaching as a conduit to connect artists with scientists. I teach courses and workshops in both urban and rural environments, including Podcasting: The Story From Hear at Hollyhock and as a sessional instructor of anthropology at the University of Victoria, among other organizations, community groups, and institutions.
I’m honoured to be a 2021/22 Action Canada Fellow alumni and serve as a Director of the Western Front artist-run-centre and an Advisor to Sea to Cedar. Previously, I served as the Soundworks Editor of the BC Studies Journal, a Director of the Salmon Coast Field Station and was the Pacific Community Lead at MakeWay (formerly Tides Canada). I hold a MA in Communication from Simon Fraser University and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Victoria.
I'm interested in collaborations, creative processes, and our connections to community, to each other, and within ourselves. Please reach out and say hello!
SKILLS/SERVICES
Jennifer facilitates authentic, productive dialogue, representing cultural values and traditional knowledge and practices. She has experience in multi-stakeholder facilitation, qualitative research, data analysis, report writing, and multimedia projects (video, audio, photography) for clients in various fields. Her approach includes fieldwork, interviews, focus groups and workshops, mapping, storytelling, and soundscape methodologies.
Contact Jenni Schine for services such as:
COMMUNITY-BASED RESEARCH
Socio-economic
Government and policy
Traditional Use Studies and mapping
Community outreach and facilitation
Technical assistance and training
even boat driving and field support!
STRATEGIC PLANNING
Scoping reports
Program reviews and delivery
Grant writing and fundraising
COMMUNICATIONS
Communication strategy
Outreach and engagement
Storyboarding and creation
Podcasts and radio production
Multimedia
Example Projects
ACTION CANADA - PUBLIC POLICY REPORT (2022)
We All Live on Indigenous Land: Building Trusted Relationships in Canada’s Immigration Process
Authors: Laura Corrales, Jon Farrell, Grace Lee, Kaitlynne Lowe, Jennifer Schine and Amrit Sehdev; Mentor: Daniel Jean.
Nearly 22% of Canada’s population was born outside Canada, and Canada plans to welcome another 1.2 million new Canadians by 2023. What do these newest residents learn and know about the original stewards of the land—about Indigenous Peoples, cultures and lived experiences?
New immigrants, as well as all the citizens and residents of these lands, undertake the responsibility to know Canada’s shared truth and history. But newcomers who arrive in Canada have very few opportunities to learn about Indigenous Peoples’ cultures and lived experiences.
To further the work surrounding the education of Indigenous Peoples’ histories, cultures, and lived experiences for newcomers, we undertook new research and engagement on how to support relationship building and truth telling between newcomers and Indigenous Peoples. We identified 25 recommendations to aid in building this knowledge and connections, which fall under five overarching goals.
Goal 1: Centre Indigenous Peoples and histories in agencies through training, technology and inclusion.
Goal 2: Increase Indigenous participation and understanding within immigration policy-making.
Goal 3: Enhance newcomers education on Indigenous Peoples’ histories, cultures and lived experiences.
Goal 4: Increase Indigenous awareness in settlement services.
Goal 5: Enhance Indigenous awareness through community engagement and self learning.
These goals and recommendations aim to enhance newcomers’ understanding of Canada’s history, and in doing so, create a national identity that is accountable to truth.
UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA - CALL TO MIND PODCAST (2022)
Call to Mind - audio stories of love and memory loss. In this four-part podcast series, people living with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia record audio diaries and conversations about their lives during the pandemic.
Join host, Debra Sheets, a nursing professor and researcher with the Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health at the University of Victoria. In each episode, you'll hear intimate and surprising stories about the challenges and rewards of caregiving, the impacts of isolation, finding joy by living in the present, and staying in love when everything else is changing.
We hope this podcast inspires you to make your community a more friendly and supportive place for people with dementia.
Produced by Jenni Schine, sound design by David Parfitt, and Executive Producer, Suzanne Ahearne.
SEA TO CEDAR - YOUTH LEADERSHIP PADDLE PROGRAM Coordination (2017-2018)
Youth Leadership Paddle Program (now run by A̱ka̱la Society) is a 10-day program, including a 7-day canoe expedition, for Musgmagw Dzawada’enuxw youth (ages 13-18), and is offered at no cost to families. Centred out of the remote community of Gilford Village (aka: Gwayasdums) in the Broughton Archipelago, BC, youth learn how to safely and responsibly use the ocean environment and outdoors for recreational, educational, and leadership use. Youth participants who complete the program have the opportunity to achieve Lake Canoe Skills Intermediate Tandem and Coastal Canoeing Skills Intermediate certifications.
First peoples cultural council - Arts program review - final report 2017
In 2016, FPCC, with the support of the BC Arts Council, conducted a program review of its two arts funding programs – the Aboriginal Arts Development Awards, and Aboriginal Youth Engaged in the Arts. More than 200 artists, arts organizations and jurors participated in one of the 10 regional community meetings (held in Williams Lake, Prince George, Vancouver, Chilliwack, Courtenay, Victoria, Westbank/Kelowna, Prince Rupert, Fort St. John, and Tofino), 14 telephone interviews and/or the online survey. The program review asked community members about the needs of the Indigenous arts community in BC, and FPCC’s performance in supporting the arts and artists in the province.
Squamish Lil'wat cultural centre - cultural audio journey (2012)
The Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre commissioned an Indigenous eco-tourism project, a self-guided audio cultural journey through the Squamish and Lil’wat First Nations. Along the Sea-to-Sky Corridor, a route stretching north from Vancouver to Whistler, listeners can experience the KA YÁCHTN / K’ALHW Á7ACW / WELCOME FROM THE SQUAMISH AND LÍL’WAT FIRST NATIONS and learn oral history, supernatural beings and place names. This project was created in collaboration with the Aboriginal Youth Ambassadors Program.
"Witness through our eyes, the place where we have thrived and existed since time immemorial."
Collaborations
Science & Art
Field Guides for Listeners
Field guides for Listeners
Inspired by the science at Salmon Coast Field Station, Field Guides for Listeners is a multidisciplinary collaboration between Jenni Schine & Jay White to create a radio show, graphic novel, and installation (at Open Space) about salmon health. Article in BC Studies Journal here.
Recipient of Canada Council for the Art's Concept to Realization grant (2017).
Place-based Art
The Kingcome Collective
The Kingcome Collective
We are an art collective exploring ways to build better understandings and stronger relationships with our environments and with each other. Through art and dialogue, Lindsey Mae Willie & Jenni Schine are dedicated to the work of decolonizing relationships.
Recipient of Canada Council for the Arts' {Re}conciliaiton Initiative grant (2016).
Immersive Installations
Ask the Mountains
ASK THE MOUNTAINS
Jenni Schine & Sylvie Ringer create immersive, multi-sensorial sound/drawing installations in both urban and rural communities, including Campbell River Art Gallery, the fifty fifty arts collective (Victoria, BC) and on Malcolm Island in Sointula, BC. They collaborate with Giorgio Magnanensi and are mentored by the Arrivals Legacy Project.
Curatorial Essay by Jenelle M. Pasiechnik here. Review by Sophia Bartholomew in Peripheral Review here.
Recipient of Canada Council for the Art's Concept to Realization grant (2022).
Award-winning Film
Listening to a Sense of Place
listening to a sense of place
Inspired by Schine's MA thesis (2013), this documentary film listens to the life-story of Canadian pioneer, Billy Proctor. It explores the meaning of home and what it means to belong. Directed & produced by Jenni Schine & Greg Crompton of Artaban.
Audience Choice Award and Best Documentary Short at the Vancouver Short Film Festival (2012).
Radio/Sound
At the heart of my work is the act of listening. I want to activate my audience's ears to change how we hear the world around us. I do this through soundwalks, sonic explorations, and audio storytelling.
2017 CBC Ideas episode.
2016 Kits Beach soundwalk w/Hildegard Westerkamp, Paul Kennedy, Jenni Schine.
ecology of sound: hildegard westkerkamp
Soundscape composer Hildegard Westerkamp hears the world differently than most people. Where many of us might hear noise, she uncovers extraordinary beauty and meaning. It's all in how we listen to our environment. CBC Ideas host, Paul Kennedy joins Hildegard Westerkamp on a soundwalk through Vancouver's downtown eastside, and explores how opening our ears to our surroundings can open our minds.
Produced by Jenni Schine in Vancouver and Nicola Luksic in Toronto (2017).
end of the line
They call him “the wise man of the woods”. Jenni Schine calls him a friend. 80 year old Billy Proctor lives off the grid in Echo Bay, BC, the heart and soul of a settler community with just seven full time residents.
Produced by Jenni Schine in Vancouver and Steve Wadhams in Toronto (2014).
Radio Art/Soundscapes
cONVERSATIONS WITH BILLY PROCTOR
As part of Music for the New Wilderness, an intimate audio work based on conversations with Billy Proctor, a lifelong resident of the Broughton Archipelago BC. As an elder who has witness the transformation of BC’s coast, Billy is known as an important knowledge keeper and “the heart" of his settler community called Echo Bay.
Ethnomusicology professor, Ellen Waterman wrote a review about the concert series in Contemporary Music Review (2016). Adam Basanta's composition is another art/ethnography collaboration.
Sound installation at The Cultch commissioned by the Western Front for Music for the New Wilderness concert series (2014).
Streamwalkers
Streamwalkers is part of Field Guides for Listeners two-year art residency at the Salmon Coast Field Station (SCFS). In the fall of 2017, Jenni and Jay White joined stream walkers from the Mainland Enhancement of Salmonoid Species Society as they counted spawning pacific salmon in the many rivers, streams, and tributaries that lead into the ocean.
Article and soundwork in BC Studies Journal here.
Commissioned by the Naniamo Art Gallery as part of Landfalls and Departures: Epilogue (Listening to the Sea) group exhibit (2018).
Soundwalks
2014 Queen Elizabeth Park soundwalk, led by Hildegard Westerkamp
A soundwalk is an acoustically interesting route that gives our ears priority over other senses. In its simplest sense, it is walking and listening. Sometimes the walk is mediated, sometimes it's not. Sounds can also be added to the soundscape to highlight the soundscape /sonic environment. Vancouver New Music puts on free public soundwalks with the Vancouver Soundwalk Collective every fall and spring.
Teaching
Students listen to underwater sounds using a hydrophone, Acoustic Ethnography course at Bamfield Marine Science Centre, Huu-ay-aht First Nations territory (2016).
Selected Courses/Workshops
PODCASTING: THE story from hear
The Story from Hear is a unique place-based audio storytelling workshop focusing on podcasting and the power of place in forming acoustic stories. Offered since 2018 at Hollyhock on Cortes Island, BC and facilitated by Jenni Schine (sound artist/researcher) and Jen Moss (radio producer/creative writing professor). Special guests include Klahoose cultural leader/sound expert, Jacqueline Mathieu (2019 & 2020), digital media artist, Brady Marks (2020) and electroacoustic composer, Hildegard Weskterkamp (2018).
Anthropology of sound
This upper-level course (ANTH 303) at the University of Victoria aims at sensitizing students to the often-forgotten presence of sounds in everyday life, including noise, music, voice, silence, etc. as significant elements of research and analysis. Students will (1) map out and reflect upon ethnographies of sound, theories of sound, sound art works and recent writings in Sound Studies and (2) experiment directly with sound production (e.g. storyboarding, field recording techniques, and audio editing and mixing software).
Acoustic Ethnography
Dr. Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier (UVic) and Jenni Schine (along with TA, Pietro Sammarco) co-created and co-instruct Acoustic Ethnography, an upper level applied-methods Anthropology/Fine Arts course at the Bamfield Marine Science Centre. Students make their own field recordings, and utilize Ocean Networks Canada's bank of hydrophone recordings and historical recordings from the Bamfield Historical Society. In 2016, their compositions exhibited at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, BC.
SOUNDWORK: The Natural Complexities of Environmental Listening: One Soundwalk – Multiple Responses by Hildegard Westerkamp was published in the BC Studies Journal (Summer 2017), and highlights the Acoustic Ethnography field school.
additional teaching
2020 Sessional Instructor for ANTH 303: Anthropology of Sound (Spring 2020) at the University of Victoria.
2020 Co-instructor for A̱ka̱la’s sound/AR workshop, Nus’idatła̱n tłax̱a Awi’nakola: Stories from the Land.
2019 Acoustic mentor for Ayajuthem Youth Weekend Camp in partnership w/Cortes Community Radio and the Klahoose First Nation.
2018-19 Instructor: Podcasting: The Story from Hear at Hollyhock w/Jen Moss, Hildegard Westerkamp, Jacqueline Mathieu & Brady Marks.
2018 Still Creek Salmon Sounds Youth Mentorship Project w/VIVO Media Arts Centre, Still Moon Arts Society & Vancouver New Music.
2016 Sessional Instructor/course creator for ANTH 393: Acoustic Ethnography (Summer 2016) at Bamfield Marine Science Centre.
2016 Facilitator for Storytelling for Scientists Workshop at Pacific Ecology + Evolutionary Conference, Bamfield Marine Science Centre.
2014 Watershed Educator with Metro Vancouver.
2014 Artist-in-Residence Mentor at the Burnaby School District in partnership with the Western Front Society.
2009-13 Teaching Assistant in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University.
2012 Co-facilitator of 4-day Sound & Listening Wilderness Workshop with Hildegard Westerkamp at the Salmon Coast Field Station.
2010 Volunteer arts workshop facilitator at the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, Vancouver, BC.
2008 Museum Educator at the Museum of the City of New York.
