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Breaking down boundaries between advocacy and the academy

Communication and Culture MA student and recent SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship winner Susanne Cardwell is using her academic training to help raise awareness about mental illness.

Her work as a schizophrenia advocate began in 1997, when her first mentor, Ella Matthews, helped her found and coordinate a nonprofit agency. Susanne debuted her first advocacy performance entitled "Grip on Reality" in which various performers with mental illness showed off their instrumental, poetic, acting, and vocal talents. A world renown pianist with bipolar disorder anchored the show with his renditions of Mozart and Beethoven. Susanne wrote and acted a comedy script, sang several vocal pieces, and acted as a backup vocalist for an operatic piece.

Since then, Susanne has made a number of media appearances, including interviews on the Breakfast Show, the Big Breakfast Show, three times in the Calgary Herald, 66 CFR, live on QR77, CKMX Radio, Avenue Magazine, and twice live on CFCN News. She also wrote an editorial for the Calgary Herald regarding the implications of the closure of the General Hospital for people with mental illness.

In 2003, Susanne held a gala at the Sheraton Suites Calgary Eau Claire ballroom. The event was born out of Susanne's belief that people with schizophrenia have much more to contribute to society than currently recognized. Acting on her desire to change this belief, Susanne decided to approach an former Disney animator, who agreed to put together a crew of five graduate student animators and voluntarily create the animated commercial. With CFCN's Darrel Janz playing host, the evening gala featured modern dance, a jazz quintet, an operatic trio, light show, a fine art exhibition, and a silent auction.

Susanne is now embarking on a new phase in advocacy, working to bring her academic training to bear on her non-profit activities. Her graduate work will examine performance ethnography. At present, Susanne is working with a modern dancer, a graphic designer, and a musician in preparing a submission for an upcoming creative conference to discuss the ways that technologically-mediated discourses on schizophrenia can be seen as contestable forms of social control. Susanne will be performing the voice over for the dance piece as well as the dance performance.

  • Last Modified:
    Monday, November 16, 2009 - 14:21

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