The SPAR Research Team

SPAR’s research team is a broadly multi-disciplinary group involving individuals from the University of Regina, the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Melbourne.
This research project involves a broadly multi-disciplinary research team. With a strong base in the arts, particularly community-based art practice, the team also involves researchers with other types of backgrounds suited to a broader understanding of artist networks and connections between artists and their communities. The team includes individuals from sociology, sustainability studies, economics, health, aboriginal studies, geography and cultural mapping as well as individuals with experience in a range of relevant research approaches (quantitative and qualitative methodology, ethics).

Mary BlackstoneMary Blackstone (Professor Emerita, Department of Theatre, University of Regina; Director, Centre for the Study of Script Development) serves as Director of the Saskatchewan Partnership for Arts Research. She oversees both the evolution of the partnership and the 3 year arts ecology research project. Past Dean of Fine Arts at the University of Regina, current board member and chair of the Research Committee for the Saskatchewan Arts Alliance, and current or past board member for several other provincial arts organizations, Blackstone brings a broad knowledge of the provincial arts scene and demonstrated administrative ability. For the past 13 years she has also served as Director of the Centre for the Study of Script Development (a community-based research centre set up in 2000 by 10 partner organizations from the arts community). She has worked as a dramaturg with playwrights and directors in the development of new dramatic work for stage, screen and new media. She worked with the Canadian Panel on Research Ethics towards the 2nd edition of the Tri-Council Policy Statement. As an early modern cultural historian she examines the role of travelling English performers and the networks they formed in the negotiation of political allegiance, social, cultural and religious values in the communities they visited. Although distant in geography and time, her study of the cultural neighbourhoods created by early modern performers, draws on theoretical material relating to place making as well as cultural and economic networks that are central to the study of the local arts ecology in Saskatchewan.

Director, Saskatchewan Partnership for Arts Research
c/o: Department of Theatre
RC 271
Riddell Centre
University of Regina
Regina, Saskatchewan S4S 0A2
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Phone: 306.337.3165
Fax: 306.585.5530