Join us on December 14th from 10:00 – 11:00am for Dr. Lisa Tink’s presentation Fit to be Canadian? Understanding Exclusion in a Recreation Context. As we look ahead to 2023, we want to help inspire you to deepen your equity, diversity, and inclusion journey and provide the necessary tools to ensure everyone in your community can benefit from healthy eating and active living! This webinar will make you think and reflect while leaving you feeling inspired to do the work in order to make an impact in your community.
Session Description: In recent years, recreation scholars and professionals began calling for a return to municipal recreation’s historical roots as a “public good.” Blaming neoliberal ideology for the current pay-per-use model, these calls for a more inclusive recreation system have suggested the sector’s “business-like” practices should be of concern because they are in direct opposition to the field’s historic mandate of “equal opportunity.” A central assumption underlying these calls for the recreation profession to return to its “historical roots” is that municipal recreation services, until the late 1980s and early 1990s, were available to all members of society. This narrative is, however, a romanticized account of recreation’s history. Through a historical re-reading of ‘public’ recreation, this presentation challenges the often-repeated narrative of a more inclusive era in recreation’s past. Tracing some of the conditions that have given rise to our current recreation systems, this research demonstrates how recreation has always been exclusionary.
Learn More About Lisa!
Lisa Tink is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation at the University of Alberta. Her research activities aim to expose what is inherently problematic, difficult, and dangerous in the inclusion discourses, practices, and policies used to govern Canada’s recreation and sport systems. Prior to returning to academics, Lisa worked as a Director in the Government of Alberta’s Recreation and Physical Activity Division and Manager at the Alberta Recreation and Parks Association. Lisa is also the Co-Director of In Situ Change Strategies – a participatory consulting firm that works with a diverse range of community organizations.