Spotlight on Research: Cheryl L’Hirondelle The prestigious Canadian Governor General’s Award for Artistic Achievement in Media and Visual Arts, was this year granted to IRC Enterprise Partnership Scheme Postgraduate, Cheryl L’Hirondelle. Honoured in recognition of her exceptional career both as a singer/songwriter, community-engaged artist and arts activist and her remarkable contribution as an Indigenous interdisciplinary artist, L’Hirondelle is a self-described ‘swift-flying songbird, interdisciplinary artist, PhD candidate and so much more, originally from the land now known as Canada. She holds an IRC EPS award for her PhD research, with Kíla, the Irish world music-group and record label as her enterprise partner and SMARTlab, Inclusive Design Research Centre of Ireland at UCD as her research base.
In her own words, Cheryl L’Hirondelle is an award-winning and community-engaged Indigenous (Cree/Halfbreed; German/Polish) multi- and interdisciplinary artist, singer/songwriter, curator and critical writer whose creative practice investigates the dynamism of nêhiyawak cosmology in a contemporary time-place continuum. Her Masters of Inclusive Design (IDRC/OCAD University, Toronto) introduced and expounded on Indigenous concepts of radical inclusivity and sonic survivance and is further expanding these theories in inclusive practice at SMARTlab as part of her PhD, which is in its final year.
L’Hirondelle’s PhD focuses on the relationship between nêhiyawêwin (Cree language), Gaeilge and the relationship they have to the landscapes and land formations they engage with through song creation as methods for language learning and custodial land engagement.
Since the early 1980s, L’Hirondelle has created, performed and presented work in a variety of artistic disciplines, including music, performance/live art, theatre, spoken word, storytelling, and redundant technologies & new media. In the early ’90s, she began a parallel career as an arts consultant/advisor and programmer, cultural strategist/activist, and director/producer. Cheryl’s various activities have also found her working in the Canadian independent music industry, national artist-run centres, educational institutions, the Canadian prison system, First Nations bands, tribal councils and governmental funding agencies, at the municipal, provincial and federal levels. She is also CEO of Miyoh Music Inc., an Indigenous niche music publisher and record label. She is also a member of OCAD University’s Indigenous Council (Toronto) and is one-third of the Indigenous kiy collective.
Speaking of the lifelong achievements and impact of this remarkable action researcher/media artist, her PhD supervisor Professor Lizbeth Goodman of UCD stated: “It has been my great honour over the years to know and advise, and in turn be informed and inspired by, the remarkable Cheryl L’Hirondelle. Her wisdom surpasses the kinds of ‘knowledge’ which can be ‘taught’ in any formal institutional setting; in nature, she sings out to the furthest mountain and shows how our relationships to land and to one another require a delicate balance of strength with integrity, connectedness and ethical engagement, all combining to inspire and enlighten us all, in honour of our ancestors and for the sake of this generation and generations still to come.”
Colm Ó Snodaigh of Kila, gives this Irish shout-out: “Maith thú Cheryl! Maith thú!”
L’Hirondelle’s art and musical practice is regularly discussed in a variety of exhibition publications, periodicals, peer-reviewed journals and doctoral theses. In 2004, she was the first Indigenous artist invited to present work at DAK’ART Lab, at the 6th Edition of the Dakar Biennale for Contemporary African Art, Senegal. In both 2005 and 2006, Cheryl was the recipient of the imagineNATIVE New Media Award for her online net.art projects: treatycard.ca , 17:TELL and wêpinâsowina.net . Her 2008/9 Songlines project nikamon ohci askiy (songs because of the land) was recognised as an Official Honouree of the 13th Annual Webby Awards in the Net Art category. She has been awarded several music related honours: Prairie Music Award (nomination for producing Nikamok, 2001), Canadian Aboriginal Music Award (for M’Girl, 2006 & 2007), and a Canadian Juno Award (as part of Buffy Sainte Marie’s Power in the Blood , 2015). In January 2020 she brought her inspirational Light Tipi participatory action installation to Davos during the WEF.
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Congratulations to Dr Aviva Cohen and the Seamless care team!
Dr Aviva Cohen shares the personal story behind her research and how she plans to help non-verbal people to communicate their needs independently.
Dr Aviva Cohen is the principle investigator on SeamlessCare , a project developing technologies to enhance the care of people with a wide range of disabilities.
Her work is funded by Enterprise Ireland and hosted in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at University College Dublin (UCD). It began with postdoctoral research backed by an Assistid Marie Curie fellowship, which has funded researchers developing technology for use by people with intellectual disabilities or who are on the autism spectrum.
SeamlessCare is set to spin out of UCD later this year, but it’s not Cohen’s first research-led business. Neuro Hero , founded in 2011, arose out of a personal crisis.
In 2006, Cohen’s partner, Steve, suffered a severe stroke. Cohen explored clinically tested but lesser-known therapies for stroke to find ways to help Steve regain his cognition, speech and movement.
While he regained some of his mobility and cognition, speech continued to be an issue for Steve. So Cohen led an expert team to develop a suite of speech and language therapy apps . Today, Neuro Hero spans 19 apps available in six languages and has won numerous awards.
‘I understood that, if I wanted things to improve, l would have to work on the solutions myself’– DR AVIVA COHEN
Cohen returned to academia when she was invited to become an Assistid Marie Curie research fellow in 2016, and the organisation introduced her to healthcare professionals and families of people with additional needs.
This experience led her to devise a new app – one that would capture the insights that primary carers acquire over years, so that this valuable knowledge can be passed on. Further development, testing and funding applications led Cohen and her colleague Ian Kennedy to enhance the app with new ideas to support the care of people with additional needs.
What inspired you to become a researcher? I loved poetry in school, especially Patrick Kavanagh and the metaphysical poets. After reviewing my Leaving Cert essays, one of my English teachers suggested that I study philosophy.
In 1984 I went to Trinity College Dublin to begin a four-year degree in pure philosophy. I loved every moment and desperately wanted to lecture because I could see how a philosophical approach could lead to creativity and foster the type of awareness that is necessary for political freedom and equality.
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When Steve became ill, I realised how few resources were available to support people with additional needs and their families. I understood that, if I wanted things to improve, l would have to work on the solutions myself. I was lucky, I could use the skills I learned as a researcher and a communications consultant. I also drew heavily on the tenacity I learned from Steve, who had been my karate sensei for almost 20 years. I started to identify gaps and to build solutions wherever I could.
It still surprises me that I ended up working in technology – this had never been my forte! However, the more I researched, the more I became inspired by the potential for technological innovation. From the very start, I had looked for information and technologies to help Steve and our family. When I failed to find what we needed, I knew that I had to learn about technology so that I could begin to address this deficit.
Can you tell us about the research you’re currently working on? SeamlessCare is now being developed as a cloud-based solution designed to ensure the best possible care for everyone, no matter how complex their needs. Our team has been joined by the talented Dr Cagri Cubukcu – he is building our APIs on the HL7 FHIR framework so that they are interoperable and comply with international healthcare and World Health Organization standards. [FHIR is a standard for healthcare data exchange published by Health Level Seven International (HL7), a not-for profit standards-developing organisation.]
We are developing four APIs that support interactions between families and formal carers, enhance the flow of information within caring facilities and promote communication with people who don’t have the capacity to use functional words.
The first API is accompanied by a user-friendly mobile app that was inspired by my postdoctoral research. It is a video-based care plan that enables carers to record and archive short videos that show the daily living requirements of each care recipient. The aim is to relay complex information quickly and accurately.
The second API and mobile app combination offers a unique opportunity to use machine learning to analyse the sounds made by non-verbal people so that other people can understand up to 10 emotional states. Using data analytics, it becomes possible to record vocalisations and generate text messages that express emotions. Our aim is to enable non-verbal people to convey their feelings independently, often for the first time in their lives.
The third API is a practical tool that will match the best qualified care provider to the specific needs of each person. This will enhance safety and quality of care. We are also building a heat-mapping system that will help to identify gaps in care, spikes in incidence and other patterns in order to enhance patient care, safety and quality of life.
In your opinion, why is your research important? Imagine if only one or two people in your world could interpret what you are trying to say. Imagine what it’s like to work in a caring environment where you desperately want to know what a person is trying to communicate but it is simply impossible.
People with complex needs, such as intellectual disability, brain injury or communication difficulty, often become frustrated because they cannot communicate their needs and preferences. This reduces their quality of life and sometimes leads to challenging behaviours that can result in harm to themselves or to those providing care. SeamlessCare is working to change this.
At first, we will help non-verbal people to express their emotions. In the future we hope to expand upon our research so that, one day, we can translate a wide range of vocalisations.
Testing has shown that our video care plan has numerous benefits, including shorter handover times between staff members and improved interactions between family members and staff. In addition, testers reported a reduction in frustration for non-verbal people which led to fewer falls and a reduction in challenging behaviours.
Our matching algorithm goes beyond aligning clinical needs with the skills written on a care provider’s CV. We want to match people who will connect on a personal level so that people enjoy their lives rather than simply receiving care. Our heat-mapping system has the potential to quickly identify patterns that could lead to medical, behavioural or staffing issues. Initial research suggests that it could improve safety and reduce risk to both staff and patients.
What’s the future for your research? SeamlessCare APIs will be available to healthcare providers including hospitals, rehabilitation centres, care facilities and nursing homes. Each institution can select a single API or license all four as a bundle. They can be easily integrated into existing systems and can be white-labelled if desired. The user-friendly mobile apps will be provided to care providers and to families.
As we provide a cloud-based service, there is no limit to the number of users we can support, or to the length of their contract. This means that it is possible to maintain an evolving archive of data that grows and changes throughout the lifetime of each care recipient.
Last year, we completed the 2020 UCD VentureLaunch Accelerator Programme . This was a wonderful opportunity to learn advanced business skills and to enhance our personal development. The VentureLaunch Accelerator is run by NovaUCD, who have been incredibly supportive of our work. With NovaUCD’s help, we will spin our company out of UCD before the summer of 2021.
We are now entering the second phase of testing in institutions and family homes. This is an exciting stage in the project. We will be ready to roll out the first of our APIs to the public by this summer and all four will be available by the end of 2021.
SMARTlab researcher Saskia Wilson – Brown of the Institute for Art and Olfaction launched her novel Perfurme on the Radio podcast: check it out here!
Dr Sambhavi Chandrashankar of Brightspace/Desire2 Learn delivers the January 2021 PhD seminar on INCLUSIVE BY DESIGN!
Dr. Sambhavi “Sam” Chandrashekar has been working with Dr. Jutta Treviranus since 2005 on several projects at the Inclusive Design Research Centre, Toronto. In 2017, she joined D2L Corporation as their Accessibility Lead, taking responsibility for the accessibility of their product Brightspace, a Learning Management System. An award-winning inclusive educator herself, Sam is passionate about making education accessible to all learners through accessible technology and inclusive pedagogy.
Since 2012, Sam has been an Adjunct Professor with OCAD University in their Master of Design program in Inclusive Design. She taught four cohorts in the program and supervised over 50 Inclusive Design student research projects on diverse topics. Sam is also an Adjunct Professor (Critical Disability Studies) with York University, Toronto, supervising a PhD student. She taught a master’s course on Accessibility & Inclusive Design at the iSchool, University of Toronto in Fall 2020.
Sam holds a PhD in Information Systems from the iSchool, University of Toronto, and an M.Sc. in Human-Computer Interaction from University College London, UK. Sam also did a 2-year post-doc with the University of Toronto funded by the Mitacs Elevate program. Sam is a member of the Ontario government’s Post-Secondary Education Standards Development Committee under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, and a member of the Curriculum Development and Recommendation Committee of the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP). Sam is also a member of the Advisory Council of the Canadian Accessibility Network.
