Wendy Allen

In 2008, after retiring, Wendy Allen took a course in oral history and digital storytelling at COHDS given by Anna Sheftel and Michael Klassen. Her first project used an oral history approach to present portraits of the people at the heart of the international development projects she had worked with. She also made short videos documenting the stories of visiting scholars at COHDS and a Concordia participant in a Concordia exchange project with Uganda.

Since 2016 she has been participating in Digital Literacy projects led by Eric Craven (also a COHDS affiliate) at Atwater Library and more recently at Suspicious Fish, a community organization in Verdun. Projects have ranged from using her photos to create a video about her time in China in the late 70s, to the Promenade Parlante, a place-based research-creation project in Shaughnessy Village (a partnership with Concordia and the Atwater Library). Through the pandemic and beyond she
participated in La Ville Extraordinaire: Learning from older Montrealer’s urban knowledge, another partnership between Concordia and Atwater Library. A montage of videos she created from the interviews she conducted in Mile End was presented at the Centre de Mémoires Montréalaises and at Concordia’s 4 th Space.

In 2024-2025 she participated in a new project led by Eric Craven called Seniors Exploring Future Literacy Through Creative Writing and Media funded by New Horizons for Seniors and worked with Caroline Filler to create an Ode to Public Transit, a short video made up of photos of people and art in the Montreal metro with music composed and performed by Guillaume Jabbour. The video was screened at Material Stargazer,
an artist’s residency at Suspicious Fish.

This year she has shared the position of Community Representative on the COHDS Board with Emily Keyes.