Cel­e­brat­ed Trinidad-born arts prac­ti­tion­er and ed­u­ca­tor Dr Joanne Kil­go­ur-Dowdy will launch her lat­est book Art­ful Sto­ries: The Teacher, the Stu­dent and the Muse on Au­gust 5, at Nalis in Port-of-Spain. The book is an ex­plo­ration of the role of the artist as teacher and re­la­tion­ship that evolves be­tween the teacher and the stu­dent in the cre­ation of new work, whether it is light­ing de­sign, dra­ma, dance, or mu­sic. Kil­go­ur-Dowdy left Trinidad in the 80s to study dra­ma at the Boston Con­ser­va­to­ry of Mu­sic, Dance, and Dra­ma with the sup­port of No­bel Lau­re­ate Derek Wal­cott and then moved on to the Jul­liard School in New York. She con­tin­ued her for­mal per­for­mance ca­reer which is care­ful­ly and poignant­ly doc­u­ment­ed in her pho­to au­to­bi­og­ra­phy 'In the Pub­lic Eye', which she al­so launched in Trinidad in 2010.

Pro­fes­sor Dowdy be­lieves that she "must come to Trinidad to share every new book. Just like we in­tro­duce our new chil­dren to their fam­i­ly at home, I must bring my labours of love to my home is­land so peo­ple can meet their new rel­a­tives." In ad­di­tion to a love for the stage, Kil­go­ur Dowdy al­so has re­search in­ter­ests in women and lit­er­a­cy, dra­ma in ed­u­ca­tion and video tech­nol­o­gy and qual­i­ta­tive re­search in­struc­tion. She has pub­lished her find­ings of the ex­pe­ri­ences of Black women in­volved in ed­u­ca­tion from adult ba­sic lit­er­a­cy to high­er ed­u­ca­tion.

Art­ful Sto­ries, as de­scribed in the Fore­word by Kent State Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor William Kist, de­bunks the myth of art be­ing a spe­cial skill, and artists be­ing "spe­cial" peo­ple out­side of our for­mal learn­ing sys­tems.

"Blood, sweat and tears of the teach­ers and stu­dents are ev­i­dent in this book-this is not play­time. When one prac­tices for five hours a day to mas­ter an in­tri­cate piece of chore­og­ra­phy, or sweats through a cou­ple of shirts labour­ing over the com­pos­ing of just the right 500 words, one has a right to say what 'work' is." Fri­day's launch takes place at 6.30 pm in the Au­dio Vi­su­al Room of the Na­tion­al Li­brary of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion on Dr Kil­go­ur-Dowdy's work can be sourced at her Web site:

http://jk­dowdy.com/