In 2002, Canadian Heritage and Industry Canada began supporting advanced research in interactive media on the CANARIE network. Performance Space Meets Cyberspace (PSMC) was a two-year investigation into new online channels for a virtual classroom of Canadian culture that connected producers, stages, museums, classrooms and audiences across the country. This project has been cited internationally as a groundbreaking prototype in online performance and story telling.
While PSMC proposed a new pan-Canadian virtual arts and culture space, it also gave insights into communications in other fields, including contributing a paper on e-democracy and a virtual Parliament to the Liberal Party’s Canada 150 conference. PSMC discovered new methods of participant engagement and consensus building among groups over networks, essential elements to improving education. Many of the events included First Nations story telling, and sharing of indigenous knowledge. Communications of this sort, by its very definition, is inclusive and two-way, an essential value in the Liberal policy book.
