The following post was written by Beyond Extraction and was originally published here.
Recently, the Beyond Extraction collective have turned our attention to the ways in which PDAC works to shape narratives about the mining industry year-round through its influence on Canadian education and school curricula. The visual culture of PDAC’s educational efforts extend beyond classrooms, reaching young children and adults alike. For example, funding from PDAC’s educational arm, Mining Matters, creates educational resources like colouring books and mining science workshops.
In response to the visual culture that is funded by PDAC and distributed in Canadian public schools and other educational institutions, Beyond Extraction has developed What it Takes: an all-ages colouring book. This colouring book is designed to disrupt the grip that Canada’s mining industry has on culture and education. What it Takes is a counter-pedagogical tool that takes direct aim at the pervasive extractive narratives at the core of Canadian institutional mining knowledge and promotes critical energy literacy.
Follow this link to download a printable version of What it Takes: an all-ages colouring book which you can choose to print depending on your preference and available printing equipment: What it Takes is designed in a “booklet” style intended be printed on “ledger” (sometimes called “tabloid”) format paper, 11 x 17 inches, double-sided. The pages can then be folded down the centre line and inserted into each other, with the “Community/No more stolen sisters” page in the middle, and working your way outwards. (Booklet instructions are included in the folder, and below.)
We have also included a version at 8.5 x 11 inches accessible to print at home or on any letter-size paper. The pages can be stapled together or simply left loose, depending on your/your child(ren)’s/your student(s)’ preference.
No interest in printing? A digital version of What it Takes spreads can be downloaded here. Sample is above.
ABOUT BEYOND EXTRACTION
Beyond Extraction (BE) is a collective of researchers, writers, artists, and activists, from a range of disciplinary and philosophical backgrounds, who have come together to critically investigate and resist Extraction in its various forms. We approach ‘Extraction’ as an ontology of production, consumption, and wasting practices. We seek to create venues and platforms for the voices, stories, struggles, and techniques that confront the imperial promises of industry and extractive modes of social organization.
At BE, our primary objective is to reveal how the mineral exploration and development sectors conjure an imaginary of spectacular subterranean wealth. We began this work in the depths of the extractive capital in Toronto, Canada, at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) annual meeting in 2020 thanks to an Antipode International Workshop Award.
The Beyond Extraction Counter Conference (BECC) uses collaborative and interdisciplinary methods of analysis to expose PDAC as a key node in mineral extraction’s intensifying financialization, maintained through an international network of relations, discourses, and representations. Our critical praxis is collaborative and continues to resist PDAC as a node of extraction in diverse and novel ways, including: discussions, interviews, book reviews, visual arts projects, and counter-tours.