picnic poster

TUESDAY, MAY 28 from NOON to 4pm

Flick has been facilitating a video installation art project with Nootka Elementary and Windermere High School, which will culminate in an exhibition on Tuesday, May 28th at the Echoes installation on Kits Beach: here’s a map.   Flick will be back at it with his fixation on old TV’s!

Come see the portraits which Windermere students shot at Renfrew-Collingwood Senior’s Centre with the help of community artist Carmen Rosen.

This project is a part of the Vancouver Biennale Big Ideas Art in Action Education Program.

These pictures show the process leading up to our installation!

Anyone can see from the beaming faces of Ms. Tuason, Ms. Potter and me, that the students’ performance of Water is Life, last Thursday, was a huge success.

During their morning shows, at William Bridge Elementary and at the Jun Ren, Water #10 site, the students whistled, sang, drummed, danced, recited poetry, tooted flutes, and blew bubbles with delight and command of their new skills.  I was certainly proud of them, but not more than they were of themselves.  And I feel that it is this self-esteem and satisfaction from being part of a collective creative team that is the most valuable bi-product of these arts engagements.

Since last fall, I have had a great time with teens from the South Vancouver Youth Centre, recording sounds in every corner of the Sunset neighborhood.  Throughout this soundscape project, in order to gather musical data for our digital map, community members have documented interesting sounds that they “happened” to encounter on our soundscape walking tours.  Or they identified sounds they wanted me to “scout out”.  But the SVYC group took the most creative approach to our project by actually “playing” their environment like an instrument. They tickled the tummy of an Elmo toy in the Marine Drive Superstore, to get him to sneeze.  They crinkled sari wrappers in Mona’s Cloth House on Main.  They slurped at the fountain, and flushed toilets at the Sunset Community Centre.   And they captured the varied sounds of the seasons well to.  In winter, they stomped on snow left by the zamboni at the Sunset Ice Rink. And in autumn, they jumped in piles of leaves on Fraser.  All this fun was done to demonstrate the sonic potential of their neighborhood.  So, I applaud these environmental musicians for their imagination, and I look forward to including their “compositions” in our map.   Here are some recorded examples of their work.

elmo  monaclothhouse  sccfountain   scctoiletflush  stompingonicerinksnow  walkinginleavesonmain

Last week, the Grade 3 & 7 students, at William Bridge, finally got to meet one another, and bring together all of the elements for their Water is Life production.  Bottle flutists, water drummers, rainstick players, dancing rappers, and bottle xylophone players all collaborated to make a wet and wonderful sound.  These hard working students will surely be ready for their May 16th performance!

https://www.facebook.com/events/374102579365467/

PLEASE JOIN
SOMETHING COLLECTIVE
ON SATURDAY, MAY 18TH, FROM 1-3 PM,
AT THE SUNSET COMMUNITY CENTRE
TO CELEBRATE
Something Collective, the Artists-in-Residence team at SCC, has worked and played over the last few months engaging community members in a variety of arts activities that map the sounds, people, growth, play spaces, and movements of the Sunset
Neighbourhood.
We Are Here has allowed community members to explore their neighborhood through dance, sound, video, green graffiti, puppets and photography.
Now, together, with your friends and neighbours, we’ll get to walk through a giant interactive map as we celebrate all the finished components of the project. Come and experience an interactive, living picture of the Sunset neighbourhood.
JOIN US FOR DANCE AND PUPPET PERFORMANCES, FILM AND
SOUNDSCAPE INSTALLATIONS, AS WELL AS FREE REFRESHMENTS!
This project is supported in partnership by

Moberly Arts & Cultural Centre
Sunset Community Centre
Vancouver Parks & Rec
City of Vancouver

weareherepromo

The William Bridge students have astounded me with their multi-talents.   For our Water is Life project, they have had to:

SING!

WRITE POETRY (Here I am reading their work aloud to the class)

PLAY INSTRUMENTS (This is them playing the thunder sheets)

EVEN DRAW (inspired by Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head)

But my favorite skill they have learned is to LISTEN

Each session has begun with a short deep listening exercise (or a masked way of saying “meditation”), to center the students, attune them to the sounds in their surrounding environment, and ready them to be good musical collaborators.  And boy, has it worked!

Yesterday morning, I tried a new strategy for gathering the sounds of the Sunset neighborhood.   I had not yet included very young children in this project, because I knew that they would be limited as to how far they could travel by foot to record soundscapes.  So, eventually, I devised an inclusive method that turned out to be tons of fun.  Using the sounds that were identified by community members, on our interactive lobby map, I invited the Sunset pre-school students, ages 3-5, to collectively imitate each of these sounds.

Here they are looking adorable as they jump around doing their frog imitations:

And here are the ducks in Memorial Park that the kids imitated, along with their recording.

   LISTEN by clicking here: ducks

I recorded all of their inventive homemade sounds for our digital map.  And the kids were encouraged to use their voices for sound effects, their body as percussion instruments and various props (cheese grater, chopsticks, whistle, pots, keys) for noise makers.  The results turned out to be surprisingly accurate representations of the various soundscapes.   And these files will add a truly personal dimension to our map’s data, as they reflect the aural landscape of the Sunset neighborhood, through a child’s mind.

After this session, I wanted to capitalize on the incredible sunshine that this week has been gifting us. So, I continued to cycle around the neighborhood to scout for other sounds that community members had identified on our lobby map. My meandering took me through streets of infinite pink, where I recorded bird songs at the cemetery, traffic noises on 41st and Fraser, and John Oliver High School boys on a training run.

   my trusty bike & cemetery blossoms

But who knew that we had giant blue herons right in our backyard???