Category Archives: About Something Collective

Shiny Kids Family Festival- May 5, 2012

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Shiny Kids Family Festival was an event that took place on May 5, 2012 at the Moberly Arts & Cultural Centre, featuring a stage show, puppets, music and dance and an interactive Eco-Maze, which is a giant inflatable sculpture you can walk inside of.

The festival also featured costume parades, face painting, collaborative art making with Zee Kesler (The Bright Red Crayon), roving performers, organized tom-foolery, and storytelling by some of Vancouver’s best story tellers. Including Naomi Steinberg, Renee Iaci, Lisa Sars, and Lori Sherritt. It also featured the Arts Umbrella Youth Theatre Outreach Actors as a gaggle of clowns who performed and roved throughout the day.

The Festival is a collaboration of The Shiny Collective (local award winning children’s entertainers; Gogo Bonkers, The Lost & Found Puppet Company, and The Ta-Daa Lady and Juno award winning Peter Puffin ) in partnership with the Moberly Arts & Cultural Centre.

The highlight of the Shiny Kids Family Festival  was a live stage performance of “Save the Sea”. The stage show featured live music by GoGoBonkers, dancing and puppets by the Ta Daa Lady and Maggie Winston (Lost & Found Puppet Co.). It told a very important story about the ocean, environment, community and helping each other. Children and Parents were welcomed into this magical world to learn about the importance of protecting the ocean, how garbage effects everyone, how rewarding it is to eat healthy and locally and how planting seeds will provide what we need to better our lives.

Watch a video of the show!!!

‘Save the Sea’ performed at Moberly Arts & Cultiural Centre, May 5, 2012

This Festival’s goal is to become an ongoing family event that could take place anywhere. It aims to make a positive difference in the lives of children and families by helping them connect and interact with artists and individuals in their community about sustainability and socially conscious ideas, concepts, and growth. Oh, and have a whole bunch of fun doing it!

We, in the Shiny Collective, have been working tirelessly since September of 2011 to realize this festival and now it has become a reality thanks to the Incubator Residency. It was a huge success. Almost 200 people attended the festival as audience members and festival goers; we enlisted over 25 volunteers, and over 15 performers!!! We hope to make The Shiny Kids Family Festival an annual Moberly Arts & Cultural Centre event.

A Big Thank You to Cyndy Chwelos, all the Volunteers, and all community members who made this event a huge success!!!
To find out more about the Shiny Collective visit www.shinykids.ca

We Are Here-Miniature Play Places

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Miniature Play Places

Toy Theatres Depicting Favorite Neighborhood Places to Play

An initiative of “We Are Here”-  a mapping project for the South Hill and Sunset Neighborhoods; a project of the 3-Year Incubator Residency at Moberly Arts & Cultural Centre

Something Collective member Maggie Winston (Puppet Theatre Artist) worked and played with 30 Grade 4 students from Ms. Dana Soga’s Moberly Elementary School class. The style of puppetry the students engaged with is called “Toy Theatre”.

Toy theater, also called paper theater and model theater, is a form of miniature theater dating back to the early 19th century in Europe. Toy theaters were often printed on paperboard sheets and sold as kits at the concession stand of an opera house, playhouse, or vaudeville theater. Toy theaters were assembled at home and performed for family members and guests, sometimes with live musical accompaniment. Toy theater saw a drastic decline in popularity with a shift towards realism on the European stage in the late 19th century, and again with the arrival of television after World War II. Toy theater has seen a resurgence in recent years among many puppeteers, authors and filmmakers and there are numerous international toy theater festivals throughout the Americas and Europe.

Example of Toy Theatre from 19th Century Europe

Students were paired into groups and invited to decide where they most enjoyed playing in our neighborhood. Together, they sketched designs from memory of their favorite playgrounds, backyards, parks, alleyways, ice rinks, and living rooms.

Drawing of Moberly Park by Grade 4 Students at Moberly Elementary School

They realized these drawings in 3 dimensions and in miniature by using a variety of recycled materials including cardboard, plastic containers, toilet paper rolls, fabric, plastics, foam balls, and many more found objects.

Students working with Found Materials

The final stage of the project involved photographing each student and recreating themselves in miniature, as 2-D puppets to be animated in the miniature worlds. Each group wrote a script and filmed their miniature scenes which will be archived in our online interactive community map. Eventually, anyone will be able to see their Toy Theatre plays by clicking on an icon where the play places are located.

Doll Making with the MACC Girls Club

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It has been a delight to observe the identity project Juliana has led the MACC Girls Club on over the past 5 weeks. Having started with blind contour drawings to a 3-d representation brought a depth to their investigation. The girls had a variety of materials to explore with traditional form of making, in order to represent their self. They are now completing Artist Statements that reveal further – who they are- watch for these on display, at Sunset Community Centre- 6810 Main Street.
This after school youth program is for girls, girls, girls! This year we are happy to announce that the continued partnership with South Asian Family Association (SAFA) will provide funding to enhance this program with weekly guest visiting artists!
MACC Girls Club will work with Something Collective our resident artists who bring media arts, doll-making, puppetry, digital storytelling and the magic of words to this after school program. In addition, participants will explore recycled book making, drawing, drum beats, hip hop and more!

SAFA is a volunteer-based, not-for-profit association with a mission to promote and enhance family values while embracing Canadian Culture and maintaining South Asian Culture and identity. SAFA aims to create opportunities for cross-cultural understanding.

Map Hatter’s Visioning Party!

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Tonight, Something Collective led the Sunset Community Centre Board of Directors in a fun creative exercise to help them get started on their visioning process.  The game, which we call “The Map Hatter’s Visioning Party,” got them thinking about the neighbourhood and its future.

The exercise also launches our Community Mapping project in the Sunset area.  More news will follow, but we plan to recruit in the neighbourhood for a fun creative project with dance, video, music, puppets and more, with stuff targeting every age group.

See the gallery after the jump…

Continue reading →

The Future of Community Arts @ Woodwards

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Something Collective took part in the CACV conference on Nov 26 in the Woodwards atrium. Tons of artistic folks set up interactive booths where the public could get creative, have fun and learn about community arts programs.

It was raining like crazy, and there was a Grey Cup Traffic Jam Parade, but the event was a lot of fun.  Our group created an exquisite corpse scroll – each visitor painted a bit and then rolled the paper along so the next viewer could only see half, leading them to paint something else in a an endless disparate narrative…

Probably the biggest booth was for Deer Crossing The Art Farm…

 

Something Collective will be at The Future of Community Arts

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A celebration of the Future of Community Arts in Vancouver!

Time: November 26, 2011 from 12pm to 9pm
Location: Woodwards Atrium
Street: 111 West Hastings (at Abbott)
City/Town: Vancouver

As the “future” portion of our “Past, Present and Future” event series, we plan to pay our respects to the youth and kids who will one day carry on the legacy of the Community Arts Council of Vancouver.

Over a dozen organizations will be participating (including Something Collective), providing activities, displays, demonstrations and information throughout the day.

Here are some of the organizations who are participating:

For more information please visit the official Community Arts Council of Vancouver events page at http://communityarts.ning.com/events/the-future-of-community-arts. A preliminary schedule is also listed on their webpage http://www.cacv.ca/future

The event is FREE but you can also RSVP via THIS LINK – http://artsfutureyvr.eventbrite.com/?ref=elink

Hope to see you there!