Captain Creative Saves the Day!

This spring, Something Collective produced their first interactive theatre show for young audiences. Here’s a short preview!

Captain Creative Saves the Day is an arts advocacy performance that encourages kids not only to appreciate the value of art in community, but to take part and make art themselves! Look how much fun they had!

The show is about 45 minutes including a performance that leads to audience participation and a discussion / Q & A.

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Moss Graffiti Project at Sunset Community Centre

Today, after three days of installation, we finally finished our moss graffiti project on the walls of the Sunset Community Centre. This is one of the 5 components that are part of the We Are Here mapping project, and a result from the community engagement with the South Hill Education Centre and the Chaos Boys Club.

Today I also had the chance to share our experience with 47 kids ages 5 to 12 from the Day Camp that was held during the summer at Sunset.

It was an amazing experience to facilitate this process, work with these culturally diverse groups of people and participate in making their projects come to life.

Please come and visit Sunset Community Centre to see this moss graffiti project and spray the green living art work on the walls to keep it alive!

Juliana Bedoya

 

 

We Are Here – Moss Graffiti Project with the Chaos Boys Club at the Sunset Community Centre

We are having a great time with the youth from the Chaos Boys Club that regularly meets at Sunset Community Centre. For the last two weeks we have been working on the development of the proposal for the moss graffiti project that is going to be installed on the north facing wall of the Sunset Community Centre.

After having a participatory process where the kids identified or “mapped” how their community has shaped them and how they are shaping it, including different cultural, social and environmental issues present in their neighbourhood, they split into small groups to start visually developing different proposals for their mural project.

We also had a photo shoot portrait session where they did their best pose trying to represent their different proposals.

Stay tuned for more updates!

 

We Are Here – Moss Graffiti Project with the South Hill Education Centre (Art Class Students)

There has been a debate in the media about the abrupt termination of the moss graffiti project I started on July 23rd with the art class group at the South Hill Education Centre, as one of the components of our We Are Here Community Mapping Project:

 

http://blogs.canoe.ca/davidakin/energy/todays-lesson-pipelines-are-evil/

http://www.torontosun.com/2012/07/30/vancouver-graffiti-artist-dismissed-from-mural

http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/News/local/2012/07/30/20045756.html

After having two inspiring sessions with the students, where the participants had the chance to identify or “map” different issues of their individual and collective concern present in their community/neighbourhood, along with a great photo-shoot session, the group agreed on presenting 5 different proposals that were intended to be installed in one of the walls of the Sunset Community Centre using the moss graffiti technique.

After presenting them during the second session, they concluded with one great proposal that included one of the portraits taken during the first session and a tag line or message reflecting on the common environmental issues addressed somehow in all the small group proposals pitched before: “How green are you?”

Even though the project was stopped before its completion, I would like to continue working with this amazing group of students that generated a very interesting moss graffiti mural proposal, and extend an open invitation to each one of the participants to complete this project outside their art class schedule and outside the South Hill art class curriculum.

I really value, respect the community art process the students already started and think their participation is very important until the full completion of the project they were invited to actively take part on.

Juliana Bedoya

 

 

 

Canada Day at Sunset Community Centre

For the second year in a row, Something Collective set up shop at the Canada Day Celebrations at Sunset Community Centre.

This was part of our ongoing project “We Are Here,” a community mapping art experiment in which we try to see the neighbourhood visually through dance, music, video, puppets and more.

Eventually we’ll have an online, interactive map that combines all these elements into one space.

See more about this mapping project

Patterning the Community at Sunset Community Centre

On the morning of June 9th the rear windows of Sunset Community Centre’s foyer were transformed into an enormous glass canvas in celebration of the rich diversity and multiculturalism in the Sunset Neighbourhood. Patterning the Community was an interactive and collaborative window mural project with artist Juliana Bedoya that was based on patterns, images and markings that paid homage to our diverse ethnic backgrounds.
Using black ink, around 30 community members young and old contributed to this temporary decorative art installation. The window mural activity engaged community members to the point that some of them were very inspired and worked for a long period of time on their cultural patterns. These included Punjabi writing, the French fleur de lis, clouds, rain, Indian and Chinese symbols, Japanese flowers, Latin and African inspired geometric shapes, a Taiwanese boat, a Jewish star of David, the city of Vancouver, batman and other multicultural traces were left on the window panels.

People also had the chance to participate in the four activities facilitated by artist Laura Barron happening on the tables at the lobby that directed them to create each challenge with a different medium on a specific surface (ie. chalk on black construction paper; colored pencil on notecards) created an attractive and consistent aesthetic.

 

 

 

 

 

SC presents Vancouver Isadora software and interactive arts workshop – June 15,16, 17 & June 22,23

[Something Collective is proud to host this excellent Isadora workshop. Ever since I took the course myself, I’ve been blowing minds and bringing home the bacon with this amazing interactive projection software. I highly recommend Jamie as an instructor. – Flick]

Here are the upcoming dates for Vancouver’s next Isadora Software and Interactive Arts workshop, to be held at the Something Collective Studio, South Hill, Vancouver which is part of the Moberly Arts and Cultural Centre and Sunset Community Centre.

One Day Introductory Workshop $60 June 15
2 Day Weekend Workshop Level I $175 June 16-17
1.5 Day Weekend Workshop Level II $150  June 22-23

Participants registering for all three workshops receive the discounted rate $325 total.

Limited space available. Contact jamie to register or for more info.  If you wish to skip the Intro class you will need to demonstrate your level of experience with the software.  Level 2 participants must have previously completed Level One with jamie.

You will learn how to use entry-level graphical programming software for interactive, live control of video, sound and lights, without needing to learn complex text-based programming languages.

The workshop provides a fast-track entry into interactive performance design. Whether you are a visual artist creating museum installations, VJs, dj, singer, musician, lighting designer, performance artist, choreographer or film-maker, the workshop frees you up from perceived programming limitations and gives you the skills you need to start experimenting with interactive live performance designs using Isadora software to harness the power of simple tools for design and control of your new media and interdisciplinary ideas.

Please note that I will be based full-time in Europe from August 2012 onward so this is the last workshop series I will be offering in Vancouver until my next visit back to Vancouver in January 2013.

thank you
jamie

Dance Video Shooting at Sunset

 Flick spent this weekend shooting a dance film / video with Rob Kitsos, for his ongoing project A Moving.

Sunset Community Centre has some beautiful lines and spaces… we also got into the Sunset Nursery next door.

See the gallery at the original posting..

“The title of this new dance is taken from a discussion in 1982 between Monroe Beardsley, Sally Banes, and Noel Carroll about the nature of what constitutes dance movement. This debate, which continues today (and was challenged in the post-modern dance movement in the 1960s) hinges on the difference and the context between the way we move in everyday life and the added “vigor, fluency, expansiveness or stateliness” found in ‘dance’ movement.”

The dancers are Kitsos, Katie DeVries and Kim Stevenson.

 

Map Hatter’s Visioning Party!

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…

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