Archive for the 'Event' Category

Tara Mahoney is one half of the Gen Why Media Project dream team, a “com­mu­nity build­ing project that uses pub­lic art, par­tic­i­pa­tory media, events and inter­gen­er­a­tional dia­logues to engage soci­ety in new forms of civic par­tic­i­pa­tion.” Given their com­mit­ment to com­mu­nity engage­ment, it makes per­fect sense they would be part of the force behind this Monday’s Reimag­ine CBC Cel­e­bra­tion. We talked to Tara about the event and why you should get involved in your pub­lic media.

Sad Mag: Hi Tara! Who are you and what do you do?

Tara Mahoney: I’m the co-founder and cre­ative direc­tor of the Gen Why Media Project. The GWMP is a com­mu­nity build­ing project that uses media, pub­lic art, events and inter­gen­er­a­tional dia­logue to engage soci­ety in new forms of pub­lic participation.

SM: Why did you get involved in the Reimag­ine CBC Cel­e­bra­tion?

TM: We strongly believe in pub­lic media. We need a non-commercial provider to conenct us with the rest of our coun­try, pro­mote democ­racy and explore knowl­edge about our­selves and our cul­ture, even if it’s not prof­itable. Com­mer­cial broad­caster can­not do that to the same extend as pub­lic media can. So that’s why when Open Media approached us about host­ing Reimag­ine CBC event, we were totally on board. It’s an honor to be a part of a move­ment that encour­ages peo­ple to come together in a cre­ative and gen­er­a­tive way around such a deeply Cana­dian institution.

SM: How did  Open­Media and Leadnow.ca get involved? How do your orga­ni­za­tions fit together?

TM: OM and LN both exist to pro­mote civic engage­ment (in one way or another) and so do we. We have dif­fer­ent approaches and focuses but ulti­mately we are try­ing to accom­plish the same the goal, so it makes sense for us to join forces. Plus they are won­der­ful peo­ple and good friends.

SM: The CBC has such longevity as a Cana­dian insti­tu­tion. What makes it so beloved? How do they stay relevant?

TM: The CBC does many things very well and it has done a good job of inno­vat­ing with tech­nol­ogy — espe­cially with their radio offer­ings. I think the one thing that keeps them rel­e­vant is that they reflect our Cana­dian iden­tity back to us. They feel like a fam­ily mem­ber — a reli­able and trusted source of knowl­edge. That is a pro­found and strong foun­da­tion to build on.

SM: What are you most excited about with the Reimag­ine CBC Celebration?

TM: Hm, that’s a hard one. I’m really excited about every­thing, we have an amaz­ing group of par­tic­i­pants. It will be great to see Wade Davis speak and hear a story from Ivan, and Steve Pratt always daz­zles with his visions for inno­va­tion and the music will be great, it’s all exciting!

SM: What is your hope for the dia­logues gen­er­ated dur­ing the event?

TM: My hope for the dia­logues is that peo­ple walk away feel­ing good and pos­i­tive about how we can shape our pub­lic media together. I want peo­ple to feel like they have a stake in the CBC and respon­si­bil­ity to pro­tect it, while also imag­in­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties for the future.

SM: Do you have a vision for the future of the CBC?

TM: I think I’d be cool to see it be more open and inte­grated into com­mu­ni­ties so as to pro­mote more cul­tural pro­duc­tion. There is so much tal­ent in this coun­try, it’d be great to see the CBC as a plat­form that encour­ages and pro­motes crowd-sourced cul­tural innovation.

Get all the details on the Reimag­ine CBC Cel­e­bra­tion here!

The best way for the CBC to thrive is to build a com­mu­nity of sup­port­ers who have a true sense of own­er­ship over the orga­ni­za­tion. To this end, as part of a national cam­paign led by media advo­cacy groups Open Media and Lead Now, Gen Why Media is bring­ing together sea­soned pro­fes­sion­als, up-and-coming CBC tal­ent, out­side experts, media inno­va­tors, and cit­i­zens in a cel­e­bra­tory event that will add new energy to the CBC and help artic­u­late a fresh vision for pub­lic media.

Open­ing Per­for­mance: Inter­cul­tural per­for­mance that show­cases Canada’s diverse tal­ent, cul­tural inno­va­tion, and artis­tic excellence.

Sto­ry­telling: Three cul­tural cre­ators tell sto­ries about their lives as Cana­di­ans, and how the CBC has been piv­otal to their goals, careers and under­stand­ing of their country. Stories from:

• Chris­tine McAvoy (local music blog­ger and photographer)
• Ivan Coy­ote (writer, sto­ry­teller, performer)
• Wade Davis (author, anthro­pol­o­gist, National Geo­graphic Explorer-in-Residence)

Dia­logue: On-stage “liv­ing room con­ver­sa­tions” where par­tic­i­pants reflect on the CBC and pro­gres­sive media plat­forms, ask­ing ques­tions such as — How do we imag­ine the future of Cana­dian media? How will the CBC grow over the next 75 years? What areas for growth, change, trans­for­ma­tion, and inno­va­tion could it pur­sue? What ideas or mod­els could inspire its next gen­er­a­tion of work? Participants:

• Jar­rett Mar­tineau (inde­pen­dent cul­tural producer)
• Kath­leen Cross (Pro­fes­sor at SFU School of Communications)
• Sean Devlin (of Shit Harper Did)
• Steve Pratt (Direc­tor of CBC Radio 3)
• Net­tie Wild (acclaimed doc­u­men­tary filmmaker)

Clos­ing Per­for­mance: Local super group of indie musi­cians. Per­for­mances by: Dan Man­gan, Aidan Knight, Han­nah Epper­son, Zachary Gray (of the Zolas).

May 7th, 2012
The Vogue The­atre (918 Granville)
Doors at 6PM, Event at 7pm (sharp)
$15
Buy tick­ets here
RSVP on Facebook

Learn more about the cam­paign.
Learn more about Gen Why Media.

At Sad Mag HQ we take an inter­est in all art forms, or at least we try; per­son­ally, I can’t sit through a musi­cal unless it was penned by Joss Whe­don. But when we heard about a vel­vet art show, we were curi­ous: vel­vet art? What is that, any­way? We inquired with Peter Short, one of hte cura­tors of The ILL’N Vel­vet Show, about this rare and beau­ti­ful (one might say unicorn-esque) art form.

Sad Mag: Why vel­vet?

Peter Short: Vel­vet is so soft and smooth. It feels good against your mus­tache. It’s sexy yet sophis­ti­cated. Many peo­ple who hang vel­vet paint­ings also climb moun­tains and drink only the finest scotch. These are just a few reasons.

SM: What made you decide to do a whole show with vel­vet art?

PS: I think its safe for us all to admit just how bomb vel­vet paint­ings are. It’s true that the fac­tory pro­duc­tion of vel­vet paint­ings that existed in the 1970s was a bit of a bum­mer. Every­one was left with a cheesy impres­sion of what vel­vet paint­ings could be but its just an unfor­tu­nate mis­con­cep­tion. It was only a brief moment in the long his­tory of pain­ing on vel­vet. The medium has end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties. We wanted to offer art lovers a dif­fer­ent kind of gallery expe­ri­ence. The show is a cel­e­bra­tion of the ILL’N Club’s sec­ond suc­cess­ful year in oper­a­tion so we wanted to do some­thing fun and unexpected.

SM: Is vel­vet art mak­ing a comeback?

PS: There has always been a desire and inter­est in vel­vet paint­ings. It never really went away. The prob­lem is that the aver­age art lover has to depend on the thrift or antique mar­ket for their sup­ply of works on vel­vet. Qual­ity paint­ings are only get­ting more scarce and desir­able. Even ‘bad’ vel­vet paint­ings can have an out­sider qual­ity to them which is very sought after for some col­lec­tors. It’s sus­tained pop­u­lar­ity has even neces­si­tated a vel­vet museum called Vel­vete­ria which is now relo­cat­ing to LA from Port­land due to its grow­ing pop­u­lar­ity. They are seri­ously car­ry­ing the flame as well as the col­lec­tors of this great art form. Col­lec­tors whom we can only assume are mostly spies and secret agents. They like to come home after a hard day and puff on their pipes while get­ting the evening news from Ron Bur­gundy and the Chan­nel 4 News Team.

SM: When was it in style, anyway?

PS: We’re not even sure, really. Arche­ol­ogy can only tell us so much but we know that it popped up soon after vel­vet was invented in Kash­mir. It was once treated quite seri­ously and the paint­ings mostly dealt with reli­gious iconog­ra­phy. Sacred images painted on what was then a seri­ously lux­u­ri­ous mate­r­ial. There are vel­vet paint­ings that are hang­ing in the Vat­i­can to this day. Who knows. Maybe all the popes smoked the dope.

The ILL’N Vel­vet Show: Clos­ing Party

7:00PM, April 21st, 2012

Chapel Arts (304 Dunlevy)

$5 at the door

Free mous­taches to the first 100 guests.

RSVP on Facebook

(If you can’t wait til April 21st to see the show, you can arrange a pri­vate preview. )

Read Part I (an inter­view with RC Wes­lowski) here.

The sec­ond annual BC Youth Poetry Slam cham­pi­onship, Hullabaloo, is com­ing to Van­cou­ver April 10–14!

The cre­ation of RC Wes­lowski and Chris Gilpin of Van­cou­ver Poetry House, Hul­la­baloo brings young slam poets from across the province together to com­pete on stage. Not a fan of reg­u­lar poetry read­ings? Don’t worry– slam poetry was actu­ally con­ceived as the answer to the bor­ing poetry recital.

As we cov­ered in the last post, there are few rules to slam poems (no props, no music, noth­ing over three min­utes) and win­ners are selected by randomly-chosen audi­ence mem­bers. That ensures each event will be unpre­dictable, excit­ing and noth­ing like the last. Don’t miss it!

The Teams:

15 teams from around the province will be com­pet­ing– one of which will be formed April 9th in the Last Chance Slam Cafe Deux Soleils, as youth ages 14–19 who are not yet reg­is­tered for Hul­la­baloo will com­pete for a spot on the Wild Card Team.

Details on the Last Chance Slam.

Pre­lim­i­nar­ies:

April 11th and 12th
The Van­cou­ver Art Gallery (750 Hornby)
4:30PM-9:30PM
Free (Details)

Finals — Individual

April 13th

The Rio (1660 E Broadway)

7:00PM-11:00PM

Details

Finals — Team

April 14

Granville Island Stage (1585 Johnston)

7:30PM-9:30PM

Details

Visit Hul­la­baloo to get your tick­ets now!

Sad Mag: Who are you?

Tim Rolls: Hi! I’m Tim Rolls, a pas­sion­ate designer, instruc­tor at Van­cou­ver Film School, and founder of Art Not Ads. We’re a col­lec­tive that works to make pub­lic space beau­ti­ful through instal­la­tions and com­mu­nity projects.

SM: What is Cap­tures about?

TR: Cap­tures is about giv­ing Mount Pleas­ant res­i­dents a chance to tell sto­ries about their com­mu­nity through pho­tographs. Each par­tic­i­pant becomes a thread in a visual tapes­try that shows the diver­sity of the neigh­bour­hood. The exhibit allows vis­i­tors to cre­ate their own sto­ries as they con­nect with the pho­tos, and we hope it helps paint a bet­ter pic­ture of what the com­mu­nity is about.

TR: After hear­ing about the Neigh­bour­hood Small Grants pro­gram, I started research­ing com­mu­ni­ties, how they’re defined, and what really makes one. It seemed every­one had their own response, so it became the per­fect sub­ject to explore for the project. I went to col­lege with Celia, and we’ve worked on one major project called Sol­stice, for the Illu­mi­nate Yale­town fes­ti­val in 2011. I had worked with Matt in a stu­dio capac­ity before, and when I told him about the project, he was eager to help in any way he could. All three of us had our own strengths that con­tributed to mak­ing this hap­pen, and it was great to see it unfold that way.

TR: Our ini­tial grant was through the Van­cou­ver Foundation’s Neigh­bour­hood small grants pro­gram. As the project evolved and grew, we got a print spon­sor to help with the grow­ing final pro­duc­tion costs. They fell through at the last minute, so we turned to crowd fund­ing through Indiegogo to make the project hap­pen. The response was phe­nom­e­nal, every­one was very sup­port­ive, we even had local blogs and pub­li­ca­tions help­ing to get the word out. We raised over $2100 in about 2 weeks, sur­pass­ing our goal.

TR: We wanted to give par­tic­i­pants a start­ing point, to get them think­ing about the things that make their com­mu­nity great. Even for myself if worked well, because the list would stick in my sub­con­scious, and I’d see some­thing while walk­ing around and think “OH, that’s per­fect!” I think that’s the fun part, like urban trea­sure hunting.

TR: We tried not to fil­ter the images, these are other people’s ideas, and it was impor­tant not to cen­sor them. There were a cou­ple that we had to take out, due to being really low qual­ity and hard to make out. I was def­i­nitely sur­prised by the num­ber of bicy­cle pho­tos… this com­mu­nity really loves their bikes!

TR: My secret spot, the climb­ing tree. It’s this enor­mous, beau­ti­ful old conifer on top of a hill. It looks nor­mal from far away, but you can pull the branches apart and inside is a clear­ing where the branches are all worn smooth from years of climb­ing. About halfway up is a net installed like a ham­mock, where you can lay and see all of down­town and the whole north shore. It’s pretty magical.

TR: Cap­tures grew so much from our ini­tial con­cept, which was based around dis­trib­ut­ing dis­pos­able cam­eras to a small group of res­i­dents. It would be great to take it even fur­ther, maybe fea­tur­ing entire cities. With the inter­net and dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy being so ubiq­ui­tous, I’d love to see where we can go with it.

TR: I really love the work Alex Beim and his crew at Tan­gi­ble Inter­ac­tion are doing. They’re great guys, too. They did a tem­po­rary instal­la­tion dur­ing the Olympics called “Seed of Truce” that allowed par­tic­i­pants to write their thoughts on a “seed” that con­tained an LED light. The seeds were shot up into the air and flut­tered down into a net, where they col­lected and grew as more peo­ple con­tributed. Like a mod­ern wish­ing well of good intentions.

SM: Do you think Van­cou­ver is No Fun City or is it a good home for cre­ative peo­ple and communities?

TR: I moved here from Edmon­ton about 3 years ago, and it was def­i­nitely the cre­ative com­mu­ni­ties and energy that drew me here. There is also a very money-driven, busi­ness ori­ented side to the city, but what­ever you’re into artis­ti­cally, there’s a com­mu­nity for it here if you look for it. Toss in the moun­tains and ocean for great energy and inspi­ra­tion, and you have an amaz­ing place for cre­ative peo­ple to live.

Check out Cap­tures, now exhibit­ing on the cor­ner of Kingsway and E Broad­way, across from Our Town!

To fol­low the work of Art Not Ads and get involved in their next project, find them on Twit­ter & Face­book

Vancouver’s favourite sto­ry­telling night returns on Thurs­day, March 29th, with an evening of sto­ries about bor­der cross­ing. With our upcom­ing Issue 9 themed around geo­graphic bor­ders and iden­tity bound­aries, well, we’re pretty excited to hear what they have to say.

Rain City Chron­i­cles has been enthralling audi­ences since Decem­ber 1st, 2009, when their first show was staged at Lit­tle Moun­tain Gallery. Fea­tur­ing speak­ers from all walks of life shar­ing five-minute sto­ries loosely orga­nized around the theme and punc­tu­ated by musi­cal per­for­mances, the nights are enter­tain­ing for their unpre­dictabil­ity, hon­esty and inti­macy. Rain City Chron­i­cles is the cre­ation of two ladies, Lizzy Karp and Karen Pinchin, who impres­sively orches­trate a flaw­less, uniquely enter­tain­ing event every two months, wran­gling new sto­ry­tellers and win­ning larger audi­ences each time.

This com­ing Thurs­day promises to be spec­tac­u­lar as usual, with musi­cal per­for­mances from The Ruf­fled Feath­ers and Christo­pher Smith. Sto­ry­tellers are yet to be announced, but the mys­tery is part of the fun. Bring your friends or come alone and make some new ones– but don’t miss it!

Rain City Chron­i­cles: Cross­ing Bor­ders
Thurs­day, March 29th, 2012
The West­ern Front (303 East 8 Avenue)
6:30 PM
Tick­ets

There are a few sim­ple rules to slam poems, in case you were won­der­ing: no props, no cos­tumes, no musi­cal instru­ments, and noth­ing over three min­utes. Beyond that, any­thing goes. “Some­one could do a haiku, or a hip-hop piece, a rant, a lyri­cal love poem, or a mix of com­edy and poetry,” says RC Wes­lowski, founder of the Van­cou­ver Youth Slam and c0-creator of Hul­la­baloo. “By def­i­n­i­tion, there isn’t really a type of poem called a slam poem.”

So what dis­tin­guishes a slam poem from the gar­den vari­ety? Appar­ently, it’s not about the poet so much as the audi­ence. Wes­lowski is wary of lay­ing down any def­i­n­i­tions (“there’s a bit of an argu­ment between the poetry slam cir­cles”), but tells me, “What the poetry slam does is encour­age poets to engage with the audi­ence. At the Youth Slam we have poets get­ting up and talk­ing about the teach­ers’ strike– they are talk­ing about stuff that’s rel­e­vant to an audi­ence, and rel­e­vant to their audi­ence, the youth of today.  You’re not just dong it for your­self, you’re try­ing to avoid being self-indulgent and appeal­ing to your own tastes, you’re attempt­ing to make a con­nec­tion with the audience.”

A lit­tle his­tory of the slam poem.

The ori­gin of slam poetry dates back to the 1980s, when Amer­i­can poet Marc Smith realised how bad poetry read­ings could be. “He was going to read­ings and poets were just get­ting up and read­ing into their papers, and not pay­ing atten­tion to the audi­ence,” says Wes­lowski, “And they were bor­ing the peo­ple who were there.” He devised a dif­fer­ent method that would keep the audi­ence inter­ested and pro­vide a new chal­lenge for the poets.

A poetry slam rev­o­lu­tion­izes not only the poetry read­ing, but the uni­ver­sal com­pe­ti­tion met­ric of a scor­ing sys­tem. Instead of experts or trained indi­vid­u­als, the judges are five audi­ence mem­bers, picked at ran­dom. They get cards with scores from 0 to 10 (10 remains the high­est score) and vote for their favourites based on what­ever cri­te­ria they decide mat­ters, be it style or content.

“Every­body acknowl­edges that it is a gim­mick, and it’s entirely arbi­trary, because the next night there’s five dif­fer­ent judges and the poem that won the night before won’t win. That’s why we encour­age peo­ple to expe­ri­ence in style, in writ­ing and per­for­mance, and not to talk it too seri­ously. Only take seri­ously work­ing on your skills as a writer and per­former,” explains Weslowski.

Hul­la­baloo and the Van­cou­ver Youth Slam

Wes­lowski has been men­tor­ing young poets for years, includ­ing as the founder of the Youth Poetry Slam (A Van­cou­ver Poetry House project), now in its fifth year. The Poetry Slam con­venes every fourth Mon­day at Cafe Deux Soleil for a slam. He also works with Word­play, another Van­cou­ver Poetry House pro­gram, that sends poets into schools to do poetry work­shops with stu­dents and intro­duce them to slam poetry.

A few years ago, he and fel­low Van­cou­ver Poetry House mem­ber Chris Gilpin were watch­ing Chicago high school poetry-slam com­pe­ti­tion doc­u­men­tary Louder Than a Bomb and decided to emu­late it in Van­cou­ver. The result was Hul­la­baloo, a com­pe­ti­tion invit­ing teams from around BC to com­pete in Van­cou­ver and as a by-product build­ing a provin­cial com­mu­nity of young poets. Impres­sive for any new arts ven­ture, the first year was a suc­cess, which Wes­lowski attrib­utes partly to the “crit­i­cal mass of inter­est” gen­er­ated by the Van­cou­ver Youth Slam and Wordplay.

What does Wes­lowski hope the com­peti­tors, from Grades 9–12 around the province, will get out of the expe­ri­ence? “They’ll be encour­aged to con­tinue their writ­ing. To know they have lots of peers within the province who are into the same thing that they are. If you’re into poetry and writ­ing and books, you can often feel alone and iso­lated, like a big geek. And maybe you are a big geek, but then you come to this event and find out that there are other geeks just like you out there, and they’re totally into poetry as well.

“I hope they’ll keep on writ­ing and be inspired by the other poets, the fea­tured per­form­ers. And they’ll know that if they chose to, this is some­thing they could keep on doing. This is some­thing they could do with their lives.”

And what of the slam poetry neo­phyte who attends Hul­la­baloo– what can they hope to get out of it? “They’ll get to see that the kids of today are able to speak for them­selves. They’re smart and artic­u­late and they know what’s on their minds. They don’t need inter­preters to speak for them. The audi­ence can get inspired and feel a sense of pride about kids. It’s great. That’s kind of what we’re in it for—all the mushy reasons.”

Sounds pretty good to us!

Check back at the end of March for full details about Hul­la­baloo 2012, or for info and advance tick­ets to the semi-finals and finals now, visit their website!

Every­one loves gin­gers! We love them so much we fear that they are going extinct, even though that is a base­less rumour. For­tu­nately, there are plenty of red­heads in Van­cou­ver, and they are all com­ing to Ginga Ninjas!!

Ginga Nin­jas is first and fore­most a cel­e­bra­tion of  gin­gers, fea­tur­ing the Greff Band, the Iso­topes (with red­headed guests!), and the Dead Voices. It’s also a cel­e­bra­tion of nin­jas, who are also cool. Come for the music, stay for the ninja pho­to­booth by Chris­tine McAvoy and St Patrick’s Day shenanigans!

Details:

GINGA NINJAS
St Patrick’s Day!
17 March 2012
The Cobalt (917 Main)
Doors at 8PM, Show at 9PM
$8 at the door (gin­gers get in free!)
RSVP on Facebook

Project Run­way is great and all, but wouldn’t you like the chance to see a crazy fash­ion com­pe­ti­tion and sub­se­quent fash­ion show live? Of course you would, you’re not a soul­less robot! Cos­tumes, cock­tails and a mer­ci­less panel of judges are three of the finest plea­sures in life, and you can have them all on March 9th at Walt Street Fash­ion Design Competition.

The Art Insti­tute of Van­cou­ver is host­ing this no-sew design com­pe­ti­tion and fash­ion show. Accord­ing to the press release, Walt Street is a “fusion of clas­sic Dis­ney char­ac­ters with icons of pop­u­lar cul­ture,” includ­ing a tantalizing-sounding Lady Gaga/WALL-E combination.

Key words in the press release included: home­made glue paste; cat suits; polka dots; capes; and blue hair. Sounds like the most amaz­ing fash­ion show ever to us.

Fri­day, March 9th
Vinyl Retro Lounge (455 Abbott)
Doors @ 8PM, Show @ 9PM
Tick­ets $10**
More info on Facebook

**avail­able at the door or in front of the AIV Art Gallery from 12:30PM to 1:30, March 2nd-8th

Rye­berg Curated Video is a Toronto event fea­tur­ing writ­ers dis­cussing their favourite YouTube videos. In March, its first show ever is hap­pen­ing out­side of Toronto– right here in Vancouver!

The line-up is great, with fea­tured writ­ers and web cura­tors Char­lie Demers (author of Van­cou­ver Spe­cial); Miriam Towes (author of A Com­pli­cated Kind­ness); Michael Turner (author of Hard Core Logo); Stephen Osborne (pub­lisher of Geist Mag­a­zine)

Don’t miss it!

Rye­berg Live Van­cou­ver
The Wal­dorf (1489 E Hast­ings)
March 6th, 2012
Doors at 7PM, show at 8PM
$12 in advance, $10 at the door (includes a copy of Geist)
Full details at Ryeberg.com