JUMBLIES: Event Showcasing Micro-grant, Bridging, and Interns

Jumblies is holding a festive gathering on SATURDAY MARCH 28th: sharing results of winter art-making at THE GROUND FLOOR.

The event includes a work-in-progress presentation of three short compositions fusing community and professional music-making, in partnership with Tapestry Opera, with a wonderful array of musicians and artists, including:

Composers: Norbert Palej, Kyle Brenders, Martin van de Ven
Librettists: Liz Rucker, Ange Loft, Ruth Howard, with poetry excerpts by Victoria Freeman
Singers and Musicians: Vania Chan, Adrian Kramer, Rosary Spence, Christine Duncan, Allison Au, William Beauvais, Britta Johnson, Ryan Scott, Martin van de Ven, Arie van de Ven, Melanie Fernandez-Alvarez
Choirs: Making Room and Ground Floor Community
Choirs directed by Shifra Cooper, with Jackie Omstead, Lisa Bozikovic, Jess Shane
Musical Director/ Musical Dramaturge: Michael Mori
Director/ Performance Dramaturge: Liza Balkan

Also Featured:
Storytelling by Joseph Naytowhow
Comics and Art on display by Miranda Sharp, Mackenzie Konecny & Phil Cote
Movement performances by local children, led by Jackie Omstead and Julia Hune-Brown.

2:00 – 4:00 – Open House, Exhibition, Interactive activities and refreshments (at The Ground Floor, 132 Fort York Blvd)
4:00 – 5:00 – Musical Performances (upstairs at 150 Dan Leckie Way)

Reserve for the performance as seating is limited.
Exhibition – FREE
Performance – PWYC (suggested $5-$20)
Contact and reservations: info@jumbliestheatre.org

This event will also open our Touching Ground Exhibition, featuring comics by Miranda, art-in-progress by Mackenzie and other art-work from Winter Art-Making. The exhibition closes on April 10th. Call or email for open times.

The musical explorations are part of our Jumblies At Large initiative, funded by the Metcalf Foundation’s Creative Strategies Incubator Program, Toronto Arts Council’s Platform A Project and Canada Council for the Arts Music ACCP. Jumblies’ work is also supported by the Ontario Arts Council, Ontario Trillium Foundation, The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation and others funders.

AFCY: Bridging 

Our bridging projects enable AFCY to create unique connections between our programs in priority neighbourhoods and established art institutions such as our long time partners the AGO and the ROM and cutting edge arts organizations like DanceWorks and Urbanvessel. We are a building new partnerships and looking forward to building strong connections with the Ontario Science Center and Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada. Through these partnerships AFCY can bolster our programs but also create new opportunities like our Artist-Residencies where we place our emerging artists in unexpected locations from Toronto Botanical Garden to the Bata Shoe Museum. One of our Emerging Artists Tara says: “So many people passing by were telling me how cool the opportunity was and complimenting my work! The experience also made me realize how lucky I am to be creating art and working in the arts with unique opportunities.”
Above – AFCY Artist in Residency: Andrenne Finnikin using Dark Horse’s coffee and leftover coffee grounds to create her painting within the Dark Horse located near Spadina & Dundas.

JUMBLIES: Micro-grant Update Part II

Gestures & Stories at the Groundfloor

For the past 6 weeks participants from the CityPlace community have been gathering in the new Toronto Public Housing community room over looking a snowy canoe park for the workshop I have been leading entitled Gestures and Stories. We have been coming together, mapping life stories; walking, dancing, and embodying the paths of ancestors and those who have impacted them most. We are gearing up to share these movement pieces next week at an open workshop as part of the Touching Ground Showcase, here at Jumblies.

Throughout Gestures and Stories, I have been guiding participants through a process of drawing out ancestors life journeys and then adding star to symbolize key moments and then working to create gestures for those moments. Those maps are now being turned into a movement pieces experimenting with how repeated subtle gestures can become movement theatre and how that can, in turn, be translated to express these personal ancestral narratives. We have been playing with echoing back these stories by having the group shadow specific moments from one another’s stories and seeing how some of these stories can come together to intersect on stage.

For me, as a facilitator, this group of all-women participants has been such a joy to work. Their openness and willingness to jump into the process and explore has been so moving and inspirational. I look forward to working with this group again on further Jumblies projects, developing this workshop format for other groups.

JUMBLIES: Micro-grant Update Part I

Comics at the Ground Floor

Hello! Miranda from Jumblies here. For the past month I’ve been leading a group of community members in making comics at the Ground Floor as part of my TAC Platform A microgrant. We’ve been talking about the strange and mysterious things that can be found in our neighbourhood, writing and illustrating stories both real and bizarre, and creating our own little Museum of Found Objects. It’s amazing to see all the different ideas that people come up with – I couldn’t be more pleased with how it’s gone!

JUMBLIES : Bridging Event with Tapestry Opera

As part of Jumblies Platform A Bridging initiatives, we are happy tp present a work-in-progress event on March 28th, in partnership with Tapestry Opera, exploring fusions of professional and community music creation and performance!