JUMBLIES: Anti-Oppression Workshop

Artful Anti-Oppression workshop with Naty Tremblay (of SKETCH) Hosted by Jumblies at The Ground Floor 132 Fort York Blvd. Friday May 1st, 2015 10:00am to 5:00pm Free, pwyc donations welcome Morning snacks provided, Bring your own lunch Contact info@jumbliestheatre.org to register or for more information

Naty Tremblay

Artist-Activist-Educator

Depending on the day, Naty Tremblay is a mixed blood identical twin & trickster, queer activist and community organizer, cyborg storyteller, arts educator-facilitator, artrepreneur, iconoclast and one-person band. They hail from a wee organic farm on Anishnabek three-fire conferacy & Haudenosaunee territory, Ontario, and uses ‘They’ and ‘Handsome’ as preferred pronouns.

Naty has been artfully involved in grassroots community organizing around social justice issues for over15 years, learning and working in Canada & across the Americas. Their art practices spans across mixed mediums, performance, video, sound, sculptural installation, printmaking, murals, creative writing street art and community engaged art adventures.

Naty’s educational pedagogy is rooted in lived experience and working alongside LGBT*Q2SIA, Indigenous, Immigrant, and Street involved communities. They have worked especially with young adults struggling through social marginalization using the arts to ignite resilience, to share stories, build networks and celebrate together! Naty is committed to creating spaces with communities to connect, build trust, explore complex social justice issues, and to strategize innovative responses together. They currently live and work in Toronto, Turtle Island.

JUMBLIES: Pinhole Camera Micro-grant

Vero Diaz and Nirven Armoogum are about to start workshops at The Ground Floor for their Toronto Arts Council Micro-Grant project throughPlatform A. Here they are modelling a sample of one of the mini pinhole cameras they will be making and using with community members over the coming four Wednesday afternoons.

JUMBLIES: Intern wins BMO Seeds Fund

We are so excited to congratulate Jumblies’ intern and micro-grant recipient, Fiona Raye Clarke, who is the winner of the Neighbourhood Arts Network‘s BMO Seeds Fund contest for her project “Finding Voice Through Personal Stories”: a series of workshops delivered to youth, adults and seniors who struggle with literacy which seeks to take participants through a journey of self-discovery and creative reflection on their personal stories. These workshops will allow participants to take a quiet moment to reflect, breathe and play, and use their imaginations to redefine the future. Participants will each produce a full-length zine of their creative writing and share their work with the wider community. Thanks to all friends of Jumblies who supported Fiona’s project by voting for her picture this last week! And congrats Fiona!

Up & Rooted at Toronto City Hall!

On Wed. Jan. 7^th , more than 28 young artists aged 4-15 excitedly travelled from their homes in the Villaways community near Leslie and Sheppard Ave. with their parents downtown to unveil an exhibit of their work in the Rotunda at Toronto City Hall. The exhibit titled Up & Rooted featured a neighbourhood diorama and a collaborative community quilt created by locals kids and youth.

The Up & Rooted diorama is the culmination of months of workshops with residents of Villaways, a Toronto Community Housing (TCH) neighbourhood. The project name alludes to the fact that TCH community will be revitalizing the neighbourhood, by replacing the existing rental housing and adding market units to build a new, vibrant mixed income community on the site in the coming years. The young residents worked with artists Virginia Tran and Douglas Hurst as well as Project Manager Carleen Robinson on visual arts projects that explored the themes of family, home, community and revitalization. The result of these workshops is a large 8ft by 8ft diorama that is both an artistic recreation of what they love about their neighbourhood and a vision for what they would like their neighbourhood to become.

“It was really special because everybody in the neighbourhood helped out” says 12-year old artist Rebekah about the process. “It was really fun because everyone had their own part and we were all sharing. It’s amazing!”

For some of the artists, the project gave them a newfound sense of agency over their neighbourhood. 13-year old Ali remarked “We can change Villaways I guess. It’s easy to change Villaways if you try”.

The Up & Rooted Art Exhibit was made possible though the Platform A Bridging Initiatives to bring the art created as part of a 5-year Art Starts project, front and center to City Hall. Through Platform A, Art Starts was able to take the community artwork into a venue where it could generate conversations among Toronto City Councilors, city staff including those in Arts and Culture Services and even the Mayor himself! The exhibit hoped to shine a spotlight on how the arts can be used to support residents in processing their thoughts and feelings about the displacement and revitalization process. The end result was a spectacular display not only of the community diorama but a neighbourhood quilt in which every member of the community was able to express their thoughts and feeling pulled together in an impressive tapestry that helped to further tell the resident’s story.

“This diorama speaks to the creativity that is embedded in this community” says Carleen Robinson, Project Manager. “We look forward to working with all stakeholders to realize the community’s potential over the next several years”.

For the majority of the Up & Rooted artists, this was their first time visiting City Hall. They had the opportunity to give their local city councillor, Shelley Carroll, a tour of their diorama and, in exchange, Councillor Carroll gave the families a tour of City Hall. An unexpected treat was when Mayor John Tory arrived, spoke too the kids, parents and community members about the project and listened to their stories and experiences.

Up & Rooted is funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation and the exhibit was made possible through Platform A, a strategic initiative of the Toronto Arts Council.

JUMBLIES: Train Payanam at YPT

Last weekend the Community Arts Guild’s production of Train Payanam shifted from Scarborough to Young People’s Theatre (YPT) for two sold-out performances. Jumblies is proud to have supported this collaboration with YPT through our Jumblies At Large initiative, funded by the Toronto Arts Council (Platform A), and the Metcalf Foundations Creative Strategies Incubator Program.   

Photos by K. Fletias

JUMBLIES: Bridging with New Friends

Today we were visited at The Ground Floor by Matthew Fava of theCanadian Music Centre, and Anastasia Tchernikova, Music Director and Founder of Musica Reflecta Chamber Orchestra and Metcalf Intern atTapestry new opera works. We made plans for an exciting musical and interdisciplinary day-long creative workshop and presentation in September 2015, which will launch the second year of our Jumblies At Large initiative, supported by the Metcalf Foundation and the Toronto Arts Council’sPlatform A Program.

Art Starts Gets Game Curious!

Art Starts has recently partnered with Hand Eye Society, a Toronto not-for-profit changing the way people think about and interact with video games through a number of innovative initiatives, programs and pop-ups. We will be offering support and mentorship as HES shifts their focus to increased outreach, media literacy and community engagement beyond the downtown core by bringing their ‘play and make’ initiative, Game Curious, to the Glendower neighbourhood. “Art Starts has been doing arts-based community programming for many years, so we’re very fortunate to be able to learn from an organization with so much experience in an area to which we’re relatively new,” says Sagan Yee, Game Curious’ Program Coordinator, on this new, exciting connection.

Game Curious is about ‘exploring the untapped art of video games, for people who don’t necessarily identify as gamers.’ And from speaking with Sagan, it is clear increasing access to games and their potential for storytelling is a significant aspect of the program and she highlights cost of technology and the misconception of video games as being predominantly violent as some of the obstacles to engaging in the medium. According to her, “Game Curious aims to break down these barriers by providing a physical space in which people of different backgrounds can explore a wide variety of titles, ask questions, and eventually learn how to tell their own stories through games.”

Game Curious began last week at our Glendower location and Sagan describes the first session as “lively” with about 15 youth, some as young as 5 years old, coming out to discuss the program and play a variety of games, a couple of the most popular being Scott Pilgrim vs The World and Space Race. The theme for this session was ‘games made or set in Toronto’ and Sagan explains that this was chosen “to get participants thinking about how games can reflect their own environments.” Some of the participants were so intrigued they’ve already begun developing ideas for their own games, sketching characters and brainstorming level designs. It is this natural curiosity that HES seeks to harness and channel to ultimately “encourage more diversity, inclusion, and creativity in the community and industry,” says Sagan.

It has been such a fulfilling opportunity working with and mentoring such a ground-breaking organization like Hand Eye Society, the first video game arts organization in the world, and Art Starts looks forward to the uniquely personal worlds the Glendower youth will discover and create as they get Game Curious this spring.

Pan Am Path Launch – Call for Volunteers

JUMBLIES: Another Micro-grant Update

An update from Junyee Wang on her Toronto Arts Council Micro-grant through Platform A!

“Silk is a precious gift from nature. Recognizing the beauty, strength and poetic connections that silk brings, cultures around the world have woven the textile into their history and traditions. Ubiquitous is the fascination about the origins of silk, legends and folktales recount its origin through the ages.

With the assistance of the Community Arts Guild, we conducted two workshops with Japanese and Tamil seniors. We began with telling an old Chinese legend and then painting on silk. Using a variety of techniques, the seniors created silk handkerchiefs and silk-screened canvas boards.”

JUMBLIES: Micro-grantee Exhibition

At The Ground Floor (132 Fort York Blvd) until April 9th, we are continuing to show art work of two Jumblies artists, from their Toronto Arts Council – Platform A Micro-Grants:

Miranda Sharp – The MUSEUM OF FOUND OBJECTS: comics with CityPlace residents.

Mackenzie Konecny – Preview of PAPER CONNECTIONS

Open times: Tuesday and Thursday (April 7 and 9), 2:00-6:00pm
and other times on request (info@jumbliestheatre.org)
Come by and have a look!