Upcoming Events
An interactive platform for community driven content on social issues + activism.
Hi folks,
Our Colouring Book artists are on fire with artistic creations and community art projects! Our own talented writer and multi-media artist, Nadia Chaney, has an upcoming project at the Anza Club as part of the “Sistahood Celebration: Future Ancestors” program - please see details below and hope to see you there!
***
Myrtle Silverspot: Kitchen Confidential
Tuesday March 31 / 7:30 doors / performance 8pm
The Anza Club
Tickets $15
available online
http://www.clubzone.com/events/Vancouver/125480/Myrtle-Silverspot-Kitchen-Confidential
“Myrtle Butterfly”:
Kitchen Confidential is a co-creative multi-media story about a matrilineal family on the day they discover that there has been a global food systems crash. Through dance, poetry, music, and theatre a mother and her daughters realize their little bubble is dependant on a much larger world.
Written by Nadia Chaney featuring Namchi Bazar, Jenny Craig, Paul Hendricks, Suez Holland, Mutya Macatumpag, Alison Roy, Charlene Sayo, Naomi Steinberg, Patricia Kim & Zinnia Clark.
Here’s a photo of our artist, Nadia Chaney:
Nadia Chaney
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
Hi folks,
Just a few updates about our ongoing community screenings of “The Colouring Book: Digital Stories by Artists of Colour”:
* We did a screening of our shorts at the Broadway Youth Resource Centre on March 19th as part of the International Day for Eliminating Racial Discrimination.
* NEXT SCREENING: We’ll be at the Gallery Opening at the Broadway Youth Resource Centre again on March 26th. The Gallery Opening is from 2-6pm and our segment alone should last between 2-3pm.
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
Hi folks,
I am excited to announce that Gabrielle Martin, the visionary behind (and one of the writers) of The Colouring Book, will be performing at the Vancouver International Dance Festival tonight and tomorrow!
Here are event details:
The Roundhouse Community Centre
March 20 and 21st
7:15pm
Fee: $3 VIDF membership (available at the show)
What:
Chrysalis is a performance-installation of contemporary and Japanese butoh dance and aerial fabric. Bringing a butoh physicality to the aerial form of fabric, Chrysalis communicates a timeless world of ambivalent existence. Choreographed and performed by Andrea Legg and Gabrielle Martin, the duet is representational of two spirits in the intermediate state between carnal materiality and spiritual catharsis. Through its twenty-five minute duration, the piece explores the eternal journey of emerging from the chrysalis.
Spread the word!
For more info on the festival and the performances please visit the website: www.vidf.ca
There are also free VIDF brochures available throughout the city.
Hope to see you there!
Here’s a photo of our multi-talented artist, Gabrielle Martin:
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
Hi folks! For those of you residing in Toronto, check out the special literary event below where our own Colouring Book artist, Marge Lam, is in attendance to read and discuss her stories. Check it out!
***
Here is Where Literary anthology explores the contemporary Canadian city
(TORONTO) “Where is here?” Northrop Frye’s classic conundrum gets a refreshing spin in TOK: Writing the New City (Zephyr Press), a luminous new anthology from Canada’s established and emerging literary voices. From Vancouver to Halifax, and Toronto to Montreal, writers, poets and dramatists explore the diverse and contemporary issues of urban Canadian lives. TOK: Writing the New City launches on Wednesday April 8, 2009 at the Gladstone Hotel with readings, conversations and live music!
Hosted by CBC’s Matt Galloway, the launch will feature fiction writers Antanas Sileika, Gul Joya Jafri, Sandra Tam, and Sabrina Ramnanan; and poets Ken Babstock and Marge Lam. The writers will read selections from the book and discuss the process of capturing their particular takes on the city.
Copies of the brand-new book will be available, followed by a very special musical jam performance by LAQR – a group of Toronto musicians curated by LAL’s Rosina Kazi especially for the launch, including Santosh Naidu, Matt Maaskant, Nuno Gervasio, Ian de Souza and Kazi.
TOK: Writing the New City is the fourth book in an annual anthology series published by Zephyr Press, and marks the anthology’s expansion into the creative exploration of Canadian cities beyond Toronto, including Montreal, Halifax and Vancouver.
The TOK anthology is the product of the annual Diaspora Dialogues mentoring program. “The mentorship is an opportunity to discover, develop and promote new literary voices,” says Diaspora Dialogues president Helen Walsh, “as well as to contribute to the expansion of contemporary urban Canadian literature. It’s always an exciting process to bring these diverse voices together, and we are very proud to present this newest volume which for the first time draws from writers outside of Toronto.”
Included in this anthology are: Anar Ali, Ken Babstock, Tanya Bryan, Maria Corbett, Shauntay Grant, Rawi Hage, Yiwei Hu, Gul Joya Jafri, Marge Lam, Jen Sookfong Lee, Daniel David Moses, Yvette Nolan, Sabrina Ramnanan, Pratap Reddy, Antanas Sileika, Moez Surani, Sandra Tam, and Naya Valdellon.
WHAT: Launch of TOK: Writing the New City, Book 4
WHEN: Wednesday, April 8, 2009 – doors open at 7 pm
WHERE: Gladstone Hotel Ballroom, 1214 Queen Street West (at Gladstone)
COST: Free
CONTACT: Julia Chan, julia@diasporadialogues.com; 416-944-1101 x 277
Diaspora Dialogues Charitable Society supports the creation and presentation of new fiction, poetry and drama that reflect the complexity of the city through the eyes of its richly diverse writers. Diaspora Dialogues is supported by Maytree, Canadian Heritage, Ontario Arts Council, the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council, the George Cedric Metcalf Foundation and TO Live With Culture.
Biographies
Ken Babstock has authored three poetry books (Mean, Days into Flatspin, and Airstream Land Yacht). He has won the Trillium Award for Poetry, the Milton Acorn Award, the Atlantic Poetry Prize, and the K.M. Hunter Award. He has been nominated for the Griffin Prize, the Governor General’s Award, and the Winterset Prize. His poetry is translated in five languages. He lives in Toronto.
Matt Galloway has been working at CBC Radio for almost 10 years, hosting the programs The Current, Sounds Like Canada, Metro Morning, The Arts Today, Global Village, Music and Company, Q and many others. In 2008, he hosted CBC Radio’s coverage of the Summer Olympics live from Beijing, mixing breaking sports results with interviews and insightful looks into the changing face of contemporary Chinese culture. Since 2004, he has been the host of Here & Now, the daily drive-home program on CBC Radio One 99.1 FM in Toronto.
Gul Joya Jafri was born in Pakistan and raised in Toronto. She has worked in international development in Ottawa, Amman, Ramallah, and Beirut. This is her first published work.
Marge Lam was born in Vancouver. A multimedia artist and community worker, she was published in The Colouring Book, a collection of multi-racial writing, and from this, created her first video short, Unkept, for the National Film Board of Canada. She freelances for CBC Radio One and CKLN, and co-hosts a show on CFRO. She lives in Toronto.
Sabrina Ramnanan was born in Toronto to Trinidadian parents. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto. Her poetry has been published in Cerulean Rain.
Antanas Sileika is a novelist, magazine writer, and broadcaster. His last novel, Woman in Bronze, was a Globe and Mail Best Book. He is the artistic director of the Humber School for Writers.
Sandra Tam writes about gender and racial aspects of women’s working lives, and has published articles in several newspapers, academic journals, and magazines. She lives in Toronto.
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
Join us in April for a night’s celebration of short stories (including “The Colouring Book: Digital Stories by Artists of Colour”) at the Vancouver Public Library’s Cinema Politica!
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
Written by
denise
February 4, 2009
Short Digital Videos by Artists of Colour
Thursday, February 26 at 7 p.m.
NFB Cinema
150 John Street
Admission by donation
(all proceeds will go the the Colouring Book Project)
Filmmakers and poets in attendance. Bold, poignant, empowering, inspiring - come and join us for a night’s celebration of short digital videos by poets turned filmmakers from The Colouring Book, a collection of personal stories by writers of colour about race and identity issues. A panel discussion to follow, moderated by Vinita Srivastava.
For more information contact: thecolouringbook@gmail.com
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
Very exciting news!
Our own Colouring Book writer/artist, Marge Lam, will be reading at the upcoming “The Word on the Street Book and Magazine Festival”, in Toronto.
Here’s some info on this award-winning festival:
When: Sunday, September 28th from 11am-6pm (Marge’s reading starts at 1:45-ish)
Where: Queens Park @ the Diaspora Dialogues Tent
What: The Far East: Beaches, Gerrard & Broadview, Scarborough Life as an East Ender. The land beyond the Don Valley is brought to life with poetry set in Chinatown East, the Beaches, and Queen East. Venture eastward even further through the story of a new immigrant Korean family in Scarborough. Featuring Shani Mootoo, Amani, KenBabstock, Moira MacDougall and Dianne Scott, and Marge Lam.
Come & show your support!
Another great link to check out:
The Diaspora Dialogues
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
I’ll never forget the day I witnessed a group of high school friends return an apartment-full of 40 oz bottles and receive over 150$ in exchange for the contents of their precarious “40 wall” stacked five levels high, and three rows deep. True story. Scary story. Here is the photo of the infamous wall still intact taken in Montreal in 2001:
There is an unfortunate stigma attached to people who collect recyclables in urban centers across Canada. Many of these self-employed individuals claim to feel invisible on the street, even when the sidewalks are packed with pedestrians. But during my adolescence in Quebec, I quickly learned that depositing a malt liquor bottle can win you 20 cents. That’s five for a dollar! Just think of how quickly you could amass five dollars with a wagon and one city block. Do you ever wonder about the community of people who collect and deposit your bottles, outside of the regularly scheduled recycling pick-up? (That’s if your province or town has a recycling service in place… but let’s leave that issue for another time, another post.)
There are certain can-collecting, bottle-depositing folk that I see around town on the daily, going about their business as I go about mine. Although I may not know the name of every bottle-picking, street-walking, grocery cart-clanging person (or couple!), there are many of them who know more about me than my friends do. Where I live, where I work, where I like to get coffee, how often I visit the library, and what I was drinking last night. That’s why I was delighted to get to see Murray Siple’s CARTS OF DARKNESS. It is a unique look inside the subculture of people who deposit bottles are their primary source of income, but with a twist.
An extreme twist. This NFB film is more about the extreme lengths that these “binners” have to go through in order to collect recyclabes in the mountainous terrain that is North Vancouver - take their grocery carts downhill at frightening speeds!
CARTS OF DARKNESS - which is playing at this year’s Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax - is worth a watch. Go see it if you’re in the area!
Sunday, September 14th
Empire 8, Park Lane
4:05 pm
Click to see the AFF website
Looking for related dossiers on CitizenShift?
Take a peek at ‘Hide or Go Homeless‘ or ‘Homelessness.org‘ for tons of more media.
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
Listen to this piece Sounding Griffintown: A Listening Guide of a Montreal Neighborhood for a taste of the character of this unique neighbhorhood.
Sounding Griffintown
Until the mid-twentieth century, Griffintown was a residential, predominantly Irish, working-class neighbourhood. As a result of preparations for Expo ‘67, the City of Montreal decided that Griffintown was an eyesore on the landscape and began its transformation into an industrial neighbourhood. By 1970, most homes, along with St. Ann’s Catholic Church, were torn down and residents moved away.
- Lisa Gasior
Griffintown is facing redevelopment again. In response to the proposed development, the Committee for the Sustainable Redevelopment of Griffintown was formed. Check out this article The Siege of Griffintown for more information about how the committee is urging the city to scale down the size of the project and make it more congruous with the neighborhood.
Griffintown remains to this day, virtually unknown to most Montrealers. To bring awareness to this lost part of Montreal; Concordia University Television, along with Indyish, is presenting a three-day event celebrating Griffintown’s rich history.
Read the rest of this entry »
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
Tags: development, griffintown
This post was sent to us from Ivona from the Ottawa Coalition Against Mining Uranium - a grassroots network of concerned citizens working on protecting the greater Ottawa-Gatineau region, including its watersheds (Ottawa, Mississippi, Rideau and Gatineau), from uranium exploration, mining and milling-related toxins.
——
Without official public consultations, environmental assessment and independent health and safety studies, many people within the Ottawa/Gatineau watershed are left in the dark about the proposed uranium mining and its consequences on their health and environment. As a result, OCAMU is working to fill the gap in awareness among the general public.
Since informing everyone within Ottawa/Gatineau is a work of monumental proportions, OCAMU is asking groups and individuals to adopt this awareness raising campaign and do any type of outreach possible anywhere in Ottawa and Gatineau at any time.
We must reach out to each other because our collective water supply is at stake. Losing water, we lose our very basis for survival. There is no safe amount of radioactivity or heavy metals. Even a bit of uranium mining is too much for too long.
LET’S STOP IT BEFORE IT BEGINS. 
Read the rest of this entry »
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
Next entries »
