On June 8th, a part of eight people went to the Canadian Urban Institute’s Urban Leadership Award ceremony to celebrate our Artistic Director, Ruth Howard’s “City Soul” award. Ruth wasn’t able to attend, and so her daughter, Shifra Cooper, and mother, Antonie Howard accepted the award on her behalf (pictured below with Fred Eisenberger, President and CEO of the Canadian Urban Institute and Tina Murphy, Manager Community Relations at award sponsor TD Bank).

In a short speech delivered by Shifra, Ruth thanked the Canadian Urban Institute and “the many funders, partners, artists, participants,  board, staff, offshoots and family members, who have been part of our creative adventure… all of who deserve a hearty share in this award and recognition.”

The Canadian Urban Institute also made a short video about Jumblies (featuring a Skype interview with Ruth in the UK), which you can view by clicking here.

Greetings from Ireland! I’m having a lovely, refreshing and engrossing time – based in County Clare Ireland, with some excursions to other places. These have included: a conference on Performance and Asylum at Royal Hollway College London; a Spring School in Oral History  offered by the British Oral History Society; a visit to Brunnenpassage, a community arts centre  in a lively mixed-cultural district of Vienna; and a wonderful Rites of Passage workshop with Dead Good Guides (the company that John Fox and Sue Gill formed after they folded Welfare State International). Here are a few photos from Brunnenpassage:

The doors, are open, the street flows accessibly into the venue, while their community choir is rehearsing.

As we do at Jumblies, they proclaim that all are 'Welcome', and that there is 'Art for Everyone'.

Ruth with host staff members Tilson & Elisabeth.

The Cooking Fire Festival is on from June 20th to 24th at Dufferin Grove Park and includes several artists from Jumblies and Offshoots: Keirsten Tough, Dan Watson, Lisa MarieDiLiberto and other friends and associates and their fabulous companies and shows. Find out my by clicking here.

With only one day to go until the amazing Making Room – PARC raft launch event, here’s a great news article about from Inside Toronto by Erin Hatfield.

We were fortunate to have photographer Mindy Stricke as a Jumblies Intern in 2008. She has since gone on to create a brilliant community arts and multi-media project called “Greetings From Motherland”. Read her message below and check out the links to find out more about it. Mindy also has an article in our latest Out Of Place, which you can order here:

Photo by Mindy Stricke

Hi everyone,

As many of you know, in 2009 I started Greetings From Motherland, an evolving multi-disciplinary community art project that brings women together to create honest representations of motherhood. I’ve led workshops in Madison, Wisconsin and Toronto, Ontario, and I’m currently running an eight-week workshop with mothers at the Harbourfront Community Centre in Toronto with a grant from the Toronto Arts Council. You can learn more about Greetings From Motherland through the website and blog http://www.greetingsfrommotherland.com, or by liking us on Facebook.

1) A Talk: I was recently invited to be the guest speaker for the Mother Outlaws’ Speakers Series, a free monthly event open to the public presenting topical issues on motherhood and feminism. I spoke about the evolution of the project, my process of collaboration, and stories and art from completed and in-progress works. The audience was also invited to contribute to the Motherland Postcard Rack, an evolving participatory installation from the project. 

2) A Documentary: Two summers ago, I ran a five-week project with an incredible group of mothers in Madison, Wisconsin that culminated in Good Eater, a site-specific installation about food and motherhood in the most beautiful community gardens I’ve ever seen.

I was very lucky that Brijetta Hall Waller, a talented filmmaker and participant in the first workshops that I ran in Madison, thought that a Greetings From Motherland project would make a good subject for a documentary, and recorded our process for posterity.  The wonderful result was At The Table: Mothers Sharing Their Stories Through Art, which subsequently screened at the Wisconsin Film Festival. In honor of Mother’s Day this year, Metta Productions released the film online. You can watch it here: http://www.vimeo.com/41574011

3) Photos for Sale: To help raise money for next year’s project at the Harbourfront Community Centre, I’m offering images of imagined landscapes of Motherland for sale from the installation You Are Not Where You Were. The photos make great gifts and would look wonderful in a kids’ room. They’re available as prints and cards. http://gfm.printroom.com/

All the best,

Mindy

Click on images to enlarge.

We are so very happy to welcome to the world and Jumblies - Violet Audrey Helmers Archer, who was born on June 12th to Beth Helmers (Artistic Director of our Scarborough Offshoot – the Community Arts Guild) and her husband, Robin Archer. All of them are healthy and happy.

On Saturday June 16th the culminating event of Arts4All’s 11th year of existence took place. Artists involved included Liz Rucker (Artistic Director of Arts4All), Keirsten Tough, Esther Maloney, Michael Burtt, Sonja Rainey, Shifra Cooper and others. Here is a report from Esther Maloney:

It was a beautiful sunny day  yesterday at Pelham Park Gardens, in the Davenport-Perth area, where we gathered with the Arts4All players, Arts4Youth, Pelham Seniors and many other residents of Pelham and community members who have dropped by over the last several weeks of our Thursday lobby days. The last weeks have been an ongoing collaboration between these different groups around the themes of discovering messages and surprises from underground, interpreting these messages and riddles and responding by creating stories, characters and a space for a community garden. 

What emerged was a wonderful story, the youth decided it must be aliens that were communicating with them through the puzzle pieces they found, and that these aliens must be arriving soon! In the meantime, the Arts4All players were rehearsing alien walks and sounds through movement, inspired by drawings the youth had made of what they thought the aliens might look like.  The seniors prepared signs for the different vegetables that would grow in the community garden. Participants in lobby days created medalions, flowers and leaves that were hung as part of a garland that was used in a parade. A magnificent sculpture, large alien puppets, a collective story about space travel, gigantic vegetables, alien mask-making, live drumming and violin and an original song created by the youth entitled “Juicy Juicy Mango” made for a very fun day. All of these aspects came together in a kind of intergalactic themed garden party, with live music and drumming, collective storytelling and the appearance of aliens and vegetables. We sang and ate juicy, juicy mango and later in the afternoon, connected our parade with CultureLink and Bike Toronto’s official opening of the West Toronto Railpath. 

Here are some photos of the event, taken by Navid Khavari:

We are proud to announce that Jumblies’ Artistic Director, Ruth Howard, just received the George Luscombe Award for Mentorship from TAPA (on of the Dora Mavor Moore Ancillary Awards).

Liz Rucker accepted the award at a press conference today, in Ruth’s absence.

Thanks go to TAPA, the committee and nominator, all Jumblies terrific former and current interns, the private and the public funders who have supported Jumblies’ mentorship efforts over the years.

For more info. and to download the full press release click here.

Also exciting is that several artists who have been mentored by Ruth and Jumblies (Dan Watson, Sean Frey and Sonja Rainey) received Dora nominations today (all for the production of “A Fool’s Life”). Congratulations to you all!!