By Susan Tsang “Skillsharing” might sound like a strange, and even confusing term when you first stumbling upon it. To simply put, people skillshare when they exchange their skills with one another, whether they are singing, improvise acting, or cooking. Skillshares is only a part of a bigger picture of connecting the community through meaningful interactions. Vancouver Arts Colloquium presents a series of skillshares workshops that link people in one place to build our skills as well as the community. On June 18, as soon as the Upcycling Fabric workshop led by the creative Colleen Rhodes had been completed, people trickled into the room for the Musical Voice Lab to learn from the skilled Dramatic Soprano Jane Perrett. Our group consisted a wide range of people aged from ten to sixty but we openly shared our experiences (or lack of experiences) with one another. We got to know each other as past choir members, curious people, some who had taken lessons before and ceased singing for years, and I belong to the last group. Like everyone else, I was excited to pioneer the unexplored territory of our voices. Most of us had found out about the workshop through Jane. We were attracted to her uplifting voice and exhilarating opera performances. Along with her friend Leo (also a singer and an instructor) who played the piano and offered tips, we were set to generate music together. First, we touched base with the basic Italian “i” (pronounced “e”). Jane instructed that saying “i” correctly is the foundation of singing; knowing how to imitate properly with our voices is helpful for beginners to polish the basic skills. The process was a novel and interesting one because it was like learning a new language, we tightened our lips...

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Dear Readers, Spring is a time for renewal!  A time to begin new, exciting initiatives that will impact our city.  For community organizers, spring is a time to re-energize and enhance our entrepreneurial and engagement skills so we are better prepared to help our communities succeed.  Vancouver Foundation Neighbourhood Small Grant (NSG)  & Greenest City Neighbourhood Small Grant (GCG) projects are about to take off. As one of the Resident Advisory Committee members for the Westside, I am delighted to announce that in 2016 there was 25% increase in applications from those submitted in 2015 and so many new and exciting projects are being funded this year. What a great time to share creativity, gain perspective on community sustainability issues, and connect with more people in the neighbourhood! Check the NSG/GCG website for the upcoming project announcements. As part of the Kerrisdale Community Centre’s Community Engagement initiatives, we are open to NSG/GCG projects for free meeting spaces on a availability basis in order to play an important role in helping our citizens to continue to grow and our residents to thrive on their own terms. Together, we will reach hundreds of westside residents through such community-led local initiatives in an effort to ensure that the opportunity of creativity and social connection is available to all.  Another exciting new initiative to connect more people is Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society (VACS)’s SkillShare project funded by the federal government. The Kick off event is just around the corner – Sunday May 15, 9pm – 3pm at Kitsilano Community Centre. Please come out to see what it is all about! And, finally, we are hosting the Vancouver Regional BC Heritage Fair 2016 at Kerrisdale Community Centre on Saturday May 21, welcoming Vancouver’s top 120 students who will be presenting their research...

By Lara Boleslawsky While Upcycling may be a new comer on the sustainability scene, it is unjust to simply call it a trend. Upcycling is a way of life. Upcycling breathes new perspectives, new ideas, new life into everything it touches. But what is Upcycling?          Just ask Colleen Rhodes, the creative and executive genius behind Meins Designs, a local sewing business that promotes Upcycling in the fabrics of its design.          “Upcycling to me means taking something that you would normally throw away and making it into something new. It means making something new out of the old,” says Colleen. To showcase this amazing new concept, Colleen will be participating in the new Skill Share series; a new and exciting community engagement project brought together by the Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society. Colleen and Skill Share have partnered in order to promote and teach local communities about the social and environmental impact of Upcycling.        Skill Share is an initiative centered around the mandate that everyone has a skill, an art, a talent that they can nurture and grow and eventually develop for the purpose of teaching others. Colleen is one of the featured artists in Skill Share, as she will be teaching and supervising sewing workshops, all of which circumvent the main theme of Upcycling. The workshops take place once a month, with each catered to a specific project. These include: leg warmers made from an old sweater, skirts made from unused jeans and wine or produce bags made from unwanted shirts and sweaters.          “You don’t need to get everything brand new. Today everyone thinks the bigger the better, but it doesn’t need to be that way,” Colleen remarks. Through ‘Upcycling’ unused, and perhaps even unloved, clothes becomes re-purposed and...

By Susan Tsang For Artists In Residence (AIR) Series session 104, the guests transform Keiko’s cozy home to a salon that is of fluid conversations and ideas while appreciated the vegetarian lasagna and wine. The guests who have already attended the previous sessions are welcoming to everyone, including the first-timers like myself. Amongst the new guests, there are Misha’s students who come for their teacher’s presentation. Michael (Mikhail) Pertsev is a figurative sculptor from Moscow, Russia. He has a studio at Parker Street and teaches at Emily Carr University. He inspires his students to master their skills in sketching and sculpting. They would practice their drawings because Misha likes to make drafts on paper before sculpting. But the one who has a significant presence in Misha’s life is his father who was an artist from the Soviet Union. Misha’s story begins with his father’s artwork, drawing inspiration from the arduous times of the Communist Soviet Union. Seeking to capture the oppressive lives of the Soviet labourers on canvas, his father’s works were marked by strong strokes of dark green, red, and other saturated colours. The images left an impressionable imprint from the distinct lines that are sharp and angular to the subjects’ eyes that are hollowed out by black shade. Yet Misha’s father was not only an artist but also a part of the browbeaten citizens who needed to have his voice heard. He wished to draw the spine-breaking domestic lives of the Russians instead of the style of multi-figure, male-centric artworks. While his piece of drawing might have been controversial since it reflected the reality of the iron-fist governance, his intrinsic disposition to his cultural background made the occurrence of that drawing to be almost inevitable.             Under the influence of his father,...

By Sean Yoon   Every life is sacred. Choosing to embrace non-violence, peace and love as a way of life, Magdaleno “Leno” Rose-Avila is a human rights activist. After Martin Luther King Jr.’s death in 1968, someone came to him and said, “You have to stand up today. If you love Martin Luther King, then you have to defend what is right.” That is when Leno made a promise to himself that he would dedicate his life to helping people. From that moment forward, he became an activist and started demonstrating and defending human rights.   “If you don’t value other people’s lives, why should they value yours?”   For over a decade, Leno has worked with former gang members in El Salvador and LA through the organisation he started called “Homies Unidos,” or “Homeboys United.” Homeboys United worked with former gang members and youth to help them break away from violence and gain life skills through education programs, employment programs and various forms of mental health support. Leno recalls listening to former gang members for 90 days before he even said anything to them. “How can I talk to them if I don’t know their reality?” He said. “Most of the time we don’t take the time to listen, we always have an answer for somebody. What about listening? What is your pain, what are you thinking, where are you?” Leno came to discover that the people he met with were often very smart, but they were poor and have had very few opportunities to lead lives other than through violence.   What is the value that we place on a person’s life? Leno once had 70,000 dollars in his retirement account. He spent it all to start Homeboys United, and then put...

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Dear Readers, Time for Spring cleaning and skill sharing!   I have been fortunate to work with a talented, highly collaborative, and passionate team in my non-profit and community partners to start a pilot skillshare program in the community…..yes, it’s passion that’s the strongest force on Earth! At the heart of community engagement is the process of building a grassroots movement involving communities and the practice of moving communities towards change. And skill-sharing, part of the asset-based community development (ABCD), is one of the effective tools to harness and leverage the individual and collective knowledge, resources and experience found within the community for sustainable development. I am looking forward to seeing multi-generational community of learning and new friendships emerging from skill-sharing. The first kick-off event will starting in May 2016 at the Kitsilano Community Centre, and I will surely keep you all posted.  For any inquiries, contact me: hondakeiko@gmail.com. Speaking of cherry blossoms, please come out to our Sakura Festival, enjoy yourself, and sense the preciousness of our connection with nature! Happy Spring! Keiko Honda Editor-in-Chief Chair, Community Engagement Committee    ...

By Lara-Sophie Boleslawsky (Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society) Photos by Noriko Nasu-Tidball Walking in, one is greeted by a jovial atmosphere; the afternoon sunlight filters into the room, illuminating the dark wood of the piano at the front of the room. There is a small buzz, with the audience waiting in anticipation for the concert to begin. We begin with the classics: Jane Perrett’s soprano voice is soars as she sings ‘Quando Me’n Vo’, teasing her lover as Musetta in Puccini’s La bohème. It is then Gerard Satamian’s turn to take the stage, and the tone immediately shifts as he laments love in Poulenc’s heartbreaking ‘Les chemins de l’amour’. Each performer embodies not only their respective characters, but also the songs themselves. It is a truly magnificent spectacle, and the brief intermission is needed, if only to refresh after the emotional outpour of each performance.      Indeed, we are treated not only to Jane Perrett and Gerard Satamian’s brilliant voices, but also to breathtaking piano instrumentals by Jane’s son, David. Performing classics such as Chopin’s ‘Prelude in B Minor’ and Beethoven’s first movement of ‘Leichte Sonate in G Major’ he brings a voice to these songs, flitting about the room as if truly alive.      Following the intermission is a brief performance by mezzo soprano Ayako Komaki. She beams brightly before beginning her performance, only to transform before our very eyes, becoming the tragic Queen Dido, mourning her own lamentable future whilst singing ‘When I am Laid in Earth’. The intensity present in the room soon reconstructs, with Jane Perrett’s rendition of the classic Disney tune, ‘When You Wish Upon A Star’, whereupon everyone is urged to join in. Continuing along this nostalgic frame, Gerard Satamian ends the concert with ‘If I Were A Rich Man’...

By Katherine Dornian (Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society) Photo Courtesy of Salome Nieto In a quiet, bare studio at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, I watch Salome Nieto being born. Her movements are slow and deliberate, full of pause. She falls into herself and then unfolds, slowly, evoking something fragile and primeval, facing the world for the first time. Behind her, poet Shauna Paull approaches with deliberate steps. In a shy, vaguely singsong voice, she speaks of water, light, and my mind leaps to the quiet of a first creation. In the background, original music plays, vaguely evoking Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Shauna watches Salome’s transformation, watches as she looks around in wonder and fear. Soon Salome embraces her, childlike and seeking comfort, and a deeply intimate connection is established before she is sent back out on her own to discover. All this time, producer Eduardo Menesses has been scribbling away at his notes, muttering quietly with the lighting and sound directors. When the song ends, he calls Salome over to work out some transitions, then asks her genuinely, what she felt while performing the scene. So has this process gone for over a year and a half – this constant cycle of meditation, observation and dialogue that’s gone into the production of Umbral. “It grows organically out of what we have to say,” says Salome. “It’s not about a product; we’re working together to create an experience.” The production, co-created by Salome and Eduardo with the help of their close-knit community of artists, is a reflection on human nature, as well as a commentary on the reality of war. It integrates an interdisciplinary mix of poetry, video, music and visual arts to support the core element of the show and Salome’s strongest talent, butoh...

By Keiko Honda Community Engagement Chair, Kerrisdale Community Centre Society Why Needs A Collaborative Garden in Kerrisdale? Who Needs? How do we build a community through a garden? Why Permaculture?  These are the kinds of questions I have been often asked by our staff and kCC board members, while the Community Engagement Committee has been spearheading the Kerrisdale Permaculture Garden project with the core team of visionary community collaborators and volunteers since last summer.  It is always good to remind ourselves that community is built best through using our bodies and hearts together – sowing, planting, digging, sweating, singing songs, harvesting, eating together, sharing poems, and handing things to each other. That is how the community is build. As we create together, it reflects us all. As such, the Kerrisdale Permaculture Garden is the act of creating a shared vision based on a community’s needs and assets, culture and history, and local sustainability. Every community, every school, and every household needs a garden. Simply put, the benefit of the garden is creating a social capital and a source for healthy foods.  Permaculture is about becoming conscious. Permaculture guides us to mimic the patterns and relationships we can find in nature. At the heart of permaculture is creativity and the ability for people to adapt and evolve in light of the conditions of modern life. We can say that a garden is a reflection of permaculture – its the integration of everything. A garden will be memorable, beautiful, functional and resilient over time because it integrates all these different considerations.  Kerrisdale Community at large desperately needs opportunities to renew our connection to nature and its aesthetics, create resilient communities, and empower children to both survive and thrive. As there is no space and culture at the centre that explicitly fosters the constantly growing and evolving global movement based on an ethical...

THANK YOU! Our heartfelt thanks to Canada Y.C. Music Orchestra and all of our friends of Kerrisdale Community for an amazing time at Chinese Lunar New Year Concert on February 27th, 2016! The musicianship in Canada Y.C. Music Orchestra was at a very high caliber! Please come back next year!   Photos by Noriko...

The Opera Zone When: Sunday, April 3rd, 2pm Where: KCC Seniors Multi-Purpose Room Open to the Public, FREE, ALL are...

2nd Annual Kerrisdale Sakura Festival All are Welcome!    ...

Happy New Year!     Time for a quantum leap in the year of the Monkey -Yeah, that’s my year! It has been years since I’ve gone on a vacation. So, last week, I flew to Hawaii and fell in love with Hawaii’s natural beauty and the legacy of people who had made a difference in the whole Hawaiian community and in the world.  This time, I felt like traveling through the eyes of an artist or writer, like Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings during her 1939 stay or Mark Twain’s letters during his 1866 visit……..  O’Keeffe and Twain were once in Hawaii….Who knew! On my 2nd day in Hawaii, I headed to the Honolulu Museum of Art —just a 20 minutes bus ride from where I was staying. It’s an inspiring architectural design, and I enjoyed just going to the museum to hang out. But, when I saw the painting of O’Keeffe hanging at the museum—I was ecstatic. The energy and excitement I felt in the moments before seeing that masterpiece with my own eyes is the same energy many of us feel about incomparable and incredible natural beauty and wonders of Hawaii. The whole island is like a living, breathing artist at work, providing the connective, emotional tissue in the form of majestic and verdant cliffs, well-kept pristine beaches, entrancing botanical gardens, eye-poppingly beautiful hibiscuses, a vibrant bird kingdom, symbolic Hawaiian public arts throughout, the colour, the blue, and the “Way of Aloha” (To Love) – It is indeed a beautiful world, a paradisiacal ecosystem. MALAMA A’INA – Important Hawaiian saying meaning “to care for.”  Gratitude comes in many forms. I thought about the gratitude I felt toward the locals I encountered during my trip –  especially towards wheelchair users. From hula and surfing, to festivals and funerals, one finds examples of the Hawaiian culture’s intimate relationship with...

By Sean Yoon Photos by Noriko Nasu-Tidball Born and raised in Kerrisdale through the late 70s, Dr. Krishna Pendakur can be described as someone whose work speaks about his passion towards helping this country, this city he grew up in and this world in which economic inequality represses the poor. Dr. Krishna Pendakur is currently a professor of economics at Simon Fraser University. His work in economics fundamentally seeks to develop a toolkit to describe and measure efficiently the landscape of social issues impacting our well-being such as economic inequality, discrimination, and poverty.   It was during his bachelor studies in sociology at UBC when Krishna ventured towards a 4th year course title in economics which was welfare economics. This course introduced the economic aspects to the issues of social welfare and economic inequality that Krishna had been interested in for a long time. His interest in economics grew, eventually leading to his doctoral studies at UC Berkeley. Krishna’s research at the time was focused on the distribution of income vs. the distribution of consumption and on the measurement of household characteristics such as the cost of raising children, which you need to know in order to measure the distribution of income or consumption. In particular, if you want to measure inequality and the data you have is household-level data, then you need to have some way of comparing apples and oranges, like families with children to families without children. They have different needs so if they have more money it doesn’t mean that they’re better off; you have to have a way to scale or deflate household incomes per household characteristics.   Much of Krishna’s research was done in collaboration with his brother Dr. Ravi Pendakur, a professor in the Department of Public...

By Chris Kay Photo Courtesy of Chris Kay The word community is one we hear frequently in the news and in our personal lives. In Vancouver, we might read a story that mentions the business community or the artist community. A controversial development is sometimes said to be opposed by the local community. We even have a network of buildings across the city called community centres! Clearly community is an important thing. So what exactly does it mean? It turns out there is no single definition of what a community is. But people who study communities have come up with a few ideas. Many communities we experience are groups of like-minded individuals, or people with a common practice. The running group you meet every Thursday evening or the knitting circle that you attend every Saturday afternoon are communities, based on common interests. There are also communities related to our vocation. We might feel part of a community of medical professionals in a hospital, or a community of small business owners on a particular street. For example, in my work I’m part of a community of scientists. In my neighbourhood I’m part of a community of gardeners. These communities tend to evolve naturally as we find people who do the same things we do. When people spend time together through hobbies or work, they tend to become familiar with each other. But people who don’t know each other also form communities, sometimes connected by their identities. The community of a specific race or religion may share common needs, challenges, or beliefs that bring them together for advocacy, even if they don’t have specific activities in common. In this sense, a diverse place like Vancouver has many communities of identity, overlapping in countless ways. As a...

By Katherine Dornian Photo Courtesy of Bhavna Solecki Therapist, businesswoman, activist, healer, philosopher – it’s difficult to pin down an exact title for what Bhavna Solecki does, since her work is all-encompassing enough to defy simple description. As the founder of Inner Evolution Healing Centre and now as a member of the planning committee for the Kerrisdale Permaculture Garden, Bhavna seeks to foster mental, spiritual and community balance in everything she does. For the past 15 years, Bhavna has run her holistic practice with the goal of building communities around the pursuit of “mindfulness” – the harmony of the mind, body and soul achieved through healing foods, meditation, exercise, and other curative pursuits. Though she holds a BA in psychology, her practice is primarily based upon Shiatsu and ancient Indian and Chinese medicine. It also features a significant amount of spiritual counselling, which she believes is directly linked to mental and physical health. “Doctors may try to take away pain,” she tells me. “But you cannot do that unless you first identify its source.” Because of this, Bhavna finds that therapy becomes a very immersive experience; she cites the paramount importance of fostering relationships with her clients, putting empathy at the forefront of her approach to healing. “If you don’t feel it, you can’t help,” she says, and makes a point of telling me that she uses the word “help”, not “treat”. Her process must be team effort with the individual, who must be willing to fully participate. Since she gives full autonomy to her patients, she trusts that they will take that step towards healing when they are ready, at which point she is truly able to help them. It is this act of trust that Bhavna states is one of the most...