Dear Readers, “What I stand for is what I stand on” – Wendell Berry What does this quote mean to you? I met this powerful quote by Wendell Berry when I was visiting our city’s oasis, Southlands Farms last week.  I was haunted by this quote for a couple of days and kept pondering the question that has become a cliché and yet wonderous: What makes the community a great place to live?   Working as editor-in-chief of Kerrisdale Playbook has been one of my favourite experiences I had in general in my life, as I constantly explore the wonderful neighbourhoods and unique communities where life and real creativity seem flourishing.  For me, what makes the community truly a great place to live comes with a tremendous amount of passion. And I am proud to say that each and every person featured or involved in Kerrisdale Playbook is the embodiment of pure passion.     September issue is all about passion and perhaps most revealing, covering the themes of culture, community, urban agriculture and arts.  Now, after reading,  it’s your turn to ponder on what you stand for! Harvest season will be soon upon us. This fall, I am delighted to invite all the community members and city folks to the Placemaking Public Walk as we will be showcasing the results of our ongoing placemaking project. Please stay tuned….We also have a series of new and interesting public free events coming up, including Musqueam Chief Wayne Sparrow’s talk on Oct 1st. You will see how powerful our collective vision can be!  Happy reading and happy Back-to-School!   Keiko Honda, Ph.D. Editor-in-Chief   Chair, Community...

By Sean Yoon Photos: Sean Yoon/Alan Peng/Kenta Motoike/Chris Kay/Glen Phillips   When I turned into Christopher Kay and Glen Phillips’ neighbourhood on the 25th of July, I got a chance to look at how exactly placemaking (converting public space like boulevards into unique spaces of creativity) would go on to impact and shape communities. On the converted boulevard in front of Chris and Glen’s duplex is a sitting area with two worn lawn chairs and a bright red parasol, along with tree cover above to hide from the sun. Right beside the sitting area is a strange hedge figure in the shape of a bear, adding a sense of quirkiness to the area and in front is a raised bed with a spot reserved for a dinosaur sculpture in the shape of a stegosaurus. Before the interview took place, I was able to relax in one of those chairs for a few minutes and I got the sense that it would be an excellent place to hang out on a hot summer afternoon. For Chris and Glen, the sitting area came to be characterized as a common room space shared with the neighbours where they could just hang out and socialize. I was able to recognize the friendship between Chris, Glen and their neighbours as a group of residents sat on the curb outside their homes, watching the interview take place and occasionally conversing with us.   Moving from Yaletown to Kitsilano two years ago, Chris is a scientist in genetics striving for a PhD, while his partner Glen is a business owner coming from a business and science background. It was last winter back in February when Chris said to Glen, “We’ve got to do something weird. We’ve got to do something really...

By Sean Yoon Photographs: Sean Yoon/Alan Peng/Kenta Motoike   Situated within a ten minute drive from Kerrisdale Community Centre lies Southlands Farm, a rare plot of the last remaining class 1 agricultural soil in Vancouver. Being a much needed break away from the bustling noise of the city, I was pleasantly surprised when I found that Southlands Farm was not traditional in the sense where crops are grown in rows, but was instead highly efficient in the form of a polyculture space raising chickens, horses, ducks, honeybee hives; as well as integrating within the space a wide variety of produce such as apples, grapes, chicken and duck eggs, tomatoes, lettuce, kale, rhubarb, basil and other herbs. Feeling at ease among the sounds of people chatting, chickens running around and delightful atmosphere of the farm, I had the opportunity to walk around the farm and talk with Jordan Maynard, who is a manager and co-owner of the farm with his family.   Before I set out for the interview, while I was looking through the Southlands Farm website, I discovered that the conceptualization of Southlands Farm began in 2008 with a simple, but highly significant vision, which was and continues to be, “to farm in a sustainable way that could demonstrate to neighbours that true food security was possible within the city.” This statement raised some questions to my mind, such as what does food security mean and why is it an important concept to keep in mind in the context of Vancouver as a city? Jordan eloquently explained to me the concept of food security in Vancouver below.   “Food security is about having access to good food and in Vancouver right now and especially with the drought in California, we don’t have a...

 By Ellen McLaren Photos: Barb Mikulec   Steady drum beats reverberated throughout the hall, deep voices singing out a canoe journey song. Water nowhere in sight, the audience was still transported to riverbanks and shorelines, chants pulsing with imaginary currents. The Coastal Wolf Pack performance group then transitioned into an honor song, equally stirring – the friendly chatter preceding the opening ceremony had long since faded to a murmur, listeners all sitting in respectful silence. The auditorium had filled, organizers and volunteers leaving their booths to catch a moment of the final canoe journey song before the performers descended from the stage, still singing as they exited the room. Applause broke out as the Musqueam Band’s celebration of National Aboriginal Day was set into motion. Taking place every summer solstice, June 21, National Aboriginal Day is a time for all Canadians to honor the cultures and contributions of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples. Festivities take place across the country as people, both within and outside Aboriginal communities, gather to learn about and appreciate Canada’s foundational societies. In Musqueam, the celebration took place a few days early on June 19, a sunny Friday afternoon. The day started with emcee Gordon Grant, who carried on a lively banter with each person he introduced to the stage. Chief Wayne Sparrow gave opening remarks, first acknowledging Musqueam’s elders and then extending welcome to visitors to Musqueam. This included the new Vancouver Chief of Police, Adam Palmer, who was there with a number of his force, all relaxed and chatting with other attendees. The crowd was decidedly mixed, attendance among Musqueam Band’s community traditionally high, but with a sizeable number of outside participants also present. Fellow intern Amy Cheng and I were there representing Kerrisdale Playbook, hoping for...

By Amy Cheng Photos Courtesy of Joanne Nakonechny   Art is not just about those usual paintings that hang on our walls. Rather, art is a way of understanding and unraveling how people piece their worlds together, with the medium being infinite. For Joanne Nakonechny, an avid connoisseur of textiles, this is especially true.   Joanne’s appreciation with textiles dates back to her childhood and that hasn’t dimmed. “While growing up, my mother regularly knitted and sewed, and in turn, she taught me how to cross-stitch, knit, and sew,” she fondly recalls. Additionally, she also has an aunt who is a weaver. Despite being well over ninety years of age, her aunt is still enthralled by the different perspectives in using Ukraine colours and patterns into her material work. ”It’s so incredibly inspiring,” Joanne gushes. Being surrounded by all those materials and inspirations involved in her mother’s and her aunt’s creative processes since young, her nascent fascination with textiles only grew. The more she wove, the more ideas came to her. And before she knew it, she was enamoured by a euphoric sense of freedom.   “I’m not only working with my hands, but I’m also working with various colours and my mind—thinking of the endless possibilities to the patterns. And within those frameworks, there is this constant rewarding engagement with chaos, which I just love,” she adds. “I understand that this can be overwhelming, but as long as you maintain within the weave structures, you have a hundred degrees of freedom. And this freedom is exactly what enables you to explore and find yourself within those very structures and boundaries,” Joanne explains. After all of her years of working with textiles, Joanne is still discovering herself in the process. For her, working with...

By Ellen McLaren Photos: Noriko Nasu-Tidball   Drums almost all handmade, leather skins are stretched taught across recycled wine barrels, wood still fragrant. In North America, this is the norm among taiko, percussionists finding it more practical to make their own drums than import them from Japan, where the prices run much higher. Since his entrance into the taiko world, Doug Masuhara has joined the ranks of BC drum makers. His odaiko, the largest taiko drums, sound rich and deep, craftsmanship clearly on par with musicality. Not that Doug would ever say so himself. Despite his success with taiko – establishing his own performing group, Tetsu Taiko, and managing several practicing circles – Doug remains exceptionally humble. He attributes many of his accomplishments to the hard work of his daughters, without whom he may have never tried out taiko drumming at all. Until 2000, taiko had no presence in Doug’s life. A Vancouver native, Masuhara is sansei, third generation Japanese Canadian. Growing up, he mostly connected with his Japanese heritage through his grandparents. Other than that, however, his homelife remained fairly western in nature. Certainly, traditional Japanese drumming was not something frequently heard. It was only fifteen years ago, at the Steveston Buddhist Temple, that Doug had his first introduction to taiko. In a workshop led by Shinobu Homma, of Chibi Taiko, a Burnaby based drumming group, Doug began his taiko lessons. Initially organized for children at the temple, “I was the only adult there,” he says, “and I was the most nervous!” They practiced mostly on car tires, using bachi drumsticks, also homemade from wooden dowelling.             Under the tutelage of Shinobu and his assistant instructor Naomi Shikaze, for two and a half years Doug, his daughters, and a handful of other students...

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Dear Readers, My 10-year-old Maya spends up to 5 hours an evening on schoolwork but mostly reading for pleasure. I often have to remind her to eat at the dinner table by saying “Stop reading!”  It takes me back to my days of 4th Grade so immersed in a book, and makes me think ….. When was the last time I was “hooked on books”?  Much of what I read nowadays is strategic and far from “reading for pleasure” for which I miss the feelings! My only contribution to Maya’s reading for pleasure is to follow her lead when she completes it with full understanding and satisfaction—ready to embrace the next one.   To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries. (A. C. Grayling) Reading for pleasure is delighting and informing at the same time. It’s always our hope that we’ve done a bit of that with each issue. Summer is upon us! What is your summer reading list? Cheers,   Keiko Honda, Ph.D. Editor-in-Chief Chair, Community Engagement...

            By Patrick McGuire Photo credit: Noriko Nasu-Tidball, Keiko Honda, & Albin Sek              If spray paint is the brush of the times then the stencil artist is king.               Banksy and Shepard Fairy are among the most popular and influential artists in the world and the street art movement they’ve lead has created the images that have captured the spirit of our times. Both honed their craft on the streets, using stencils and spray paint to reflect and shape their urban environment. Robert Naish is not a street artist because that is not where he shows his art, but his stencils are from the street but his art encompasses the whole urban environment.                Naish finds his stencils everywhere. In thrift stores, junk shops, roadside stands and garages sales, they are the fly swatters, the kitchen tools, the plastic railroad tracks and children’s toys, the ones we throw away, the ones with interesting shapes that he can pin to the canvas and spray. He uses them for their shapes, for the lines they create when he places them with precision. He sprays on top of them with bright colors on giant canvasses to create intricate works that are stunning to behold. He has thousands of stencils to choose from.               “It’s endless,” says Naish, “I have more stencils than I could use in a dozen lifetimes. The things people throw away are like gold to me.”   Naish first began to paint with stencils and spray guns after painting extensively with oil and brush and exhausting all his ideas with them. He needed to do something different and found his answer in the city around him.               “Stencils allow me...

  By Sean Yoon Photo Courtesy of Colleen McLaughlin Barlow   Despite exhibiting artistic talent early in her childhood, artist Colleen Barlow had been channeled towards becoming an English teacher or journalist by her family based upon her aptitude in reading and writing with the idea that an education should lead to a job. Colleen would follow this thought process throughout the early stages of her education, going on to pursue a bachelor’s degree in journalism at Carleton University in 1976. What she encountered in studying journalism was that the field of journalism quickly proved to be an extremely rigorous and competitive environment as Colleen recalls, “Fifty percent of your mark in 3rd year reporting was running the C.B.C. News Room for one afternoon in Ottawa and you were being watched by professional journalists who at the end of the day, would say whether you passed or not. You might’ve been working for three years on a degree and you could have just been cut right then.” Ultimately surviving the competition, Colleen began her career as a journalist at the age of 21 after graduating in a class of only 42 students from a starting pool of near 400 first year students.   The stress that came from a rigorous, competitive environment would persist throughout Colleen’s career as a journalist, which culminated in instances where her moral values were skewed negatively. Colleen recalls a particular instance of this phenomenon stating, “It’s very stressful and you start to get some very odd values like I actually remember being in a war zone in the Bekaa Valley. Nothing had been happening for about three or four weeks and then suddenly there was some skirmishing going on and I thought to myself: ‘Great we’ve got something for...

  By Kenta Motoike   Purpose and Overview  The goal of the intergenerational creativity project, led by Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society, is to strengthen the connection between youth and seniors through the sharing of their experiences and stories in a collaborative manner. These stories and experiences are conveyed and expressed through multidisciplinary formats in order to facilitate interactions between youth and seniors. The project chose “placemaking” as multidisciplinary format to inspire people to collectively reimagine and reinvent everyday spaces as the heart of every community, including public and semi-public spaces such as boulevards and front yards.  The Placemaking Team comprised of all ages is directed towards addressing the intergenerational and intragenerational distance faced by youth and seniors due to their differences in age, culture and experiences. While youth and seniors at times have trouble relating to each other due to their perceived differences, this distance is further exacerbated by the fact that we live in an increasingly privatised world. Public sites; places for people to converge and congregate such as parks and public parks are dwindling. This matter is compounded by the systemic tendency to prioritise personal and corporate privacy at the expense of the community. Some may say we live in a state of communal limbo, where people are in proximity to each other physically, yet we remain emotionally distant and disconnected. Large scale systematic change on society is daunting yet achievable, but it must begin locally with a social ripple. The article intends to elaborate on the progress in the Placemaking Team through the process involved in the completion of one boulevard located near 23rd and McKenzie St, namely Oliver’s boulevard. Concept and Execution On Sunday March 31st, work on Oliver’s boulevard commenced, however prior to actually working on the garden itself,...

By Amy Cheng   This spring I had the pleasure of being invited as a participant of the Weaving History Together: Making a Collaborative Blanket project led by Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society, which is an interactive and collaborative scheme designed to bring our neighbourhood together as a community through weaving a community blanket. Not community in the way it is used to describe a target market where conversations are only grazing the surface level. I’m talking about a real community of diverse people, of all ages and backgrounds, invested in each other. With that in mind, I spoke with the project facilitator, Debra Sparrow, an eminent weaver on her vision and inspiration for the project, and some of the other participants, like myself, on the process and the significance they have found through this initiative.   “I wanted to facilitate art that both the young and the old could easily participate in, because I believe art can be created by everyone—we are all creative,” says Debra. Of her own work with textiles, Debra describes, “The art of weaving is familiar to every culture, making it an ideal tool in creating communication. Conversations and understanding can’t help but manifest across a loom.”   Also inspired by the her affectionate memory of the Kerrisdale Community Centre as a child, Debra says, “I think it would be really fun to weave stories from the threads of our experience and communicate our stories with others. Binding our stories together in creating a beautiful community blanket.” She hopes to demonstrate the way our stories reflect the knowledge and wisdom that are part of every generation. “We need to listen, then listen some more,” Debra explains. “We just have to pay attention.”   “This project will do just that. As others...

By Ellen McLaren Photos by Keiko Honda When I arrived at the Marpole-Oakridge Community Center, the mood was busy and the people were bustling, making last minute rearrangements in the gymnasium, where the Vancouver Regional Heritage Fair Showcase would soon be taking place. After the giving the room one final sweep, Wendy Hallinan led Keiko and I toward the rows of projects, explaining that though the Heritage Fair has been an annual event since 2004, last Saturday (May 16) was its public debut. By taking place in the community center, members of the Marpole-Oakridge community were able to share in the knowledge that participating students, grades four through ten, had been readying for presentation since January. An adjudicator herself, Wendy would soon have the difficult task of determining especially standout projects. Hallways made from poster-board stretched from one end of the gym to the other, each one different from the next, covered in carefully lettered titles and bright illustrations. There were photographs and dioramas, miniature mansions and handmade brochures – some students even dressed for the part: I met a viking, a Scout, a basketball player and a young lady who had drowned on the RMS Empress of Ireland.  Giddy with anticipation, students darted here and there, eyeing their peers’ projects, reevaluating their own, and staying on the lookout for Janet Morely to ask her any last minute questions. Janet, coordinator of Vancouver Heritage Fairs, was doing some juggling of her own, fixing nametags and speaking with fellow organizers, like Marpole-Oakridge Community Association President Mike Burdick, who gave opening remarks at the kickoff ceremony. Before he welcomed and congratulated participating students, setting the rest of the afternoon into motion, I had the chance to speak with Janet (albeit briefly, her list of things to...

Dear Readers, In this month of May, I am looking forward to watching how a seed we planted is growing; a seed of community connections, a seed of an idea that adults and older adults and youth together explore the wonderful world of art, which prompts discussion and the sharing of life stories between the generations; Everyone is at once a teacher and a learner at all times. To foster the concepts of lifelong learning and spirited citizenship, together with Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society, we have just begun the Intergenerational Creativity Project where our young people have opportunities to engage with the broader community and to learn with and from individuals of all ages who exemplify this ideal.  To that end, a series of intergenerational workshops and projects are starting from this month at Kerrisdale Community Centre as a pilot site.   Other noteworthy community connections include: Byng Project 3B, a school-based immigrant integration program sponsored by the VSB Settlement Workers In Schools (SWIS) Program in Lord Byng Secondary School, which took on a new challenge to extend their vision to global charity with UNICEF Canada; Uproot, zero-waste initiative diverting 100% of Vancouver’s wood waste from the landfill; and Urasenke Tankokai Vancouver Association whose debut was a smashig  success in Kerrisdale Community Centre’s first Sakura Festival — What a powerful synergy that is emerging! Read on. Keiko Honda, Ph.D. Editor-in-Chief Chair, Community Engagement  ...

  By Amy Cheng Photos: Noriko Nasu-Tidball     With different paces of life and activities, it is far too common for different generations to live in their own so-called “separate lives,” even if they were living together. Grandparents who are usually alone during the day may feel detached from their grandchildren who are more likely to spend their time online than to interact face-to-face with their family members.    This has greatly limited our opportunities in nurturing cross-age connections and understanding. We would hope to think that the issue of a generational gap is not as prevalent. And yet, many of our activities are divided by age group, more so than ever before. How many of us have actually taken steps to consciously narrow the gap?   Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society (VACS) is taking the lead to address the growing gap by launching“Intergenerational Creativity” Project, federally funded and supported by many community organizations including our very own Kerrisdale Community Centre (KCC). This project has been created to promote mutual understanding and respect across generations through art-driven activities, and to flesh out the varying gifts and resources that both the young and the old can give one another.   On May 1st, 2015, the project officially launched its kick-off event at KCC as a pilot site where we were joined by people of all ages and background. I have been recruited to this project as youth member and I have to say, it was extremely heartwarming to see everyone seated together and genuinely shared their passion and vision about ways to transcend the limitations society has place upon us. And eager participants, such as myself, could only relished and warmed up to the many inspirations and ideas that filled the room to the brim. ...

By Chloë Lai Photos: Noriko Nasu-Tidball     With delicate intensity, a young Japanese woman dips a bamboo ladle into a small black cauldron and raises it up again, the steam from the near-boiling water she has collected curling softly as it vanishes. She pauses. A moment later, the ladle is being tipped into a tea bowl at a slight angle, the hot liquid streaming down its inner curve until it finds the bottom. She lays the ladle, called a hishaku, across the top of the black pot, and reaches for the chazen, a short-handled whisk also made of bamboo. Its slender legs are splayed slightly outward from the handle, their tips curled in toward the tightly bundled limbs gathered at the centre. She lowers the chazen into the bowl and raises it, keeping it perfectly horizontal. She pauses. Repeats the action. Pauses. The third time, the chazen is suddenly vertical, whipping the water first in tiny circles, then in one larger, more sweeping motion that encompasses the entire interior space of the vessel, the movements so controlled that the wide sleeve of her kimono barely rustles. She places the whisk on the table, picks up the tea bowl and without hesitation pours it out and begins to wipe the bowl dry with a white linen cloth.   I exhale sharply, realizing that what I had assumed was the matcha blending was instead the most contemplative bowl washing that I could ever have imagined.   It is the Kerrisdale Community Centre’s first Sakura Festival, and the Japanese tea ceremony demonstration by the Urasenke Tankokai Vancouver Association has just taught me my first lesson in chanoyu, the way of tea: each step of the ceremony is a ceremony in itself.   From the placement of the...

By Sean Yoon Photos: Noriko Nasu-Tidball   On May 4th, I met with two SFU graduates, Joe Bickson and Kevin Kimoto, are founders of a zero-waste initiative called Uproot. Uproot was founded in January 2015 and by working along with three other team members: Dayna Stein, Natradee Quek, and Danielle Vallee, the initiative essentially seeks to divert 100% of Vancouver’s wood waste from the landfill, appropriating the material instead into sustainable and useful products. Significantly, the project has already produced remarkable results, having diverted over 12 tonnes of wood waste from the landfill.   First of all, Kevin and Joe recall the crucial state of mind which marked the beginning of their journey towards the founding of Uproot: “I’m not sure what the origin of this is, but we’re both very passionate about waste and the environment. I think it’s just a part of our generation, which is understanding that we need to live on this planet more sustainably. So we began with this context of, okay we want to help our environment, we like to participate socially in Vancouver and we’ve found this need which is diverting wood waste from the landfill. There’s too much wood in the landfill, what do we do about it.”   Thus with a forerunning passion towards waste and sustainability, Kevin and Joe had formed a team through a minor program at SFU called “A Semester in Dialogue” in 2014, which initiated their shareable neighbourhood project done through an innovation hub inside City Hall called CityStudio. The shareable neighbourhood project aimed to connect neighbours and reduce waste through the production of a recreational sharing library, allowing for the sharing of recreational items, such as sports equipment. The search for wood waste to construct this library began locally for...

By Ellen McLaren Photos: Noriko Nasu-Tidball & courtesy of the SWIS program   School is hard and, adds Janet Chung, it’s even harder when nothing is in your native language. The difficulties that students face are made that much more apparent when paired with language barriers. As a representative of VSB SWIS Program Byng Project 3B (Settlement Workers In Schools) in Lord Byng Secondary, Janet is one of the many Vancouver Settlement Workers  committed to overcoming these challenges and integrating new immigrant families into their Canadian schools and communities. I first met Janet at the Kerrisdale Community Center’s Cherry Blossom Festival, and have since had the chance to talk with her several times about Project 3B (short for Bridge, Bond, and Build), a school-based integration program founded in 2008. In a quick overview, she explained that each year, 3B develops a specific aim for the program. In past years, these have been mainly community oriented, working mostly within Vancouver. However, as 3B has now expanded beyond 200 registered members, in 2015, Janet raised the stakes, partnering with UNICEF Newcomer Youth Ambassador Project: fundraiser for School In a Box Program (a.k.a., School in a Box).  School in a Box operates on the idea that schooling should remain as consistent as possible in crisis-struck areas; each box costs $240 to fund, and can provide support to up to forty students. Since this January, Janet and the students and parents of Project 3B have been throwing a variety of events and engaging in different communities to raise money for this program, and are currently at a whopping $10,000. In the process of doing so, Project 3B students and their parents, many of them only recently arrived in Canada, have not only tackled the issue of providing education to children in need but have also demonstrated...

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