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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Dear Readers, Where does time go? That’s what I feel nowadays. My 10 year-old daughter often recites lines from her favourite movie, Spy Kids: “No one notices time until it’s gone!”, and then goes on, “If kids are feeling this way, then adults must feel even more!”   Sometimes we don’t appreciate what we have until it’s gone. As such, let’s embrace the moment and enjoy springtime!  Many lovely events in the community are happening this month! This April is packed with exciting events and news. First of all, Kerrisdale IS the hottest destination in Vancouver, it seems, according to the Courier’s Stars of Vancouver Readers’ Choice Awards. See all the winners!!   –  Kerrisdale Community Centre has been voted #1 Community Centre  – Kerrisdale Village Farmers Market has voted #1 Farmers Market   –  Kerrisdale Days has been voted #2 Street Festival in Vancouver – Kerrisdale Village has been voted #2 Neighbourhood in Vancouver – Moore’s Bakery & Delicatessen (only in Kerrisdale) has been voted #1 Bakery – Faubourg (in Kerrisdale and elsewhere) has been voted #1 Dessert – Ajisai Sushi Bar (only in Kerrisdale) has been voted #1 Sushi Restaurant – my favourite sushi place;) – Bean Brothers Cafe (only in Kerrisdale) has been voted #2 Sandwich Place – Yes we often cater yummy sandwiches from them!   – The Kerrisdale Lumber Co. Ltd (only in Kerrisdale) has been voted #1 Hardware Store – Legato Tea & Coffee (only in Kerrisdale) has been voted #1 Coffee Shop, followed by Starbucks and JJ bean! I would like to congratulate to all of our area’s hardworking and innovative local businesses and people behind the scenes! Thank you for making Kerrisdale so vibrant and livable each and every day!  Secondly, our 1st Cherry Blossom Festival in Kerrisdale is coming up on Sunday April 26th!! This is what Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival...

Building Intergenerational Connections Through Creativity and Culture...