Hub Community Gallery + Gather⋮Place + Off-Site Events
SHIFTING CURRENTS — COMMUNITY ACTIVATIONS
GATHER⋮PLACE and the Hub Community Gallery at CVAG are set aside as fluid spaces for Art | Activism | Education — artwork + make stations + activations + creative research — are opportunities that engage community to participate in RETURN TO WATER 2024.
Art-based installations + events shift the way in which we all consider water and how we engage with it. Thoughtful, playful, and experimental offerings instigate rethinking our current relationship with the Comox Valley Watershed.
DROP-IN INTERACTIVE ZONES
Make Art Stations | Self-guided | All-ages – Like small tidal pools, CVAG’s drop-in interactive stations invite the community to explore and participate by offering creative responses that reflect the past, assert the present, and envision a future that holds a restored healthy relationship with our watery world.
Watercolour | Sketch | Wordsmith – Express something about your favourite watery place.
Compose a Love Letter to the Water – Dissolve your words into the small pool.
Water Samples | Water Stories – Add to the accumulating Repository of Water by contributing a sample from a special watery spot.
CVAG YOUTH MEDIA PROJECT
Poignant explorations and cultural perspectives address the history and consequences of colonizer misuse of water. The presented videos were created by emerging young filmmakers Emma Joye Frank Year, Towustasin Stocker, Maddison Thomas, and Poppy E Duff during their time as CVAG Youth Media Project participants. Youth Media Project uses digital media, creative facilitation, and artistic collaboration as a framework for youth to create media for community action.
“The Comox Valley Art Gallery’s Youth Media Project uplifts emerging creative change-makers and story-tellers. It is an inclusive space where contemporary issues can be examined and where participants can make and share meaningful media.” – Team Leader Krista Tupper.
CVRD CONNECTED BY WATER
Story-telling + presentations + site-specific activations engage individuals of all ages in deep listening and dynamic conversations about caring for our watershed. The program is delivered by environmental educator and facilitator Tina Willard Stepan and interdisciplinary community engagement facilitator Meaghan Cursons.
Connected By Water is a program of the Comox Valley Regional District (CVRD) designed to build capacity, community and connection to support drinking water and watershed protection efforts. Through exploring the natural, indigenous and settler history of the Comox Lake watershed, human impacts, ecosystem health and climate change scenarios, the Connected By Water team engages residents and visitors in the story of our watershed: how it works, how we have and continue to change it, and how we can ensure its health and climate resilience for future generations.
The Connected By Water program includes K-12 curriculum resources, community workshops, water and land based tours, presentations and interdisciplinary projects that help our community understand how we’re all “connected by water”.
SOURCE ENCOUNTERS IN THE COMOX LAKE WATERSHED
Free | Public Community Event
Wednesday, May 22 at 5PM at the Comox Valley Art Gallery
GP VANIER SECONDARY – ASPIRE TO ACTION
Water Walk + Water Webs – social art practices and activism of Grade 11 + 12 students guided by educators Kristie Keyworth + David Merrick raise awareness about water politics + issues.
The Aspire to Action program is a unique opportunity for highly motivated senior students to pursue the traditional academic requirements in an integrated and blended studies program that combines academics with experiential learning in the community. Empathy, compassion, connection, and volunteerism are at the heart of this program. Students engage in service learning, experiential learning, and create awareness campaigns that seek to educate others. This program requires students to think critically and empathetically. It also involves students working in a team atmosphere while learning in the classroom and on the land.
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” – Anne Frank
GP Vanier Secondary School – Aspire to Action
HAND-IN-HAND NATURE EDUCATION
Wishes for Fishes – Off-site activations + on-site installations by the community’s youngest citizens express their thoughts and feelings about water in their “Outdoor Classrooms”.
Hand-In-Hand Nature Education is an outdoor educational program located in the Comox Valley and Campbell River that is designed to offer a unique learning experience for children. Programs are facilitated by Nature Educators (most of whom have either an ECE, ECEA and/or B.Ed).
CURATING CLEANER WATERS
Ongoing Creative Research + Development Incubator – The explorations in shadow puppetry and video storytelling of Jamie Black, Kat Radford, and Megan Moon give voice to the creatures that inhabit local waters.
“Stepping into the crafting studio, be prepared to move in front of or behind the screen, make improvised sounds, song, and magical being-like narration into the microphones or craft visual art on the overhead projector. Through delight and humour, we crack open the issue of plastics and garbage in our oceans, narrating from the perspective of “tiny ones” — beings that are trying to get our attention, and are doing something, even though they have no idea what to do or how.” – Jamie Black
Curating Cleaner Waters, an initiative started in January 2022, is currently inviting professional and amateur artists, musicians, storytellers, and movement artists to bring their creative selves in. During RETURN TO WATER 2024, opportunities for public participation will be announced on CVAG’s social media platforms and website.
Wild Craft Play – Curating Cleaner Waters
ROBERT MOON
Remembering Robert Moon – Early print works are meditations that express the artist’s love of water.
Robert lived many decades in the Comox Valley where he continued his art practice. He was a faithful supporter of the gallery from its inception until his passing. He received the Nonny Milne Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts in 2019.
“…If you are old and gray and you are still searching for beauty and making art then you are a successful artist.” – Robert Moon recalling a speech given when he graduated with his MFA in 1970
