Curtain Razors Theatre

Solo Performance Mix Tour

Project Role: PR + Administration

 

Curtain Razors is a Regina based organization that has been creating, producing, and presenting new Canadian theatre for the past twenty years, collaborating with organizations and individual artists to create new ways of telling stories.

 

Special by Kelley Jo Burke is a creative non-fiction performance piece about families, and autism written and performed by Burke and directed and staged by Michele Sereda. Kelley Jo Burke’s performance documentary is a remarkably candid, humorous, and raw journey through the early years with a child with atypical autism.

Navigating is a performance/installation that draws from a trip taken to Ukraine in 2006 shortly after the orange revolution. Navigating was created and is performed by Michele Sereda and directed by Kelly Handerek. Material was collected, by Sereda, in the form of photography, audio journaling, and video during a three-week period (May 2006) on the east side in the country’s largest industrial centre, Dnipropretrovsk. A year later a performance template and script emerged centering on the ideas of memory, identity, and deep ancestry.

 

For more information, visit our Facebook Fan Page.

 

 

 

 

The Eight Track Gallery

The Saskatchewan Cultural Exchange Society

Project Role: Programmer

 

The Eight Track, located in Regina at the corner of 8th Ave. and the railroad tracks, is housed within the Art Room/Club of the Saskatchewan Cultural Exchange Society. It is an artist-led gallery committed to nurturing emerging contemporary visual art and its artists. Curatorial decisions are framed by an artistic direction that supports presentation of work by artists, in a non-institutional space to encourage and support a wide range of artists’ projects. The Eight Track will focus on support of emerging artists and the dissemination of their work.

 

Current exhibition:  Eliza Fry : Family Album
August 28 - October 23, 2009

 

 

 

Prairietimes and Pickup Lines

Broadview High School

ArtsSmart - Saskatchewan Arts Board

Project Role: Artist (photography)


 

Broadview, SK had been awarded a 2009 ArtsSmarts Grant for an arts exchange between Halifax West High School and Broadview High School. The SK Arts Board asked the community to create a documentary of our first ever exchange at both ends of the journey. This documentary will be used to explain the project at next years Arts Exchange with other Arts Boards across Canada.

 

Broadview has a very small 130 student K-12 school with a significant First Nations population from nearby Cowessess Reserve in the Qu'Appelle Valley. The students from Halifax attend Halifax West High School, the largest gr. 10-12 school in NS. Their school has 93 different culturesand the largest language group speaks Arabic. This school was chosen, because of its African Canadian studies program, that seemed to correspond to our Native studies.

 

Including myself, there were four other artists included in this project: Rod MacIntyre (writer); Michele Sereda (drama), Brad Bellegarde (hip hop/rap) and Josh Goff (graffiti artist). Each morning, over a week, the students were divided into small groups (mixing the SK and NS students) to work on an arts session with each artist.   The afternoons included events and field trips which explored the history of Saskatchewan and the differenced/similarities of the two provices.  The accumulation of the project included a community gathering where the projects and performance which the students created were showcased to the whole community

 

 

 About ArtsSmarts:

  • ignites young people's excitement about learning core curricula through the arts.

  • inspires collaboration among artists, and educators, schools and communities.

  • invests financially and strategically in creative learning networks at the local, regional, provincial and national level to build capacity for arts and education.

  • supports a new vision for public education in Canada.

ArtsSmarts Saskatchewan offers arts and education grants of up to $7,500 to schools, artists and community partnerships for innovative projects in any art form that bring K-12 students and professional artists together. This program is offered through a partnership among the Saskatchewan Arts Board, Saskatchewan Ministry of Education and SaskCulture.  Saskatchewan Arts Board

 

Thursday Night Live!

MacKenzie Art Gallery, 2009

Position: Gallery Educator of Community Programs

Project Role: Event Coordinator

 

“Projections Thursday Night Live! program was put on in partnership with the Saskatchewan Cultural Exchange Society, the Saskatchewan Filmpool Co-operative and the Interactive Media and Performance Labs in the Fine Arts Department at the University of Regina.

 

Projections Thursday Night Live! featured live performances by local bands Rah Rah and Library Voices and Saskatoon band We Were Lovers, and an interactive presentation by participants from the IMP Labs, a Projections inspired photo studio with the Filmpool, free snacks, a limited-edition series of Rah Rah and MacKenzie pins and a cash bar.” MacKenzie Art Gallery

 

 

 

 

 

Common Circles: Addressing Violence Through Arts

Common Weal Community Arts, 2008

Position: Artistic Director

Role: Project Coordinator


“During the summer of 2008, Common Weal hosted the Common Circles project at the Albert Scott Community Center. This project invited multi-cultural organizations, community members and various artists to explore the issues related to violence against women and families. The project artistically explored the ideas behind the four areas of the Medicine Wheel, Circle of Courage and the Perceptual Control Therapy, which include: independence, generosity, belonging and self power. Through these workshops, the outcomes and learning experiences were brought together to create a VISUAL resource manual for schools, organizations, victims, and others. The purpose being, to visually empower, educate and bring awareness to the prevalent issue of women, violence, and multi culturalism.

 

The overall objective of the Common Circles project was to bring awareness to the prevalent issues concerning violence and abuse, while providing an outlet for participants to use their creativity as a new “voice”. To do this, our objectives were to create a safe environment, encourage the process of creativity and culture, encourage relationship building and provide informational resources and links for the projects participants and partners. The final project objective was to create a resource toolkit, which would allow the objectives and message of anti-violence to grow and carry on to a new audience.” Common Weal Community Arts

 

 

Dewdney Avenue Project

Common Weal Community Arts, 2008

Position: Artistic Director

Role: Project Coordinator

 

"The Dewdney Avenue Project (2007-2008), a Common Weal Community Arts initiative, was a multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary art project that engaged individuals and organizations housed within the neighborhood of North Central Regina in discussion and interaction around notions of site, circumstance and voice, in relation to the history of the geographical space now known as the city of Regina. We chose Dewdney Avenue as a starting and focal point for the project because of its geographic, social, economic and historical significance within the city of Regina.

 

Government House, the original Territorial government building and the local detachment of the RCMP and national training centre are on Dewdney Avenue, as is a significant portion of North Central Regina, recently deemed “Canada’s Worst Neighbourhood” by Maclean’s Magazine. Bordered by the CN and CP railways, and major arteries including Albert Street, the Lewvan and Dewdney Avenue, the neighbourhood of North Central provides our community with a set of unique challenges, experiences and personal and collective histories.

For the Dewdney Avenue Project, there were multiple streams of programming – video, audio, visual, voice, and interdisciplinary. Community partners for the entire project included the South Saskatchewan Independent Living Centre, the North Central Community Association, Neutral Ground, Soil Digital Media Suite, Women of the Dawn, Scott Collegiate, and the Saskatchewan Cultural Exchange Society.” Common Weal Community Arts

 

 

 

 

Creative Voice

Common Weal Community Arts, 2008

Position: Artistic Director

Role: Project Coordinator


"Offered as an extension of the CP Salon theatre performance Tour and Voice Workshop, this eight-week workshop was for participants with disabilities and without disabilities, and any one who already views or is interested in incorporating creativity through voice and expression as a profound part of their artistic and community practices. These workshops were presented by Traci Foster, and in collaboration with the Saskatchewan Independent Living Centre.


The workshops were geared to:
- Performing artists with disability emerging and experienced
- Non-disabled performers -with an interest in voice, creative collaboration, disability arts and disability culture.
- Non-performers with or without disabilities who will benefit from the work in relation to their vocational, professional or personal needs.

The sessions focused on:
- Voice as a lead impulse and instrument of creative development and expression
- Mask work, to cultivate a personal mythology, which will lead to character development, story development and performance
- Story telling, singing, and sounding
- Improvisation that allows for different levels of experience to co-exist and be shared
- Development of stories and narratives through song, sound, and vocal expression." Common Weal Community Arts

 

 

 

Roast + Roundup

Al Ritchie Community Association, 2007

Position: Artist in Residence

Role: Event Coordinator, Manager and Administrator


 

 

Artsreach

Al Ritchie Community Associations, 2006-2007

Position: Artist in Residence

Role: Event Coordinator, Manager and Administrator