making room

Last month, twelve members traveled to the Mabelle community in Central Etobicoke in order to take part in the MABELLEarts presentation of “A Tethered Heart.” We made the wooden boat that appears in some of these images. The boat made its first appearance in the Jumblies’ Theatre production of “Like An Old Tale” in Scarborough. All photos by Katherine Fleitas.

Over the past three weeks, Sisi Chen joined us as part of her internship with Jumblies Theatre. As well as spending time with us, Sisi worked with our sister organizations the Community Arts Guild, Arts4All and visited MABELLEarts to sit by the bonfire and celebrate the recent parade. While at PARC, Sisi has helped us build our canoe, make books, helped us with some desktop design, web design and taught us ballroom dance.

We will miss her when Sisi returns to Kingston to complete her undergraduate degree in teaching.

Last Friday, Noah Kenneally presented the first Jumblies Seminars of the year, presented by the Jumblies Studio and Making Room. To a packed room of 25 PARC members and friends, Noah described his recent trip to Inukjuak, Nunavik as coordinator of the Innalik Mask and Puppet Project. Using masks, puppets and other visual theatre elements, the children of Innalik Public School told stories about their own experiences, their ideas and their community.

Noah described how he brought together his experiences as a community artist with that of a children’s educator in his work there. He was honest and frank about the challenges of having flying into a remote community and completing a community arts project over a very short amount of time (and spending a part of that time looking throughout the community for bins of art materials). Noah talked also about struggling with the reality of himself as someone from the South who has come to the community on several occasions only to leave again.

“This is part of our country” Noah reminded the audience.

John Rogers is from what used to be called Frobisher Bay, in the Southeast corner of Baffin Island but has not visited for many years. John enjoyed hearing stories from his part of the world but was bothered by many of the changes in the way of life of those living in the far north.

Noah’s trip was coordinated by Solo Chicken Productions, led by Lisa Anne Ross, who has coordinated the Nunavik Theatre Arts Program in Northern Quebec for nine years, working in schools in remote inuit villages to develop community arts projects.

Upper Toronto Consultation
Tuesday, February 7 at 7PM at the
Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre
1499 Queen Street West
Free (with snacks)

When I look over the urban landscape, it is hard not to feel helmed in at every corner. While I see exciting, inspiring endeavors that open up possibilities in the way we eat, we live, move around the city and get the other things we need, I also seem these same gestures being limited by bureaucracies, fear and laziness.

What if we all started over? What if we had the opportunity to move all of Toronto directly upwards into the sky? This is the questions raised by Upper Toronto. And they are coming to Parkdale on February 7 and are being hosted by Making Room and the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre at 1499 Queen St. W.

Join the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre
and Small Wooden Shoe in
Imagining Toronto’s better future.

What kind of city would you want to live in, if we could make a city from scratch?

Upper Toronto starts with a terrible idea. We want to build a new city in the sky above the current Toronto.

It’s a terrible idea that allows us to ask what would happen if, knowing what we now know, we could start fresh.

We are meeting with people from all across Toronto to ask them about the city that they live in now. What do you love about it? What do you hate about it? What would you change?

Spend an evening with other people from your community and help us dream of a better city for everyone.

WHAT TO EXPECT
Expect a quick introduction to the ideas that drive Upper Toronto. Expect guided brainstorming and playful design work. Expect time to think about city planning with a freedom and depth rarely permitted to even the experts. Expect to laugh. Expect to examine your own ideas about what’s most important in city life.
By opening this process to people across Toronto we hope to learn about your civic dreams and imaginations while giving you an experience of civic engagement and the challenges of planning.

WHO WE ARE
Small Wooden Shoe is an award winning arts company that uses current and effective consultation practices, mixed with our own innovative and idiosyncratic performance style. We bring experience with conferences, unconferences, keynote presentations, debating workshops, online collaboration, and 10 years of events in which groups come together to make the world a more interesting and engaged place. We are bent on proving that good ideas are entertaining and that pleasure and thinking require each other.

We concluded our very busy week yesterday with a visit from Laura Hale, a prop-maker and designer working on the Jumblies’ production of Like an Old Tale “a Scarborough telling of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s tale”. Laura has been helping us build a large ship that will be a prop for the production.

Earlier in the week, we had a visit from seven media arts students from Rexdale. We had a very nice visit, comparing living in Rexdale to Parkdale. Thanks to Glenn, from the PARC Ambassador program, for joining us to talk about PARC and for talking so candidly about his own experience.

After some time for introductions and meditation, we all went down to the lake to bring back sticks for the showboat. While collecting sticks, we came across a rose coloured memory bike that told a story about that place. This led to other stories about the area. Things I had not known before. We also hatched some ideas for future projects. What a wonderful morning! Stay tuned here for a report from the students themselves.

A few weeks ago, while working on seats for the raft, John, Ash and Josh realized that they could make very comfortable seats out of inner tubes! Last week, Josh and a few others made a three person bench in this way. Unbelievably comfortable!

Today we finally began working on the chairs. A few weeks ago we collected images that reflected the experience of being held and comforted and last week we went to the Value Village in order to find material that reflected those words

Meeting in a small hallway in the basement of PARC, we found ourselves in the strangest location yet! But after a brief check-in and introductions to new people, we quickly made the space our own. With material that we found at the Value Village, goods we foraged from around Parkdale and a wood donated by Joshua, we had much to work from.

We broke into three teams and before long, we had the basic form of benches that all had their own personality. Angela and Alice worked on their “boob chair”, my group worked on our “nest” while Joshua’s team built an industrial arm chair, complete with wooden appendages and rubber tubes that were transformed into the most comfortable seat.

Because the food bank was taking place next door, we had lots of people walking by and admiring our work in progress, a number of whom who stopped by to lend a hand.

Thanks to all who helped out today, it was a really great time. I look forward to seeing how the chairs take shape next week.