Design your pole

Photos by Liz Rubincam

Design and Stencil Making Workshop

Tuesday, May 22nd from 6:00pm – 8:00pm

NOTE: Date changed from Saturday, May 19th to Tuesday, May 22nd due to long weekend

Fernwood Community Centre (1240 Gladstone Avenue)

Emily Grav of the Paint Box School of Art will be hosting a Design and Stencil Making Workshop on May 22nd from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Fernwood Community Centre. She will teach you how to get the creative juices flowing and make a stencil for your pole. It’s free and you can pick up your Pole Painting Kit at the workshop. People of all artistic abilities are encouraged to come. This year, there will not be any pre-made stencils provided, so this is a great opportunity to create your own.

Fernwoodians, paint your poles!

The Great Fernfood Scavenger Hunt

Fernwood NRG is calling on all of you to become detectives!

The importance of local organic food is well known these days; urban agriculture is popping up all over. Many people in cities have started to raise chickens and grow produce in all kinds of spaces! We want to see what great urban agriculture initiatives we have happening in our little neighborhood.

What better way then to host a SCAVENGER HUNT. Here’s how it works…

• You (and your team) must take a photo of each of the 9 topics listed below. Be creative.
• Submit your entry to scavengerhunt@fernwoodnrg.ca by midnight, Wednesday May 16th, 2012
• You will be entered to win a $50 Gift Certificate to the Cornerstone Cafe! & your images could get published in the June 2012 issue of the Village Vibe
  

Rules: One entry per person or team. You must find and take a photo of all nine items above to qualify for the prizes. All of the photos must be taken in Fernwood. All of the photos must have a description attached saying when and where the photo was taken (this is to ensure the photos are legitimate photos from Fernwood). Please ask people’s permission before taking their picture or a picture of their property. Please don’t harass people if they won’t let you take a picture. Please don’t break any laws in order to take a picture. This is supposed to be fun—let’s keep it fun for everyone. Once submitted, all photos become property of Fernwood NRG and may be reproduced (with attribution).

Contest Entry: You must submit your completed entry by midnight, Wednesday May 16th, 2012 either physically at Fernwood NRG’s office at 1313 Gladstone Avenue or by email at scavengerhunt@fernwoodnrg.ca. If you’re submitting by email, please keep the file sizes of the photos small so that it all comes through. Along with the nine photos, please include a brief description of each photo stating what the photo is, when it was taken, and where it was taken. Also, please include your name or your team name and provide a contact email address and telephone number.

Prizes: All completed entries submitted by the entry deadline will be entered into a draw for a $50 Cornerstone Café Gift Card. The best entry (most beautiful, fun, creative, interesting, etc.) will also receive a $50 Cornerstone Café Gift Card and will be printed in the June edition of the Village Vibe. (In order to print the photos, we will need either originals or high resolution image files). Incomplete entries will not be eligible for a prize.

Happy hunting!

Belonging Victoria Homelessness Summit

Greetings!

Join Belonging Victoria on April 21st for an afternoon of community building, connection and workshop in preparation for Belonging: A Victoria Youth Homelessness Summit in October, 2012.  We will be sharing information on our initiative and then creatively making use of our time by collectively participating in a World Café session lead by local youth empowerment leader Mike Sheehan, owner of Beatboard Education and Training.  What’s a World Café you ask. Great question.

The World Café is a powerful method for bringing people together for lively conversations around questions that matter.  In the World Café, “there is an idea that when people gather and are engaged in an issue or question that they care about, in an authentic, open-hearted and open-minded way, that collective wisdom emerges.” (Samantha Tan)

“…the simple idea on which the World Café was founded: powerful questions that really matter; cross-pollinating ideas in an informal environment, a natural environment…When you get more lenses, or more perspectives on the whole, a greater intelligence can reveal itself, so as the conversation unfolds it goes deeper and deeper and deeper towards the essence of what’s really important for the group.” 

        -Juanaita Brown, World Café co-founder

We will be focusing on what makes a healthy community, specific planning and visioning for the upcoming community summit in October and questions about how to address youth homelessness from the ground, as a community of empowered citizens.

“Using seven design principles and a simple method, the World Café is a powerful social technology for engaging people in conversations that matter, offering an effective antidote to the fast-paced fragmentation and lack of connection in today’s world.

Based on the understanding that conversation is the core process that drives personal, business, and organizational life, the World Café is more than a method, a process, or technique – it’s a way of thinking and being together sourced in a philosophy of conversational leadership.” (http://www.theworldcafe.com/about.html)

Event Schedule

For more information on Belonging Victoria visit www.BelongingVictoria.com

To connect with us on Facebook visit www.facebook.com/BelongingVictoria

 Coffee, tea and snacks provided

Blossoms at Springridge Common

Springridge Common is showing signs of Spring…

Crocus

Red Flowering Currant

Purple Sprouting Broccoli

Damson Plum Blossoms

Indian Plum

Last Class of Fernwood University

March 27th, 2012 at 7:30pm

Lesson 4 (rescheduled): Economic Power to the People: How to create and support neighbourhood employment.

Speaker – Rob Wipond, Focus magazine

Rob Wipond is a community issues journalist for Focus magazine, and has frequently done research into and written about local and regional economic and business development. He also co-wrote the Consensus Statement on Victoria’s Economic Development Strategy, co-founded the Metro Victoria Community Economy Group, sits on the steering committee for the Community Social Planning Council’s Community Investment Fund initiative, and organizes actions with the Transition Victoria Economy Working Group.

This talk will explore the large gap between our collective, innovative community visions for environmentally sustainable urban development and our comparable lack of vision for similar kinds of economic changes. It will trace the history of the most recent local Official Community Plan and Economic Strategy processes, and look at some the creative, inspiring alternatives that are emerging here out of the worldwide Community Economic Development movement.

Link Recommendations:

1. Metro Victoria Community Economy Group Initiative, communityeconomy.ca
2. Community Social Planning Council, Community Investment Fund Project

Thanks to all the student who attended, listened, learned, and took part in these great neighbourhood discussions. You are now truly alumni of FU.

PODCAST are available for all to listen to here.

Specials at the Yoga Den

Lola and Rachel are offering some AMAZING deals right now. Be sure to take advantage of these grand opening specials.

Phone: (250) 590-4664

Email: hello@fernwoodyogaden.com

www.fernwoodyogaden.com

Nominated for M Awards!

We are very proud to announce that the neighbourhood of Fernwood & Fernwood NRG have been nominated in two categories in Monday Magazine’s Annual M Awards. Both the Fernwood Pole Painting Project (a.k.a. ‘Soul Poles’) and Fernwood Bites have been chosen as top 5 in their respective categories (Favorite Art Event & Favorite Foodie Event).

Fernwood Pole Painting Project on May 28, 2011. Photo: Liz Rubincam.

Both these events were such a success because of the wonderful, creative, amazing people of Fernwood and beyond! They demonstrate how a community working together can create something much greater than individuals working alone. Thanks to all the amazing volunteers and attendees who participated in both these events.

“Average people and the average community can change the world. You can do it just based on common sense, determination, persistence and patience.”

- Lois Gibbs

Fernwood Bites on June 26th, 2011. Photo: Willie Li.

VOTE! at www.surveymonkey.com/s/mawards or pick up a paper copy of Monday Mag and fill out the ballot.

Deadline is March 23rd, 2012 at 5pm

Pssst… If you vote, you are entered into a draw for a pass to the gala on April 24th, at Club 9One9 emceed by Wes Borg.

Two Weeks of Wonder: SPARK Festival

>> Mark Dusseault

Three years ago the Belfry transformed its March programming when it introduced its annual SPARK Festival. Prior to SPARK the company presented three shows in its Studio space over six weeks, and while the work was first-rate, the programming lacked focus and a community feel.

All that changed in 2009 when the Belfry compressed the festival into just two weeks, doubled the number of shows, added dozens of free events and reached out to local artists.

SPARK is broken up into five components: big shows, miniplays, new play readings, professional development workshops and one big party right in the middle of the event.

The festival will kick off on Monday, March 12 with a free new play reading of My Memory’s Not So Good by Matthew Payne from Victoria’s Theatre SKAM. Inspired by the late great arts maven Joan Mans (she was a character), Matthew and a group of Victoria artists recently spent a week in Banff developing the script for a future production.

The first week’s big shows, Goodness and Kitt & Jane, will start on Tuesday, March 13. Goodness, from Toronto’s Volcano, has played Edinburgh, New York and Rwanda, stunning audiences at each theatre. While the play examines genocide through a series of concentric stories enveloping each other, we are never told where the genocide has occurred, leaving us all to question what we believe. Goodness is about what happens in the gaps between experiencing, telling and hearing. If you are interested in social justice issues, Goodness is sure to challenge and engage you in ways you never thought theatre could.

Creators from Victoria’s SNAFU Dance Theatre, Ingrid Hansen, Kathleen Greenfield and Rod Peter Jr. will premiere their latest work, Kitt & Jane. Kitt & Jane is the Belfry’s 2012 Incubator project; every two years we commission local artists to develop and produce a new piece for SPARK.

SNAFU’s work has been described as fresh and daring, provocative and engaging —and, at times, wonderfully silly. Kitt & Jane is an unofficial sequel to Little Orange Man, their sold-out hit at the Vancouver and Victoria International Fringe Festivals this year.

While SNAFU’s work is inspired by a radical collection of ideas. It includes Viewpoints, a creation practice that provides a vocabulary for thinking about and acting upon movement and gesture; Butoh, a Japanese avant garde performance art; as well as found-object puppetry, clown, ritual, fables, politics, children, history, and lore. It is always surprising and delightful.

Each Wednesday through Saturday, prior to these big shows, we’ll present a series of free miniplays. These quirky pieces, performed throughout the Belfry will feature new work from local artists Missie Peters, Dave Morris, Krystal Cook, Theatre Inconnu and, in a unique collaboration with Judd Palmer from Calgary’s Old Trout Puppet Workshop, Puente Theatre.

Miniplays run each night at 7:20 and 7:40 pm. While they are free, attendance is first come, first served. Trust us, you’ll need to be there early as capacity is limited; last year we had a show in a closet with one actor and one audience member. You could see a musical in a washroom, a dance piece on the roof or a comic monologue in an office.

For the past eighteen months, the Belfry has been working on a new play, now titled Home is a Beautiful Word, about homelessness in Victoria. On Monday and Tuesday (March 19 & 20), we’ll give this play its first public reading. Home is a Beautiful Word is a piece of verbatim theatre; the script is created entirely from transcribed interviews that playwright/journalist Joel Bernbaum has had with a wide spectrum of people from Victoria. It’s the community’s voice on stage and the story is fascinating. We would love to have you there to hear what others have said and to hear your thoughts about the play.

The big shows in the second week of SPARK are Shane Koyczan’s When I Was A Kid and Fish Eyes by Anita Majumdar. You probably know Shane. He’s best known for the piece “We Are More,” which he performed at the 2010 Olympic Opening Ceremonies, but he was an established and well-respected artist long before that. 

Accompanied by his band, The Short Story Long, Shane explores what it means to grow up – what we learn, what we forget, what we gain and what we give up. When I Was A Kid is a quest to rediscover our silliness and to embrace our wonder, to let go of our fear and spark our imaginations. You only have to hear Shane Koyczan once to be hooked. He is humane, furious, sexy, political, tragic and so funny you’ll be laughing through your tears.

Anita Majumdar will just have you laughing. Her piece, Fish Eyes, complete with Bollywood dance moves, tackles imperialism and cultural misappropriation, with a sly nod as she struggles to find herself and her cultural identity. This comedic “east meets west” story celebrates the joy of youth and heritage.

The second week of SPARK will also feature a new round of free miniplays and Belfry 101 Live. Belfry 101 is our program for local high school students (public, private and home schooled) from around Greater Victoria. Each Spring Break we throw these intrepid students into a rehearsal hall with a huge mission – to write, create, rehearse and mount a new show in just one week. The results are always astounding. We have been running Belfry 101 for over ten years now and it has been very satisfying. We have had graduates tour the country with their own shows and this year former student Rod Peters Jr. has a show, Kitt & Jane, in SPARK.

There will be much more happening at the Belfry during these two wonderful weeks – much of it free. Tickets, on sale now, are $20 for the big shows. If you are a University or College student you get $5 off; if you’re in high school you’ll get $10 off.

www.sparkfestival.ca

International Women’s Day

You’re invited to join Denise Savoie for a Celebration of International Women’s Day! March 11, 1:00-3:00 p.m. at The Belfry Theatre – please RSVP to 250-363-3600.

I Love Local Food! at Uvic

On Thursday, March 15^th, the UVic Sustainability Projects (UVSP) will host the I Love Local Food event in front of the fountain on campus, between 10:00am-2:00pm. Set aside a few minutes from your day to sample FREE locally crafted tea and organic apples, and learn the facts about food security and waste management both on campus and on Vancouver Island.

Get informed about green projects that stemmed from the campus and are now branching out into the community. Chat with members from The Good Food Box, the FREE Meal Program, and The Pacific Mobile Depots (PMD). Campus Food Services and Waste Reduction will also be present to dish out the facts on current and future campus initiatives working to make UVic more sustainable. Representatives from the Capital Regional District (CRD) will attend the event to showcase their Growing Solutions campaign, which is an exemplary initiative focused on achieving Island food security in the face of climate change. Come get the know-how on simple steps that will help add to a healthier lifestyle.

Play quick interactive games and spin the huge CRD wheel to win sustainable swag. Take home prizes like seasonal seeds, $5 coupons for the PMD, fresh Good Food Boxes, and enter for a draw prize of a CRD Growing Solutions gardening kit, complete with soil and seeds!

Join the Facebook event page, I Love Local Food, and spread the word about this pioneer event.

UVSP invites you to visit us at the I Love Local Food event, and learn about how the campus and community are coming together to educate, act, and grow!