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Checklist for Hosting an Activity

September 27th, 2011 by Culture Days

Whether you are a first time activity organizer or you’re participating for the second year, Culture Days has created a checklist with suggestions to help you host your activity and maximize both your and your participants’ Culture Days experience!

Here are some things to keep in mind as you finalize preparations for your activity:

  • Everyone loves a friendly face! Your connection to participants begins by simply welcoming them to your activity, so don’t be shy! Introduce yourself and be sure to thank them for participating in your Culture Days activity. Who knows, this may be the beginning of a lovely friendship and/or collaboration!
  • Is the environment comfortable? If applicable, provide seating, ensure there is proper lighting in your space, accessible washroom facilities and, if you wish, refreshments!
  • The Culture Days weekend is a great opportunity to promote your artistic and cultural endeavors, so if you have promotional materials (i.e. business cards, flyers, signage…etc.) be sure to have some on hand.
  • Your activity is also a wonderful way to introduce your work to a new audience, so keep in touch! Have a notebook and pens on hand so people can sign up to receive more information from you via email about upcoming activities or events you may have lined up after the Culture Days weekend. Building a mailing list is a good way to stay connected with those interested in you and your practice or organization.
  • Is your activity location identifiable as a “Culture Days activity” ? Culture Days Bright Spots Venue Identifiers help ensure that the public will be able to find you! These FREE vinyl clings can be picked up at your local Sun Life Financial Center and are available everyday until September 29th, from 8:30am to 4:30pm, local time. Please consult the Culture Days blog to find the one closest to you!
  • Do you have volunteers or a team helping you host your activity? Be sure they are aware of the key messages you want to communicate. Messages such as: instructions on how to participate, your wish to connect with them after the Culture Days weekend or the promotion of an upcoming activity or event – or anything else you want to communicate.
  • Are you active on social media channels, like Facebook or Twitter? Social media is a great platform to build and maintain an interactive dialogue with the public. Tell participants that you’re on Twitter or Facebook and encourage them to follow or “like” you and don’t forget to connect with @CultureDays on Twitter and Facebook too!
  • Document or ask a friend to help capture your Culture Days experience by taking photos or shooting video of your activity. Don’t forget to upload and share your photos and videos via the Culture Days Flickr pool and YouTube channel! Be sure to submit high-quality photos to Flickr and allow for downloads and re-distribution on YouTube as your photos could be featured in a Culture Days ad in the Globe and Mail and your videos used in a 2011 video highlight reel! Be sure to include important information with your photo/video submissions such as the activity name, location, names of those captured in the images and photo credits. All this information can be included in the file name of your photo or with your video upload. Please contact Culture Days for more information if you are capturing photographs of minors.
  • Videos are a fun and innovative way to capture your Culture Days weekend! Check out the free, downloadable video bumpers available for all to use HERE. Once uploaded on YouTube, share the video URL with Culture Days via email, Twitter or Facebook, so it can be featured on the Culture Days YouTube channel!
  • Last, but not least; have FUN!
View Comments | Posted in Culture Days 2011, community organizers, for activity organizers, marketing & PR, seen, uncategorized, ways to get involved | Tags: , , ,

Join CBC LIVE A Kick Off to Culture Days on September 30th, 2011!

September 26th, 2011 by Culture Days

Whether you’re live in person outside the CBC Vancouver Broadcast Center or in the comfort of your home, join CBC for the kick-off to the 2nd annual Culture Days weekend! CBC LIVE will be connecting audiences coast to coast to coast to a star-studded lineup of CBC personalities and arts and culture events in a festival setting outside the CBC Vancouver Broadcast Centre on Hamilton, between Robson and Georgia. On Friday, September 30th, from 10am to 10pm, celebrate the art of broadcasting in all forms with an entire day of live events and broadcasts hosted by Jian Ghomeshi and a lineup of CBC personalities. This jam-packed Culture Days-themed day culminates in a live network TV music special. Midnight Music: A Concert For Culture Days will feature Stars, The New Pornographers, The Midway State and many surprise celebrity appearances, and will be broadcast live across the country at midnight and re-broadcasted on Saturday, October 1 at 12 noon.

Like the much-adored Hockey Day in Canada, CBC’s participation in Culture Days will provide Canadians with an opportunity to unite and celebrate their love of arts and culture. Culture Days is the largest-ever collective public participation campaign undertaken by the arts and cultural community in this country and CBC’s commitment not only includes the nationally broadcast CBC LIVE event, but the opportunity for Canadians to celebrate the art of broadcasting, in its many forms and in a variety of ways, at CBC Broadcast Centres across the country, with 75th Anniversary open houses taking place on Oct 1.

For more information about CBC LIVE – A Kick Off to Culture Days, please visit www.cbc.ca/live

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NRTEA Challenges Participants to Take Part in Culture Days

September 17th, 2011 by Culture Days

During the National Roundtable for Teacher Education in the Arts conference held in Spring 2011 at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, some 50 education professors, artists, arts administrators, teacher candidates, teachers and government officials from across Canada met to consider the best ways to provide effective instruction to teachers in the fine and performing arts.  A unique feature of the event was that many participants insisted that ideas be expressed through artistic creation.  Some did art-making, others created dance and music pieces and many performed improvised dramatic sketches. Interwoven into the dialogue, a hula hoop practice led by a PHd specialist in hula hoops and mixed with tap dancing lessons was also part of the overall experience.

An added challenge to all the participants at the conclusion of the discussion was for them to contribute something to the Culture Days weekend in their part of the country relating to some discovery or idea they leaned at the Roundtable. The Let’s Make Music Conference in Brantford ON, organized by NRTEA participant and Assistant Professor at Nipissing University Christina Grant, is one of these responses. During this Culture Days activity, a variety of free practical music education workshops will be offered to anyone with a love of music. Another response to the NRTEA’s challenge comes from the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB), which will showcase arts performances by elementary and secondary students with filmed highlights of various schools’ musical, dance and drama shows.

The following text is an excerpt from the NRTEA’s summary report. For the full report, click here.

For more information or to share your thoughts on the NRTEA’s initiatives, visit www.nrtea.ca or contact Michael Wilson: mpwilson@uottawa.ca.

Jumping through hoops for culture

NATIONAL ROUNDTABLE FOR TEACHER EDUCATION IN THE ARTS
MAY 25, 26, 2011
SUMMARY OF PARTICIPANT COMMENTS IN SMALL GROUP DISCUSSIONS

The National Roundtable on Teacher Education in the Arts, held on May 25 and 26 ,2011, at the National Arts Centre, in Ottawa,  heralded the first time that an invited group of 53 experts consisting of education professors, teachers, artists, education students (both pre-service and graduate), arts administrators, government officials, and school board consultants and superintendents, met to discuss critical issues in the process of teacher education.  The connecting question to arts advocacy in general was: – In order to have better quality arts programs in our schools, we need better educated teachers.

A unique feature of this event was the element of preparation by all participants that included the offering of a creatively decorated piece of material that might symbolize prior to the event, attitudes on teacher education in the arts.  Each submitted piece at the beginning and during the progress of the Roundtable, was added to a kind of garden of ideas that stimulated metaphoric images throughout the experience. The interweaving of vocal dialogue, mixed with arts experiences continued throughout. In the 2 day dialogue, small group discussions of 8 participants each, met to consider 4 major themes of teacher education: a) pre-service or initial teacher education  b) models of in-service education  c) the role of partnerships  d) the relationship of instructor and candidate. At each opportunity for reporting findings to the whole, narrative summary, dance response, improvisational sketch creation, soundscape atmospheres and visual renderings, were all employed by the reporting groups.  The resulting findings and crystallization of ideas for all participants, included both logical idea suggestions and metaphoric images that continue to resonate in a kind of dynamic symmetry that has promoted alternative meanings for everyone.

As a concluding challenge for each participant, we asked all to conceive of an innovative theory, practice or event that resulted in some way from the experiences of this Roundtable, that could be offered to a public forum as part of the national Culture Days celebrations, scheduled for September 30 – Oct. 2, 2011.

Topics covered during the Roundtable include:

1.THE PLACE OF THE ARTS IN AN OVERALL PROGRAM OF PRE-SERVICE TEACHER EDUCATION

Participants in this discussion group were asked to comment on delivery models,overall programs, the relative time for the arts in relation to the total program, the relationship to practica, degrees of integration, training for generalist candidates and pre-requisite issues for specialized candidates.

2. MODELS OF IN-SERVICE ARTS EDUCATION

Participants were asked to make observations about the situation of in-service training from their perspective, comment on insights that might have been sparked by their observations and recommend solutions or avenues for exploration on possible policies, procedures or models that could better in-service training in the arts.

3. THE ROLES AND CONTRIBUTIONS OF COMMUNITY, REGIONAL AND NATIONAL ARTS PARTNERS

Given the complexity and challenges of providing pre-service and in-service training in the arts for teachers and educators, it is important to explore and understand the diverse communities of partners and their possible contributions to the betterment, development and delivery of a variety of training programs. Many models exist and many more are being explored.

4. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INSTRUCTOR AND CANDIDATE

This question was not related to any particular sector of teacher education in the arts but pertained to all. Issues examined included instructor modeling; information vs experience; differences between excellence in teaching teachers compared to teaching in schools; unique characteristics of excellent teaching in arts teacher education; relationship of artistic excellence and pedagogical competence.

Full report here.

View Comments | Posted in Culture Days stories, Ontario, Results and impact, community organizers, role of arts and culture, uncategorized, ways to get involved | Tags: , , ,

My Invisible Library

September 15th, 2011 by SaskCulture

Below is a blog entry by Paul Wilson, an active Culture Days Animateur in Saskatchewan. Paul is a writer and publisher, and has been engaging the public through an exercise of creating an “Invisible Library”.


I’ve been writing poetry since I was a baffled teen, about forty years. I have published four books of poetry and have just completed my fifth collection, “The Invisible Library”. I am also a culture worker, editor, and publisher (Hagios Press). Currently I have the best summer job ever as an Artist Animateur for SaskCulture promoting Culture Days, September 30, October 1 and 2, 2011. Culture Days is a celebration of arts and cultural involvement from coast to coast to coast in Canada. I’m proud to be one of its champions this year. for the last three years as I have worked on a poetry manuscript titled “The Invisible Library”. Invisible books have no substance beyond the context given in the books where they are mentioned. They are fragments of the imagination of the author, but yet somehow they light a flame in the imagination of the reader. What would that book be like?

Once aware of the invisible library I began to notice entries in books I was reading. It seemed a short leap from these discoveries to wanting to create entries in the invisible library myself. In this writing process I have been inspired by the invisible library but all the titles used in my poems are original and not borrowed from other sources. Soon the poems I was writing took on more imagistic and metaphoric weight. I found that the concept was leading me into fascinating thematic and psychological territory.

In June I began a term position as an Artist Animateur for SaskCulture in aid of supporting and promoting Culture Days, Canada’s celebration of arts and culture from coast to coast to coast. This summer I have acted as Poet in Residence (at the Invisible Library) at several events in southern Saskatchewan, where I have read poems from my book and engaged people in the creative act of writing their own “invisible” titles into a book I’ve carried with me. The response when I ask someone to participate is usually a smile or even a chuckle at the thought of them becoming an instant author. While the writer may want to pause and think it over, I encourage them to use the first good thought they have. Many of the participants use their own name but they are also allowed to sign a pseudonym that plays off the title.

Here are a few samples of the anonymous entries I’ve collected:

The creation of a book title, imaginary or or real requires a creative leap and writing the title of an invisible book one that resonates, requires employing one’s intuition. It’s fascinating to watch participants as they contemplate and then write their invisible book title. While many have not written a book, they all have read books and have perhaps entertained thoughts of writing one day. They may tap into a humorous idea or one that speaks to them personally and as they do they are also thinking about the the importance of books in their lives.

So far I have collected over seventy book titles in my Invisible Library, and welcome more via e-mail: wilsonhpaul@gmail.com. At the end of my term I will post the complete list of titles here on my blog and the “library” will be archived with SaskCulture. I look forward to seeing your entry into the world of invisible books.


Follow Paul on Twitter! @InvisiblePoet11

View Comments | Posted in Culture Days stories, Saskatchewan, opinions, seen, uncategorized, ways to get involved | Tags: , ,

How to Use the Culture Days Bright Spots Schedule

September 5th, 2011 by Culture Days

The Culture Days Bright Spots Schedule, made possible with the generous support of national Lead Founding Visionary Partner, Sun Life Financial, is a free, online scheduling tool that will help both Culture Days activity organizers and the public create a customized schedule of activities taking place over the Culture Days weekend (September 30, October 1 & 2). The Bright Spots Schedule will provide activity organizers with another tool to help promote and publicize their activities by creating a program guide and ensure that the public can better discover and plan their weekend in advance.

Accessing the Schedule and Adding to Your Schedule
The Culture Days Bright Spots Schedule is easy to use! Once you’ve created an account using the “My Culture Days” portal on culturedays.ca and are logged in, simply browse registered activities and select those you wish to add to your schedule using the yellow “Add to my Bright Spots Schedule” button (located on the top-left on each activity description page). Once an activity has been added to your schedule, that button will turn green and will read “In My Schedule”. The activities you’ve decided to “add to your schedule” will automatically appear in your customized 3-day schedule. If an activity is happening more than once over the Culture Days weekend, the activity will automatically appear in your schedule on each day and at each time it’s scheduled to take place.

Viewing Your Schedule
To view your schedule, simply click on the “In My Schedule” button and you’ll be directed to the “My Schedule” page. You can also access your schedule via the “My Culture Days” section. Once you’ve logged in, click the link at the top right that reads “My Schedule”.

Removing an Activity
To remove an activity, click the icon to the right of the activity you’d like to delete (the circle with a line through it) from your “My Schedule” page. A message window will pop up asking you to confirm that you want to remove the activity; click the “Remove” button and you’re done! One important thing to note is that if an activity is happening more than once over the Culture Days weekend, it will automatically appear in your schedule on each day and at each time it’s scheduled to take place, and if you choose to remove it from your schedule, it will remove all instances of that activity.

Exporting Your Schedule
You can export your customized schedule in a number of ways: by email, to popular calendar platforms (ie. Outlook, iCal, Google, etc.) and in PDF format, which can then be shared and printed. For individuals or organizers who want to create a program booklet, choose the “Print My Schedule” option where you also have the option to include an accompanying cover and customized title.

Activity Recommendations
In addition to these exciting features, there is also a “smart” referral engine that will make recommendations based on activities you’ve selected based on the geographic proximity of activities you’ve already selected or by category, based on the kinds of activities you’ve selected (i.e. dance, visual arts, music…etc.)

So, what are you waiting for? Plan your Culture Days weekend NOW!

View Comments | Posted in Funders & Supporters, Local marketing & promotions, community organizers, for activity organizers, marketing & PR, ways to get involved | Tags: , , , , ,

Riverdale Hub: Call for Artists!

September 2nd, 2011 by Aubrey Reeves

The Riverdale Immigrant Women Enterprises calls for dancers of any traditional style who would love to host a workshop/performance at their space.  The program runs from 2 pm till 8 pm, with available spots at:

2 -3:30 pm

5 – 6:30 pm

6:30 – 8 pm

As per Culture Days guidelines, the workshop/performance should be interactive.

They also invite visual artists who would like to use their ground and second floor as a gallery space.

Please send submission with the link to your video to:

Riverdale Hub contact Anna Plugina at anna.riwc@gmail.com.

The Riverdale Hub

Riverdale Immigrant Women Enterprises has conceptualized the Riverdale Hub: A Hub for Ideas, a centre for Change. The Hub will create a green colocation workspace, space for social entrepreneurship initiatives, a fair trade cafe, and a third floor events space with a community kitchen in place. The Farmer’s market will provide locally grown and healthy food alternatives.

View Comments | Posted in Ontario, community organizers, for activity organizers, ways to get involved | Tags: , , , , , ,

Volunteers Can Make All the Difference!

September 2nd, 2011 by Culture Days

Nazanin Shoja, OAC’s Ontario Culture Days Animator/Coordinator, interviewed Gina Rim, Volunteer Coordinator Reel Asian International Film Festival, about how to recruit, train and show appreciation for your Culture Days volunteers. The Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival  is Canada’s Premier Pan-Asian International Film Festival. The 15th Anniversary Edition takes place  November 8-13 in Toronto and November 18-19 in Richmond Hill. Check out their 2011 Culture Days event “Meet the Festival.”


Nazanin Shoja – How far in advance do you post a call for volunteers? Where do you advertise?
Gina Rim – Since the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival (Reel Asian) holds year round events, I post monthly calls through our volunteer e-bulletin. For the film festival in November, I post a call for volunteers in September by inviting them to our Culture Days event, ‘Meet the Festival’. It’s a great way for all our potential volunteers to meet the entire staff, learn what happens behind-the-scenes, and hear about the roles they will be playing during the festival. I also advertise volunteer postings through our various social media, such as Facebook, and I spread the word through local community and student groups as well.

NS – What incentives do you give?
GR – We offer free volunteer t-shirts, vouchers for any of the films at our festival, and a letter detailing their contributions.

NS – What draws volunteers to the Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival in particular?
GR – Volunteering at Reel Asian is a great way to interact with film and the industry, as well as a great opportunity to meet people. Every staff member at Reel Asian including myself, is a previous volunteer for the festival so we treat all of our volunteers like family.

NS – What is involved with training to become a volunteer?
GR – Training varies depending on their volunteer roles but our general training sessions are done at the theatres that we use during the festival. Chris Chin, our Operations Manager, did a walk-through of the venues with the volunteers, gave them an overview of the night, examples of questions that may be asked, and what to do in certain situations. We try to train all our volunteers with as much information as possible so that they feel confident in what they do and have fun while they volunteer with us!

NS – What role do the volunteers play at your festival? What tasks are involved?
GR – Like any other film festival, Reel Asian relies on the help of dedicated volunteers for various tasks – from office help to ushers and front of house support, industry series and special events hospitality.

NS – How do you communicate with your volunteers and determine scheduling?
GR – I have a one-on-one scheduling session with each and every volunteer. This allows me to get to know my volunteers better, what their background and interests are, and see if what we have available for them suits their schedule.

NS – How do you ensure their commitment?
GR – During our volunteer orientation and the one-on-one scheduling session, we make sure that the volunteers clearly understand that they play a very important part in our festival and that they are the ones who puts into action the months of work and planning.

NS – How do you show your appreciation to volunteers? How are they recognized?
GR – We have a volunteers appreciation party with food, drink, music and some great prize giveaways a week after the November festival. This year, Reel Asian will also have a screening just for the volunteers before the party as well. We realized that last year, a lot of our volunteers didn’t have time to watch many of the films because they were volunteering instead. To appreciate such participation from our volunteers, we decided to have a screening of one of the festival selections just for them as our way of saying thank you.

NS – How do you ensure that your volunteers return year after year?
GR – The most important thing is for the volunteers to have a positive experience with us. If the volunteers enjoyed their experience and had fun during their previous shifts, they are more likely to return to volunteer with us again this year. We already have a few volunteers from last year who volunteered with us on our pre-festival screenings this year!

View Comments | Posted in Culture Days 2010, Ontario, for activity organizers, uncategorized, ways to get involved | Tags: , , , , ,

Culture Days Stories: Catherine – Kingston, ON (Part 3)

September 2nd, 2011 by Culture Days

“Ripple Effect” is the third installment in a series of blog posts that document Catherine’s (aka Kingston Through My Lens) experience and participation in Culture Days 2011.

Find out more by reading the first and second installments.

One of the greatest things that can happen when you embark on a journey to make change in your community is knowing that it has inspired change in other places as well. Through My Lens started off as an initiative in Kingston, and has now grown to include an event in Toronto as well as a second initiative to come in Kingston through the Kingston Frontenac Public Libraries. Here’s an excerpt from Jenn’s latest blog post about Toronto Through My Lens.

Over 100 photographers will be taking city inspired images for 10 days in Toronto. For added inspiration, we are leading 4 neighbourhood walking tours around Toronto. Their images and stories will be collected for our Nuit Blanche exhibit in Parkdale.  We are 1 of 18 rental truck installations in Leitmotif and 1 of 5 community based installations. Our truck installation is an interactive city building themed truck.

When you come to visit us on October 1, you are the curator of our exhibit. You will help us design our exhibit with hundreds of city images, then we will  layer your stories and build dialogue. Inside the truck you can participate in storytelling and a photo shoot with a cardboard city scape backdrop. We are looking to gain insight into what the community focuses on in the city and how we can inspire positive change.

Change can start anywhere and from the smallest of ideas. What can you do to inspire change in your community?

Click here to learn more about the Kingston Through My Lens project and follow Catherine’s Culture Days journey.

UPDATE: Click here to read Catherine’s summary blog post detailing her Culture Days weekend experience with Kingston Through My Lens.

If you have something to say about public participation and engagement in arts and culture, post it on the Culture Days blog! Submit your vision or post from your own blog via email at stories@culturedays.ca and Culture Days will share your story with the growing network.

View Comments | Posted in Culture Days stories, Ontario, Results and impact, for activity organizers, ways to get involved | Tags: , , , , ,

Culture Days Stories: Catherine – Kingston, ON (Part 2)

August 25th, 2011 by Culture Days

“Confessions of a First-Time Organizer” a great blog post written by Catherine (aka Kingston Through My Lens) and is the second installment in a series of posts that documents her experience and participation in Culture Days 2011.

Click here to read Catherine’s previous post.

Organizing Kingston Through My Lens has definitely been a whirlwind adventure. We’ve experienced many ups and downs, but already the results are amazing. We’ve inspired multiple other photography projects, and we’re looking forward to the start of the project. Thinking back, there are three things that I have gleaned from starting this initiative. They’re my three tips for successful community engagement practice if you will.

Be excited and spread the word

People need to know what you’re up to, and they need to see that you believe in the project. Bring other people on board who can share that excitement with you as well.

Dream big and be flexible, but never lose sight of your mission

You need to have a clear goal of what you hope to achieve from your project while being able to adapt to the circumstances. We all have the ability to be creative, so tap into that! It’s really important, though, to remember why you decided to start the project in the first place, and to make sure the end result is true to that original vision.

Use your connections and don’t be afraid to build new ones

Starting with the people you already know is a great way to go. Further to that, with technology and online media being what it is today, it’s even easier to send someone an email and let them know what you’re doing. You’ll be surprised with how willing people are to meet you and learn more about your project.

Click here to learn more about the Kingston Through My Lens project and follow Catherine’s Culture Days journey.

If you have something to say about public participation and engagement in arts and culture, post it on the Culture Days blog! Submit your vision or post from your own blog via email at stories@culturedays.ca and Culture Days will share your story with the growing network.

View Comments | Posted in Community spotlight, Culture Days stories, Ontario, community organizers, for activity organizers, opinions, ways to get involved | Tags: , , , , , ,

Culture Days Stories: Catherine – Kingston, ON

August 11th, 2011 by Culture Days

Here’s a great blog post written by Catherine (aka Kingston Through My Lens) that documents her experience as a first-time activity organizer.

If you were to look in my desk, you would find a thick brown notebook filled with many of my hopeful community initiatives. The ideas in this notebook range from book swaps to transit reform, small art projects to large institutional changes. The majority of these ideas will remain just that – ideas. However, within those ideas are scattered a few creative seeds that do manage to take root, and will one day blossom into something bigger and better.

Near the beginning of this book, dated sometime in February, you will find scribblings from the start of my current project, Kingston Through My Lens. In a nutshell, Kingston Through My Lens is a 10-day, themed photo adventure that hopes to capture life in Kingston as is. It aims to allow the people of the community to see where their life intersects with the lives of others, and to bring everyone together to affect change within the city. Every day, participants will submit one photo, which will be added to a growing collection to be exhibited both online as well as in print during Kingston Culture Days. At the print exhibit, everyone will be able to experience the photographers’ stories and pictures, and they will get a chance to add their own stories to the collection. At its core, Kingston Through My Lens is about community creation, conversation, and transformation.

Over the last few months, I have been asked on multiple occasions to encapsulate the growing process of Kingston Through My Lens. The story you are about to read is my attempt at putting those thoughts down on paper, of documenting how this idea really came to be. This is a story of what happens when you give one idea a chance – a chance to grow, to develop, and to adapt to the world that it is born into.

For the past five years, I’ve had the privilege of living and learning in Kingston, Ontario. Kingston is a mid-sized town in Eastern Ontario with a lot of history and a bright future. Its claims to fame include being Canada’s first capital city and home to Queen’s University, where I recently graduated from the Faculty of Education. Kingston is no stranger to community events, and with its friendly atmosphere, it seemed the most suitable place for me to try my hand at organizing my own community initiative.

Something you need to know about me is that I am no professional photographer. Mostly, I use my point and shoot camera to capture the world around me. Despite my limited experience, one thing I know for sure is that a picture is worth a thousand words. And with prevalence of cameras being what it is today – phones, digital cameras, SLRs – I thought that photography would be a perfect vehicle for my first community project.

The first thing I needed to do was to get some people on board with my idea. After spending hours online looking at other projects, developing my own idea, and scoping out people who could help me, I decided to go out on a limb and email some of the people I found. The emails were simple – I told them who I was, what I wanted to do, and that I would really like to meet them. Through these emails, I ended up meeting two individuals who would both play a large role in getting Kingston Through My Lens off the ground. The very first person to respond to my emails was Greg Tilson, the program coordinator at the Kingston Arts Council. He was the one who introduced me to the Culture Days movement and who encouraged me to make this project happen right away. The second person I met was Jennifer Chan, the founder of a design thinking organization called Exhibit Change. She was someone that I had stumbled upon through Twitter, and who had a ton of experience in community building initiatives. She agreed to work with me on this project and together we started to hash out our ideas. We really liked the free, participatory, arts-driven mandate of Culture Days, so we decided to register for the movement. The project found itself the name “Through My Lens” and it was decided that Jenn would head up an exhibit in Toronto called Toronto Through My Lens, while I would continue with my vision for Kingston Through My Lens.

April was the month where we really started to get moving on the project. The Kingston Culture Days planning committee held its very first get-together, and I was invited to be part of the group. There, I met Aubrey, the Culture Days Ontario Manager, as well as some movers and shakers from the City of Kingston and other prominent local groups. It was at that first meeting that I really began to build partnerships with other organizations in Kingston who would be able to help me realize this idea.

From there, it has been a whirlwind adventure. The past few months have been full of both wonderful surprises like being given the chance to be featured in a local magazine and frustrating obstacles, such as struggling with how to print all the images. I’ve had to look into countless things, from the larger vision and how to secure sponsorships to individual logistics like how to set up the space on the day of and how many volunteers I’ll need. Days have been spent in front of the computer, setting up the website, starting up social media pages, and promoting the event. Through it all, I have relied on my supports to keep me afloat, and I often need to remind myself to share the workload and to ask for help. When in doubt, I am reminded to go back to the root of the project, which is to give people a chance to see their community in a new light, to document their everyday life, and to share it with others who live around them.

In the end, I know it will all be worth it. To be able to see people in a community enjoy themselves while getting to know their surroundings in a new and creative way – that is the greatest gift.

This post is the first in a series of blog posts that will follow Catherine’s experience and participation in Culture Days 2011.

Click here to learn more about the Kingston Through My Lens project and follow Catherine’s Culture Days journey.

If you have something to say about public participation and engagement in arts and culture, post it on the Culture Days blog! Submit your vision or post from your own blog via email at stories@culturedays.ca and Culture Days will share your story with the growing network.

View Comments | Posted in Community spotlight, Culture Days stories, Ontario, community organizers, opinions, ways to get involved | Tags: , , ,
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