“Words are sacred. If you get the right ones in the right order you can nudge the world a little.” - Tom Stoppard
The application window for the City’s word art projects is now open until May 15, and we’re looking for local creatives to lead community workshops and develop new work. Full details can be found at mission.ca/culture.
This year’s creation project is a call for proposals for audio walks set in the Silverdale Creek Wetlands. What is an audio walk? Well, that is open to interpretation. It can be a narrative story that is meant to be listened to in the wetlands, transforming the site into the setting of a story that the listener is immersed in, or it can be more abstract poetic text that somehow reacts to or reflects on the natural environment where the project is set. The works of renowned Canadian artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, and Hildegard Westerkamp illustrate the range of possibilities for this kind of creative work.
The audio walks created by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller over the last 30 years are acclaimed around the world for their innovation and the ability to completely immerse the listener not just in the recorded work, but in the space where the work is being experienced. Playing with memory, narrative, place and sound, these works create an intimate personal experience in a public space. To learn more visit cardiffmiller.com/walks.
Hildegar Westerkamp is renowned for their work exploring the act of listening in many different contexts. Hildegard’s works have been performed and broadcast in many parts of the world, with much of her creative output dealing with aspects of the acoustic environment: with urban, rural or wilderness soundscapes, with the voices of children, men and women, with noise or silence, music and media sounds, or with the sounds of different cultures. Often mixing poetry with recordings of ambient, environmental sounds, Hildegard’s work shows a very different direction than Janet and George. Learn more at hildegardwesterkamp.ca.
The selected proposals for the audio walks will receive an artist fee for the creation and recording of the work, and City staff will collaborate with the creators to make sure the recorded works are readily available for anyone spending time at the wetlands.
The call for workshop facilitators is similarly open in definition; as long as your proposed workshop in some way intersects with the concept of word art it meets the criteria. So what falls under the umbrella of word art? So many things! Writing of every kind, oral storytelling, slam poetry, literal visual art that incorporates or uses words, blackout poetry, there are nearly unlimited ideas that could be part of this.
Visit mission.ca/culture for all the details, the deadline for proposals is May 15.
On Tuesday, April 29, Arts and Culture is hosting our next Creative Conversation at the Clarke Theatre at 7 p.m. Our focus this time is on planning for Culture Days in September/October; specifically looking to develop collaborative projects within the cultural community and to look at ways Arts and Culture can support grass-roots efforts and initiatives. Last year Mission ranked ninth nationally for small municipalities, and we’re hoping to come in higher this year.
Culture Days is both a way to celebrate the creative community and all the work they do in many disciplines and genres, and an opportunity to provide multiple ways for the community to engage with that work. I’ll be honest, when I first began as Manager of Arts and Culture I had limited interest in Culture Days, but the Cultural Resources Committee changed my thinking.
The Cultural Resources Committee serves an important function for Arts and Culture, it is a sounding board for the ideas and initiatives that are being developed, but it’s also a vital communication avenue from the community to City staff. The members of the committee bring their experiences and points of view to the table, but also the opinions and ideas of their networks and collaborators. It was this communication that led me to change how I thought about and saw Mission’s participation in Culture Days, and the committee has shaped and influenced the direction of many other projects.
And now you can join the committee for the next two years! We meet every two months for an hour, and we’re accepting applications for new members until April 30. You can find all the details at mission.ca/culture, please consider joining this great committee.
If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to email me at mark.haney@mission.ca
Mark Haney is Mission’s Manager of Arts and Culture
