What's On at the Library

Culture Days at the Library: Get Your Proposal in Now!

This fall, On September 27-28, more than 40 Toronto Public Library branches will be opening up their spaces to artists and performers of all kinds during the Culture Days events. Culture Days @ the Library is part of a country-wide festival of the arts and a wonderful opportunity for artists--musicians, painters, photographers, actors, sculptors, poets--to display their craft and invite the public to take an inside look at how and why they create.To participate, just fill out the simple application online form.

The deadline is April 15, so don't delay!

Last year, more than 2220 people attended Culture Days events at library branches across the city. There was jazz, guitar lessons, a weaving demo, felting demonstrations and much more more. Check out the blog postings from last year to see the enormous variety that was on offer.

Sneak Preview of Culture Days 2013

On April 2, the Toronto Star featured an article about the Tamil Literary Garden and its annual awards which take place in June. These awards recognize the finest Tamil writers from around the world, from India to Sri Lanka, Singapore, Canada and other places. (Pictured left is Appadurai Muttulingan, noted Tamil author and one of the founders of the Tamil Literary Garden. Credit: Richard Lautens/Toronto Star)

The Tamil Literary Garden does more than present awards. This fall, they will also be presenting a unique art form at the Malvern Branch on Saturday, September 28, 2-4 pm., as part of the Culture Days festival. The King’s Fury—a Tamil Folk Drama is a presentation of an ancient traditional musical art form from the north and east of Sri Lanka. Known as Naadu Koothu, the dance will be demonstrated in its original style by Manuel Jesudasan and Group. Jesudasan is with the Tamil Literary Garden. This event will be quite an extravaganza.

Keep following this blog, and check out the Culture Days website for more information about library events and other events across the city.

 

Call for Participation: Take Part in Culture Days at the Toronto Public Library

If you are an artist, musician, dancer, arts and crafts specialist, then keep reading.

Toronto Public Library is again gearing up for Culture Days, which takes place on September 27 and 28. This is a massive country-wide celebration of culture that invites the public to step into the creative process. Learn origami, a new dance form, be part of a collaborative musical creation--the possibilities are limitless. 

The library is making free venues available to artists in some 40 branches, so if you have an activity or some kind of creative endeavour that you want to demonstrate to the public, please follow this link, read the Call for Participation and fill out the proposal form. The most important consideration is that your activity be interactive.

Last year more than 2200 people came to Culture Days @ the Library events at  branches across the city, from Scarborough to Etobicoke, from North York to the Lakeshore.

Above: Spur-of the Moment Shakespeare at Culture Days, Credit: Christian Badanja/Torontoist

Culture Days @ the Library is now in its third year. It is a partnership between Toronto Public Library, Neighbourhood Arts Network and Culture Days.

 

Create Artworks From Fabric--Culture Days at the Library

Have you ever wandered along Queen Street West, entranced by the art supplies stores and the specialty fabric, bead, ribbon and wool shops? These stores and others like them provide the raw materials for any number of art forms. And on Friday and Saturday of this week, as part of Culture Days at the Library you will have a chance to try your hand at a couple of them.

Juana Selzer’s Tapestry for Beginners will introduce participants to the basics of the art and science of weaving. You will be able to experiment with unusual materials as Juana shows you how to create colourful textures and shapes. At Leaside, Friday, September 28, from 2-3 pm, and Northern District Program Room , Saturday, September 29, 10 am-12 pm.

Although felting is a very ancient art form, and felt fabrics have great utility, it is also a relatively new trend in crafts, as a quick look at the internet will show. Of course many people already know how to felt and have the tiny wool sweaters (what’s left after you throw a wool garment in the dryer for a couple of hours) to prove it. If you are intrigued, be sure to check out one of the two felting workshops. Learn how to felt and create something lovely from this beautiful and extremely useful fabric. Both are on Friday, September 28. Felting at Taylor Memorial , goes from 2-3 pm.

The Felt Jewellery Workshop is at Bloor/Gladstone, 4-5 pm. Hungarian folk art specialist Elizabeth Toth will help participants explore this versatile craft by making unique pieces of jewellery such as earrings and bracelets. Workshop is open to parents with children ages 8 and older. But space is limited so call 416-393-7674 now to register.

 

Click here for all Culture Days at the Library programs. 

Culture Days at the Library is a partnership between Toronto Public Library, Culture Days and the Neighbourhood Arts Network.

NAN is a community-engaged network of over 750 artists providing support to artists with in-person networking, professional development events, promotional materials, advocacy, shared resources, research, and on-going partnerships.

For all Culture Days activities, go to the Culture Days website.

Express Yourself in Music with Culture Days @ the Library

 

The great thing about Cuture Days is that it aggregates an enormous range of artistic creators and performers and allows the rest of us to consider genres, forms and disciplines that we might otherwise be unaware of.

On Saturday, September 29, 11 am, at Northern District, Theatre Gargantua offers a Song Creation Workshop during which the participants will work with the company to create some remarkable soundscapes. You can hear their beautiful and unique vocal techniques on the CD Concert for St. Stephens, a 2005 concert to benefit the St. Stephens parish church in Kensington. For those who are interested in the arts and perhaps embarking on a career as a performer or artist, check out Theatre Garganua's Emerging Artists Roundtable.

 

At Queen/Saulter, on Friday, September 28, 10 am, you can experience and take part in Interactive Jazz Trio Storytelling with Tova Kardonne.

I had the good fortune to see Tova and her colleagues perform during Culture Days @ the Library last fall. This program will delight children and intrigue any musician interested in doing improvisation. Tova walks to the bookshelves and chooses a picture book and then begins to read as a pianist takes her cue from the story and improvises on the keyboard.

Tova also invites members of the audience to try their hand, choosing a book and then read it to inspire more music. 

At S. Walter Stewart, on Saturday, September 28, 2 pm, the junctQín keyboard collective presents storytime for all ages with piano, toy piano and squeaky objects. Listen to "Disney Princess Disasters" accompanied by piano and squeaky objects (meet iDog!). The audience will then join in with junctQin to narrate "A Tale with Two Stories!" Keith Kirchoff’s picturesque musical setting of classic Hans Christian Andersen stories. 

This is a chance to hear the toy piano in action. Yes, the toy piano is for children, but many composers and pianists are creating works specially for these well-made and beautiful instruments.

Click here for all Culture Days @ the Library activities.

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Culture Days @ the Library is a partnership between Toronto Public Library, Culture Days and the Neighbourhood Arts Network.

NAN is a community-engaged network of over 750 artists providing support to artists with in-person networking, professional development events, promotional materials, advocacy, shared resources, research, and on-going partnerships.

For all Culture Days activities, go to the Culture Days website.

Guitar Kids @ Sanderson and Northern District Library  (Arts and Culture Blog)

 

Song Creation Workshop

Culture Days @ the Library--Fall 2012

Culture Days @ the Library is back in a big way for Fall 2012. Now in its third year, Culture Days is a massive country-wide celebration of arts and culture with many thousands of activities in towns and cities across Canada. The range of activities is immense and includes dance, music of all kinds, theatre, film, literature and even culinary arts. Culture Days is also a vast cultural mosaic of artists and performers including indigenous peoples, Québécois, Indian, Korean, Chinese, Caribbean and many more.

The big thing about Culture Days is that it is interactive and offers a way for the audience to literally get in on the act.  Culture Days @ the Library features some 40 activities and they will all let you experience the arts in a very direct way. Do you want to learn guitar? Find out if there is a sinuous bellydancer hiding behind those blue jeans? Be the storyteller? Compose a song? Create a webcomic?

There are also many hands-on arts and crafts events, from Origami to wire weaving, tapestry, bookmaking, felting and much more. Virtually all the programs are great for kids and families.

Just click on  Culture Days @ the Library to see the possibilities. Let your imagination go wild!

Above, left to right: Lizardo Carvajal and the Bird of a Thousand Songs, Bloor/Gladstone, Fri. Sept 29, 1:15; Jauna Selzer teaches the Art of Tapestry (Leaside, Fri. Sept. 28, 2 pm and Northern District Sat. Sept. 29. 10-12); Bellydancer Evyenia Karmi (Highland Creek, Fri. Sept. 28, 2 pm, and Agincourt, Sat. Sept. 29, 10:30 am).

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Culture Days @ the Library is a partnership between Toronto Public Library, Culture Days and the Neighbourhood Arts Network.

NAN is a community-engaged network of over 750 artists providing support to artists with in-person networking, professional development events, promotional materials, advocacy, shared resources, research, and on-going partnerships.

For all Culture Days activities, go to the Culture Days website.

 

Be a Culture Days Activity Organizer!

 Culture Days @ The Library is Back for Second Year! 

Are you an artist of almost any kind, in pretty much any medium? If so, this is for you. Keep reading.

Once again, Toronto Public Library, the Neighbourhood Arts Network and Culture Days are working together to help artists and arts groups share their creative work with the public in the free and accessible spaces of the library. Last year, more than 2,000 people took part in Culture Days @ the Library. They got the inside story on weaving, origami, bookbinding, violin improv, toy pianos, stone carving, French folk music, storytelling, writing and dozens of other activities. Our 2011 Culture Days blog postings will give you a sense of some of these activities.

We want to replicate that incredible range of artistic talent again this year, and so we are again inviting artists and cultural creators of all kinds to get involved.

It's easy to apply ... and the April 30 deadling is coming up soon so don't delay. The main thing is that your activity should be interactive. This could mean that your audience tries their hand at a craft or musical activity or that you simply explain how you do your work. You might conduct a mini-lesson in your craft or give a demonstration. The application is online--just fill it out and click submit. For the Culture Days big picture, go to the Culture Days website, www.culturedays.ca.

 

 

Collage and Scultpure at Northern District--Today!

Collage, Poetry and Sculpture

By  Valentina (Northern District)

Get an early start on Nuit Blanche with art and design workshops at  Northern District on Saturday, October 1 from 10am to 4pm. Experience the arts walking through our library space and meet with others in your neighbourhood who love creative expression and want to explore various art forms.

Collage and Poetry Experience

The word collage comes from the French verb coller and means to paste, stick, or glue.  By combining visual art with written expression, it is possible to create a powerful statement of who we are, helping to bridge the gap between the right and left brain.

In this workshop, you can discover your poetic and experimental sense, creating a collage with images from magazines and leaflets, adding words that reflect your collage’s unique meaning. Make your very own masterpiece or just come cut-paste-write and have fun. Get inspired and celebrate Culture Days with the mixed media artists and poets Ellen Jaffe and Catherine Raine.  (Catherine Raine’s blog, Breakfast in Scarborough, is a trove of information about Toronto Public Library branches—she has visited every single one of them!) October 1, 10 am-1 pm.

by Catherine Raine

Sculpture Workshop

Digital sculpting @ your library is presented courtesy of the Toronto School  of Art. Sculpting in the digital realm lets the sculptor work naturally, but with a superset of the tools available to the traditional artist. With live demos, you will be introduced to sculpting. You can experiment with sculpting clay and learn about the amazing world of digital sculpting, an art form used extensively in film, concept art, video games and illustration. Create your very own 3D models!  October 1, 12-4 pm.

 

Laser Eagles gets started at 2 pm in the Program Room. Check out our earlier blog posting.

A warm welcome to all artists, art enthusiasts and writers!

For all Culture Days @ the Library events visit www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/ and click on Culture Days @ the Library under What's New. For all Culture Days activities, visit go to Culturedays.ca.

Culture Days – Tar Sands Exploration Station

Tar Sands in Toronto?  by Diana (Downsview)

Yes. Specifically, the Tar Sands Exploration Station (TSES). This is an interactive art installation housed in a 1982 Dodge Ram camper van that will be open for visitors in the Richview Library parking lot from 10am - 4 pm on Saturday October 1!  

Visual artist Allison Rowe created the TSES as a way to help people learn more about the tar sands and how they really affect the world. The TSES carries a wealth of information and resources such as environmental samples, 3D models of tar sand extraction methods, and different multimedia.

I spoke with Allison to ask her a couple questions about her fascinating art installation:

Q: After reading your TSES website, it sounds as though you’ve had some interesting experiences! Any you’d like to share? Anything you would do differently?

A: On our cross country trip in the TSES we met some amazing people and saw some very interesting places. I particularly enjoyed Texas where conversations and ideas about oil and fossil fuels were quite different than in the rest of the country. A lot people in Texas were very disturbed that their oil would not be coming from within the United States. Whereas in California, people were excited to hear that Canada had oil, even if it is isn't a particularly environmentally friendly kind.

Q: The TSES is a very creative and interesting way to educate people all over about the Canadian Tar Sands. Did you learn something new from your travels this summer?

A: I discovered that people across the U.S. and Canada are very concerned about sustainability but are uncertain what they as individuals can do to address it. We all seem to be searching for leaders but don't have anyone in government to look to.

I also learned a few things about the design of the TSES itself. Parents kept coming to visit but not staying long because their kids weren't interested in chatting about oil. This Fall I have added some new interactive elements just for kids that I am excited to officially launch at the TPL!

Q: Although your final stop is Toronto, if you could drive your TSES anywhere in the world, where would you go?

A: The TSES initially began as a research vehicle that I used to travel to Fort McMurray to gather data on the tar sands. Now that the TSES is complete, I am planning to travel back to Alberta and see what people their think of the project.

Thank you Allison for the mini interview!

The Tar Sands Exploration Station has travelled all over Canada and the US and has finally come to Toronto, so don’t miss out on this amazing opportunity to check out this creative and educational mobile art installation dedicated to Canadian environmental issues and art.

For all Culture Days @ the Library events visit www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/ and click on Culture Days @ the Library under What's New. For all Culture Days activities, visit go to Culturedays.ca.

Richview Branch: Culture Days @ the Library Hub

COLOR ME BADD

 by Maciek (Richview)

Culture Days events take place in some 45 Toronto Public Library branches across the city, but the Richview Library is proud to host four of them, all on Saturday, October 1. And there are two that will be especially interesting for anybody who wants to learn about painting. 

A visual and community artist Faten Toubasi will teach an interactive workshop on basic (and, at the same time, unconventional) watercolour techniques, applying these techniques with variety of different materials. Participants will have a chance to use their newly-acquired skills by creating their own gift cards!

Saturday October 1st, 10 am - 12 pm, Richview Library. Suitable for all ages, with exception of very small children.

 

Do you know what "Dodalism" is?... Dodalism is a "creative process which borrows from the stream of consciousness and Zen approaches to channeling creativity". There is a very good chance you are a Dodalism fan, and you simply haven't found out, yet :-) 

On October 1 (same day) the artist known as Sio will deliver a live painting performance with contributions from the audience (that means you!). It will be the third instalment in an ongoing project “In the beginning there was nothing…” Saturday October 1st, 12.30 pm - 4 pm, Richview Library.

Also at Richview, Echo Choir, which has tons of fans and followers in Toronto, will perform a set of mostly a capella songs. Learn a South African song in 4-part harmony, involving clapping, and be prepared for some dancing too! 1:30-3 pm in the Art Gallery.

Finally, on your way out or in, don't forget to check out the Dodge Ram in the parking lot. This is the home of Allison Rowe's Tar Sands Exploration Station. But that is the subject of a separate posting--stay tuned! 

For all Culture Days @ the Library events visit www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/ and click on Culture Days @ the Library under What's New. For all Culture Days activities, visit go to Culturedays.ca.

Culture Days – Afro-Brazilian Dancing

Curious about a dance style that incorporates elements from mythology?

by Diana (Downsview)

Many thousands of Torontonians have seen this beautiful, almost iconic photograph of The Dance Migration on the cover of our What's More event guide and in today's Metro News. To learn more about this extraordinary dance troupe, keep reading. And you can meet them at Culture Days @ the Library. They will be at the Cedarbrae Branch on Friday, September 30, at 3 pm.

The Silvestre Technique is a Brazilian, contemporary dance style which incorporates the gestures and mythology of the dances of the Orixa. Linking sacred symbolism with rhythm and movement, this  artistic style of dance will be lead by Adrianna Yanuziello from The Dance Migration. To get to know Adrianna a bit more, I was able to do a short Q&A session with her:

Q: What do you like most about dancing?

A: Dance for me is a way I can express myself without words. When I dance I feel my body, mind, and spirit connected to the universe power. Dance brings me joy, and inspiration. Dance is my tool to inspire others. To bring healing to myself and others. This is why I love dance.

 Q: What music do you like dancing to?

A: I enjoy Brazilian music Samba, Pagode, and Afoxe rhythms. I also enjoy Jazz, and other world music.

Q: If you could perform anywhere in the world where would it be?

A: My dream is to perform my art all over the world in any country for everyone. I wish to inspire as many people as I can with my gifts in the arts!

Thank you Adrianna for the mini interview!  Don’t miss the opportunity to meet the talented founder, artistic director, trained dancer and choreographer of The Dance Migration. Mark Friday September30, 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. at Cedarbrae Library on your calendar!

For all Culture Days @ the Library events visit www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/ and click on Culture Days @ the Library under What's New. For all Culture Days activities, visit go to Culturedays.ca.