Starting last Friday, many locals took part in the Creative Jam 2011, a series of workshops on four fine-arts disciplines that were “jamming” on a common theme of “learn-create-improvize-perform” with a public presentation of the pieces created on Sunday.
Four facilitators came into town for the series of workshops coming from impressive backgrounds. For the art workshop Sheila Karrow was brought in. Karrow is an award-winning artist who is influences by early Canadian landscape painters in her pieces, illustrating the symbiosis of the human spirit and the land. Bas Rynsewyn, who earned himself a fine arts degree, and who is the current managing and artistic director of Serious Moonlight Productions, was brought in to help people in drama through the workshop, as well as Genni Gunn, who is a writer, musician and translator with eight published books to assist in creative writing. The last facilitator brought in was Wyckham Porteous to assist in song writing. Porteous has recorded two albums in the studio.
On Sunday, the presentations started out on the Lester Centre stage with the creative writing group who all composed one sestina poem with one another that they all read, as well as a few others in the group reading their own sestina poems aloud. The next discipline up was drama, with the four participants doing a variety of improvisation performances that had the crowd laughing. After a reading from Gunn, the song writer’s took on the stage with their piece, A Shifting Tide, that they all composed together. The group consisted of many guitar players, a bassist and a trumpet playing Peter Witherly.
The art discipline couldn’t exactly take their creations on stage, other than the mural the group made together, which was hung up to be seen during all the other discipline’s showings, but throughout the Lester Centre lobby there were a number of lovely colour pieces that really caught the eye.
The last Creative Jam workshop sessions were held in 2000, and organizer Peter Witherly says that he hopes to hold another Creative Jam sooner than later.