Labrador Creative Arts Festival Wrap-up

I arrived home yesterday after participating as one of the visiting artists at the 39th Annual Labrador Creative Arts Festival in Happy Valley-Goose Bay and environs. I posted one blog entry during the festival. Re-reading it just now, I can "hear" how breathless I was!

My secret source of power for the festival: trail mix with
added pralined nuts and Reese's Pieces

The festival continued at an intense pace: workshops, plays, soirées! It is a phenomenally rich week, but one that requires a great deal of flexibility and stamina. Before I left, I was worried that I wasn't going to be able to make it through gracefully. Fortunately, I feel like I did. I maintained my equanimity in the face of withdrawn high school kids and rambunctious middle school kids. Every class that was willing wrote a song or two. And the less willing did some breathing and stretching and thinking about their own rib cage and diaphragm and how our voices are produced. And most of the students sang along on a chorus or two. Voice can be a very vulnerable place and I hope I presented in a way that held that vulnerability with care and consideration.

I talked with various classes about story songs, metaphors, high sounds and low, quiet and loud and how melody is a way to communicate more meaning in a song that with words alone. (Communication was the theme of the Festival this year).

Some of the students at Sheshatshiu Innu School shared some great beats with me.

We did a benefit concert for Libra House (a women's shelter) on Sunday afternoon at the Birch Brook Chalet. That was lots of fun - my favourite kind of concert: intimate, relaxed. And the setting was so beautiful:

The view from Birch Brook Chalet, home of our Sunday concert

I felt sad to leave on Wednesday morning, but I am also glad to come back to the quiet and solitude of my home life. It was a very stimulating week for me, full of new people and ideas. I did lots of thinking on the fly to try to make my workshops more accessible and engaging. I expended a lot of energy!

Boarding our flight home

It was a bit of an endurance test, but a happy and successful one. I slept for eleven hours last night - so glad to be in my own bed with my sweet cat.

My rest and relaxation guru, Salinger

I will definitely be absorbing this trip and the things I learned for a long time to come. I extend my heartfelt thanks to the Labrador Creative Arts Festival for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!

Labrador Creative Arts Festival update

I'm almost halfway through my time here at the Labrador Creative Arts Festival. It's been super-interesting so far. 

Of course, everything at the festival is weather dependent! We arrived without difficulty on Tuesday night, but most of the day Wednesday I spent (with about seven other visiting artists), waiting at the Goose Bay airport hoping that the weather hold would lift and that we'd be able to fly up the coast to the north. 

I was scheduled to be in Nain overnight, but alas, the weather remained windy and we were unable to fly. That meant having the morning off yesterday and I used the time to write a song called "Weather Hold". (Stay tuned for that, I'll try to get it up on YouTube one day soon).

Yesterday afternoon I had a workshop with an adult basic education class. Today was full-on: six half hour workshops with kids from K-3 in the morning and this afternoon, an hour-long workshop with some of the students visiting from the coastal schools.

Here is a picture of one of the flip chart pages from my morning sessions:

We wrote TWO songs together in just a  half hour! Amazing!

I've been trying to get a little rest this afternoon. This evening, we'll go out to see two more plays - we've seen four so far and all of them have been funny and/or moving! The student actors/playwrights really put their hearts and courage into their work.

So far, so wonderful! Our billeting families, our drivers and the festival organizers are taking really good care of us! 

I'm looking forward to the rest of the Fest! (Hey, that rhymes! Maybe I should write a song about it...)

Labrador Creative Arts Festival 2014

I haven't been writing much here because I've been on a performance sabbatical this year for wellness reasons. I'm happy to report that I'm feeling quite a lot better than I have been – and just in time!

In four days, I'll board a plane to Happy Valley-Goose Bay, NL to be one of the artists at the 2014 Labrador Creative Arts Festival.

The LCAF is a drama festival for students in Labrador. I'm going to be facilitating some voice workshops and singing some songs.

It is an amazing opportunity. I didn't ever expect that in my lifetime I might get an opportunity to go so far into Canada's north.

I've got some new merino wool long underwear and new warm socks.
Thirty-eight cm of snow fell in Happy Valley-Goose Bay last Saturday
and it's been below freezing since then. For me, it's going to be
a sudden infusion of wintery-ness!

I am very excited. I'll be posting about my experiences here and on Twitter – whenever I get a chance.

And when I get back, I have some other exciting projects planned for 2015 that I'm looking forward to sharing with you!