The conscient podcast is a series of conversations and monologues about art and the ecological crisis. This podcast is bilingual (in either English or French). Episode notes are translated.
I started the conscient project in 2020 as a personal learning journey and knowledge sharing exercise. It has been rewarding, and sometimes surprising.
Green Kids Inc. is a live-theatre company dedicated to environmental education through performance! Our mission is to educate children, teachers and families on environmental issues and inspire them to be tomorrow’s leaders by taking positive action towards protecting our environment.
Omineca’s mandate is “a safe space for creativity to flourish” and our Mission Statement is “Omineca Arts Centre will create space and opportunity for innovative, multidisciplinary, collaborative, and marginalized art forms within the Omineca region.” Our Core Values are: Welcoming, Innovative, Inclusive, Community-minded, Supportive, Accessible and Sustainable.The Omineca Arts Centre is an interdisciplinary, locally-led artist run centre that is grounded in arts-based community development. Omineca continues to facilitate collaboration and diversify opportunities for emerging & professional visual, literary, musical and performing artists. The centre is located in a storefront in the pedestrian core of Prince George’s downtown. Our aim is to co-develop meaningful and collaborative artistic projects, experiences, and models for catalyzing arts and culture in the Omineca region, while prioritizing inclusivity, responsiveness, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Chantal Chagnon is a Cree / Métis Singer, Drummer, Artist, Storyteller, Actor, Educator, Workshop Facilitator, Social Justice Advocate and Activist with roots in Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, Saskatchewan. She shares Traditional Indigenous Songs, Stories, Culture, History, Arts, Indigenous Craftsmanship and Teachings. Chantal has presented in Classrooms from Preschool through University and Professional, Community, and Social Justice Events and Gatherings. Chantal aims to entertain, engage, enlighten, educate, and inspire everyone she meets.
Jen Yakamovich (she/her) is a drummer, multi-instrumentalist, improviser, environmental researcher, and educator currently living and working as a settler on Coast Salish territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. Her musical approach tends towards the embodied, textural, and hidden worlds of multispecies collaboration. Jen performs as drummer on a number of projects ranging from folk, experimental, sound collage, R&B, and creative & improvised music. Her solo project is called “Troll Dolly”. She received her Master’s in Environmental Studies in 2020.
If the Borch Brother’s music style were to be personified, the heart and soul would be East Coast Fiddle music with a spine of old tyme fiddle. The head would be folk and each appendage would be reaching into jazz, swing, ukrainian and celtic.
The Borch Brothers are Rigel (fiddle), Marten (guitar, vocals, harmonica and kick-drum) and Garnet (accordion, piano and vocals). They released their first album since 2006, Gathering Change, in June, 2021 and will be releasing an EP in June 2022. Beyond being musicians, the Borch Brothers are also activists, community builders and performers. Their aspirations aren’t for fame or fortune but instead to play more of their favourite gigs: where they connect with the audience as they bounce, dance and sing along.
Lou Sheppard works in interdisciplinary audio, performance and installation based practice. His work is often responsive, investigating the material and discursive contexts of a site and their affect on bodies and environments. His research is often evidenced through graphic notations, scripts and scores which are then performed in collaboration with other artists and in community gatherings. Lou’s recent projects include Phase Variations, an exploration of queer archives, The Exquisite Corpse, a meditation on post human worlding, and I Want To Be a Seashell…, responding to the Dalhousie Arts Centre with collaborator Will Robinson.
Kristin Gyrlevich Singh is a multidisciplinary community-engaged environmental artist and activist graciously living on the unceded and unsurrendered territories of the Wǝlastǝkewiyik/Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet), Mi’kmaq/Mi’kmaw and Peskotomuhkati. Her arts practice is dedicated to social change in the areas of environmental sustainability and gender equality. She is an emerging visual artist and poet as well as a song writer. Her aim is to foster an interconnected relationship between our waterways, our lands and our people and to inspire others to find harmony within themselves and the environment. Her belief that the message is more important than the medium has led to using all natural paints, dyes, fungi and bacteria to create biodegradable environmentally friendly art work. It is with these works that she hopes to convey that it is the ideas communicated in our art that foster change that must remain. Alongside this practice , Kristin has worked in the non-profit and public sectors as a board member, volunteer librarian, art therapy leader, gallery owner and manager. She opened Under the Tree Art Gallery in 2020 to give local artists a venue to showcase their work during the COVID-19 pandemic and to help engage the community with art and the environment.
Laura Barron is a musician, writer, facilitator and community artist whose 30-year career as a flutist has brought her from the Yukon to New Zealand, including solo appearances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and several performances at Carnegie Hall. She now harnesses her experience as a performer and teacher in her role as the Founder /Executive Director of Instruments of Change. This Vancouver-based non-profit leads numerous community arts initiatives that engage with incarcerated women in Canada, at-risk youth in India, educators in Zambia, and many other diverse groups. Here, she has found her greatest reach and impact designing experiences that empower underserved and often marginalized individuals to become instruments of change in their own lives as they find their own creative voices. Most meaningfully, she started the Vancouver branch of Carnegie Hall’s Lullaby Project, where she works with single mothers escaping violence, to co-create original songs for their children. Always striving for relevance in her work, she guides young artists to find intersections between their talents, passions and social concerns in ICASC’s Futures:forward initiative, as she did on the faculties of the Universities of OR, WI & N. AZ. She also facilitates climate action art projects for the Conservation Council of New Brunswick’s Harm to Harmony initiative, out of which her composition, Come Home – an ancient forest lullaby, emerged from a collaborative lyric-writing process that she led with tree activists across Canada. Laura accepts numerous public speaking invitations to share principles and best practices in Arts for Social Change. She is also a frequent blogger, most recently about artistic responses to the pandemic, globally, in These Adagio Days. And she brings all of her professional experiences together in her new writing project, Key Changes, a novel based on the healing power of music.
Ambient improvisational ensemble New Hermitage imagines a future in which the climate crisis has decimated the population of the Earth, and dangerously high levels of pollution have rendered the cities of the world uninhabitable. The surviving humans are forced to live in nomadic clans, wandering the sparse wilderness in constant struggle to claim what little natural resources remain. However, a few solitary people have returned to the cities. Armed with patience and tenderness, these new hermits balance technology with natural wisdom to work with nature to restore their environment. The music of New Hermitage is the soundtrack to their survival, incorporating what these individuals might hear among the crumbling cities they call home.
The Climate Art Web (CAW-WAC) is a grassroots network that brings together climate artists living in northern Turtle Island (Canada).
