Tag Archive for: Blog

SaskScapes – The Avonlea Heritage Museum

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This episode is sponsored by the South West District for Culture, Recreation and Sport Inc.

Kevin Power is joined by guests who have a passion for the history found inside museums. In this episode we focus on the Avonlea Heritage Museum in Avonlea, Saskatchewan. The former CNR station, built in 1912 now proudly displays artifacts that take visitors on a journey back in time.
The Avonlea museum has taken advantage of funding available through the Canada Summer Jobs andYoung Canada Works funding made available by the Canadian Government. This funding allows the museum to hire students to work at the museums full-time through this funding.

This episode of SaskScapes features three of the students who have worked at the museum. Tanner, Jaida and Micah share their passion for the job, their love of the area, and some really entertaining stories about frightening mannequins and pump organs!

General Manager, Cathy Geisler and Board member Darlene Watson are also featured in this episode and discuss the benefits of hiring students, the gratitude for the funding, and the passion and pride they take in their community and museum.

Indeed, the is a road to Avonlea…and I suggest you take it on your next trip!

 

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SaskScapes is a podcast featuring the stories of arts, culture and heritage in Saskatchewan. The series is produced and hosted by Kevin Power.  To sponsor your own episodes contact SaskScapes via twitter, Facebook or by email for more information. Your reviews in the iTunes store help boost the ratings so be sure to have your say!

Host: Kevin Power www.kevinpower.net

Music provided by Jeffery Straker www.jefferystraker.com

SaskScapes is also available through the iTunes Store on Stitcher Radio and TuneIn Radio. SaskScapes now has its own app for android devices available in Google Play.

Follow SaskScapes on Twitter @saskscapes

Follow SaskScapes on Facebook: Facebook.com/saskscapes

Follow Kevin Power on Twitter @kevinpowerlive

Thanks to SaskCulture for their ongoing support of SaskScapes

Funding for the cultural sector in Saskatchewan is provided by the Saskatchewan Lotteries Trust Fund for Sport, Culture and Recreation. Your lottery dollars at work!

SaskScapes – The MAS Story Slam

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THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY THE MUSEUMS ASSOCIATION OF SASKATCHEWAN

Happy 50th Anniversary MAS! To help mark the event Kevin Power joins the festivities held during the MAS annual general meeting in Humboldt, Saskatchewan.  With so many people in attendance,  representing museums from around the province, what better time and place could there be to hold a live story slam podcast. Enjoy,  a lively crowd and some very entertaining stories and life lessons!

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SaskScapes is a podcast featuring the stories of arts, culture and heritage in Saskatchewan. The series is produced and hosted by Kevin Power.  To sponsor your own episodes contact SaskScapes via twitter, Facebook or by email for more information. Your reviews in the iTunes store help boost the ratings so be sure to have your say!

Host: Kevin Power www.kevinpower.net

Music provided by Jeffery Straker www.jefferystraker.com

SaskScapes is also available through the iTunes Store on Stitcher Radio and TuneIn Radio. SaskScapes now has its own app for android devices available in Google Play.

IF YOU ARE ENJOYING THE PODCAST WE’D LOVE YOUR SUPPORT http://bit.ly/1TSJw8C

Follow SaskScapes on Twitter @saskscapes

Follow SaskScapes on Facebook: Facebook.com/saskscapes

Follow Kevin Power on Twitter @kevinpowerlive

Thanks to SaskCulture for their ongoing support of SaskScapes

Funding for the cultural sector in Saskatchewan is provided by the Saskatchewan Lotteries Trust Fund for Sport, Culture and Recreation. Your lottery dollars at work!

SaskScapes – Saskatchewan Nonprofit Partnership

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This episode is sponsored by the Saskatchewan Nonprofit Partnership

Most of us have, or will engage with nonprofit organizations at some point in our lives.  In Saskatchewan the nonprofit sector is alive and well, and thanks to a dedicated team of professionals working within the sector, the Saskatchewan Nonprofit Partnership has been growing! The SNP serves to benefit the nonprofit sector through research, networking, public awareness, sector strategy development and thought leadership, with a long-term vision that the nonprofit sector is widely recognized as a fundamental and essential contributor to Saskatchewan’s success. In this episode, Kevin is joined by 6 members of that dedicated team at the end of a very successful nonprofit summit held in Saskatoon.

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SaskScapes is a podcast featuring the stories of arts, culture and heritage in Saskatchewan. The series is produced and hosted by Kevin Power.  To sponsor your own episodes contact SaskScapes via twitter, Facebook or by email for more information. Your reviews in the iTunes store help boost the ratings so be sure to have your say!

Host: Kevin Power www.kevinpower.net

Music provided by Jeffery Straker www.jefferystraker.com

SaskScapes is also available through the iTunes Store on Stitcher Radio and TuneIn Radio. SaskScapes now has its own app for android devices available in Google Play.

IF YOU ARE ENJOYING THE PODCAST WE’D LOVE YOUR SUPPORT http://bit.ly/1TSJw8C

Follow SaskScapes on Twitter @saskscapes

Follow SaskScapes on Facebook: Facebook.com/saskscapes

Follow Kevin Power on Twitter @kevinpowerlive

Thanks to SaskCulture for their ongoing support of SaskScapes

Funding for the cultural sector in Saskatchewan is provided by the Saskatchewan Lotteries Trust Fund for Sport, Culture and Recreation. Your lottery dollars at work!

SaskScapes – Resilience and Respect

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Throughout 2017 SaskCulture has had the remarkable opportunity and privilege to build and strengthen relationships with a number of First Nation and Métis cultural partners in the province through our Canada 150 project, funded by Canadian Heritage, called Resilience & Respect: Canada 150 & Beyond.

Canada’s sesquicentennial was a starting point: an opportunity to reflect on the important work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and its 94 Calls to Action, to help ensure that Indigenous peoples are genuinely inspired to recognize positive change in Canada over the next 150 years.

Join Kevin Power and his guests at a gathering held in Saskatoon on January 26, 2018.   This final event for Resilience and Respect: Canada 150 and Beyond is not the end of the partnership or its work. Instead, it marks the next step in a journey together toward a more meaningful, respectful and rewarding relationship – one that supports positive changes needed in communities and cultural organizations in this province.

 

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THIS EPISODE OF SASKSCAPES IS SPONSORED BY SASKCULTURE

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SaskScapes is a podcast featuring the stories of arts, culture and heritage in Saskatchewan. The series is produced and hosted by Kevin Power.  To sponsor your own episodes contact SaskScapes via twitter, Facebook or by email for more information. Your reviews in the iTunes store help boost the ratings so be sure to have your say!

Host: Kevin Power www.kevinpower.net

Music provided by Jeffery Straker www.jefferystraker.com

SaskScapes is also available through the iTunes Store on Stitcher Radio and TuneIn Radio. SaskScapes now has its own app for android devices available in Google Play.

IF YOU ARE ENJOYING THE PODCAST WE’D LOVE YOUR SUPPORT http://bit.ly/1TSJw8C

Follow SaskScapes on Twitter @saskscapes

Follow SaskScapes on Facebook: Facebook.com/saskscapes

Follow Kevin Power on Twitter @kevinpowerlive

Thanks to SaskCulture for their ongoing support of SaskScapes

Funding for the cultural sector in Saskatchewan is provided by the Saskatchewan Lotteries Trust Fund for Sport, Culture and Recreation. Your lottery dollars at work!

Pioneer Women Project

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A group of people in Weyburn is raising funds for a sculpture of a pioneer woman.

As part of this project, the Committee, made up of Jan Linnell, Mayvis Goranson and M. Isabelle Butters, is encouraging people to share stories of Saskatchewan pioneer women. Two schools in Weyburn invited me to help turn their students’ narratives into digital stories. Grade 5 students at Assiniboia Park Elementary School were given the assignment to write about a pioneer woman travelling through time to the present day or to imagine a person from the year 2014 traveling back in time to pioneer days. The students wrote scripts, collected photos and produced imaginative digital stories that included a lot of references to Wal-Mart, cell phones, girls wearing pants, electricity, melting snow for water and general stores.

Later in the week, I visited Souris School and worked with 11 grade 5 students. Each had been given the assignment to interview a woman at a seniors’ home. The students brainstormed questions as a class and took a day trip to one of the local seniors’ homes, where they met women “as young as 94 years old,” as one student put it. After finding out what life was like for some of the seniors, the students took photos, wrote scripts and produced digital stories.

On the day that I was at Souris School, a couple of women from the Pioneer Woman Sculpture Committee and interested seniors visited the school to see what the students were up to. The students explained their projects to the seniors, who were impressed with the students’ creativity, dedication to the project, and their technical skills.

For more information about the Pioneer Woman Sculpture Project, please contact:

Ross McMurtry: 306-848-0444 Stan Runne: 306-842-5864 or Leo Leydon: 306-842-2595

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When artists collaborate great things happen

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I’m always excited to learn about new spaces popping up that provide opportunities for artists of all genres to create. Finding affordable studio space in any city can be a challenge. During my recent visit to North Battleford to record a SaskScapes podcast with artist Sherron Burns, I had the pleasure of spending time in the newly formed Artist Run Centre.  It was wonderful to meet several of the artists working in the new space that day.  Each has a section of the large studio, and each space is decorated with art that reflects the work and vision of the individuals.  It’s a bright, open, vibrant space and it all came together through the efforts of artists who had a vision. They took that vision to the town council and as with many things in life, when the vision is there, the practical aspects just fall in line.

Here is their mission statement:

ARC: Creative Studios is an artist run centre in downtown North Battleford where artists can create new work, collaborate with one another and connect with community through markets, events, workshops and performances.

You can follow ARC on their Facebook page HERE

(photo included with this post shows painter, Rosemarie Stadnyk working with acrylics)

Stay tuned for an upcoming podcast in which Sherron speaks about how ARC came together!

Stories of the land from Eastend, SK

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“Better to go outdoors. Better to see the flash of warblers in the willows, to smell the spicy aroma of sage, to hear the bright gurgle of the creek as it speeds under the footbridge. Better just to be here and try to accept the solace of this land that refuses to let us forget.”

– Candace Savage, A Geography of Blood

I’ve been staying in Eastend, SK in a charming house that was mail-ordered from an Eaton’s catalogue many years ago. Eastend is home to an Arts Council and the Wallace Stegner House, which provides residency to artists. It’s a quiet, friendly town with a population of approximately 600. The Eastend Historical Museum is hosting one of my digital storytelling workshops July 17-18.

While packing the car for the drive here, my roommate came out of our house and handed me Candace Savage’s award-winning book, A Geography of Blood, which is set in Eastend and Cypress Hills. “Have you read this?” He asked. I hadn’t, though I’d almost bought it several times at various bookstores. It seems serendipitous that I’d held out on reading it until now.

Savage, a Saskatchewan writer, who has stayed at the Stegner House, and now owns a house in Eastend, admirably balances her appreciation for this stunning landscape with an acknowledgement of her white-settler background. In A Geography of Blood, she delves into the disturbing history of Cypress Hills, specifically the government-sanctioned slaughter of bison to purposefully starve Indigenous people, the massacre of the Nakoda at Fort Walsh, and the establishment of farms in the name of so-called progress. Savage digs up the uncomfortable stories buried in the hills and valleys of the Plains while maintaining her love and appreciation for the land.

Here are some photos that were taken on the drive to Eastend and around this area.

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1947 REO Speedwagon near Caronport

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The band, REO Speedwagon, was named after a truck like this.

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Canola field near Caronport

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Cotton Candy Cloud in Eastend

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Bald Butte at Cypress Hills Provincial Park

A new perspective

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When driving through the farm fields of Saskatchewan, I’ve always been curious as to why abandoned barns and shacks are left barely standing, ready to return to the soil. I find them oddly beautiful structures and each one is like looking at a house of cards ready to tumble. Why not knock them down and clear the area?

In an upcoming SaskScapes podcast I spent an afternoon driving around my guest, Bill Warrington on his family farm. I asked him this very question. The next thing I knew Bill was cutting across his own wheat field, me bumping along beside him in his white truck, and then we came to a stop.

There stood (or rather leaned) an old wooden house. Bill is so proud of his family history and in 2011 had a plaque erected to honour the Warrington family homestead built one hundred years earlier. This was the home in which Bill’s ancestors lived, 13 children raised in this small shack! We mused about the pressure of having to get along under cramped quarters.

And in that moment, I realized why many of these dishevelled monuments are left standing. Within their toppling walls there are family stories to be remembered. How many of these landmarks are left standing to preserve the past? It was also pointed out to me, that in many cases they provide shelter for wildlife. I’ll never look at them quite the same way again.

Fort Qu’appelle’s new Centre for the Arts

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This weeks SaskScapes podcast was recorded in Fort Qu’appelle’s Old Central School. This grand piece of architecture was slated for demolition in 2011. You’ll hear my guest Doreen Evans share the story of when she cornered Jim Harding, the mayor of Fort San, in a local coffee shop and said “Jim, you’ve got to help save the school”. You’ll also hear my other guest, Jack Lowe share stories of being a student in the school.

The great news is that the school was saved, and is now home to the Fort Qu’appelle Centre for the Arts. I had a chance to tour the building and the work they are doing is remarkable. The dedicated committee is making every attempt to maintain the original interior fixtures where possible.

There are big plans for this centre, which will house dance studios, rehearsal, performance and gallery spaces as well as visual arts workshops. There is a call for emerging and established artists and craftspeople to come and show their work on either a short-term or long-term basis.

The team is so committed to bringing this vision to life, that a few dedicated souls are donating their time and skills to do some of the renovations themselves.

This is a true community effort, all in the name of creative arts.

In the next SaskScapes podcast you’ll have an opportunity to hear my conversation with mayor Jim Harding who shares with me how this dream began, and the plans for the future. I’m always so excited when I learn that Saskatchewan has a new arts centre for all to enjoy.

Art-i-tecture

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Thursday, May 22, 2014

The anticipation ended this past Friday as I finally took the SaskScapes podcast on the road, with stops in Moose Jaw, Willowbunch, Rockglen and Gravelbourg. I drove across the prairies watching the unmistakable “big sky” … like a constantly evolving canvas on which the image is always changing…never the same twice.

What an amazing group of people I’ve met on this trip. And by the end of my visit in each town, I feel like I made new friends.

My jaw dropped as I pulled up in front of the Willowbunch museum. The 1914 structure is an anomaly against the backdrop of rolling hills and farms. It’s of grand proportion and a heritage gem. The museum board members care deeply about the preservation of the museum, and I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation together. Thank you Doris and Nicole!

It was a true family affair in Moose Jaw. Father Gus Froese, a painter with a successful career spanning a lifetime. His son Rob Froese, one of Saskatchewan’s most gifted potters. Rob’s partner Gabriela Garcia-Luna, a photographer whose work is like nothing I’ve seen before…a powerful, moving experience for me. All three artists kindly invited me to their studios. Prolific is the one word that comes to mind. Each surrounded by past works, and works in progress. The are three passionate, articulate, gentle souls. Thanks to Rob and Gabriela for hanging out with me under shelter during the torrential downpour after the interviews. The brilliant rainbow was the payoff. You’ll understand how I happened upon the “word” artitecture when you hear the podcast.

Rockglen was unforgettable. I’d not travelled that far south west before I was agog at the rolling hills which were more like foothills of a mountain range. A rare archeological find! Thanks to Dick Oakes for introducing me to the old railway station museum and the nature walk. And then their were my hosts; Jan Johnston and artist/musician Neil Jones. They opened their home to me, and invited 15 of their musician friends and had a house party in my honor. Jan and Neil created a concert series for bands traveling through the area as well as local musicians. They literally hold the series in their house – well, Neil’s studio to be exact. What a time we all had! And what would such an event be without a three hour power failure! Even that couldn’t stop the music. The sound system got turned off, and the remainder of the evening was an acoustic musical buffet! I slept soundly in the cozy room they made up for me. I can’t wait to post the podcast. I made some truly lasting friendships here. I even met the town’s “cowboy poet”.

I’ve really been looking forward to seeing Gravelbourg. It’s no wonder the town has been dubbed “the cultural gem of Saskatchewan”, and “little Europe”. I fell in love with the rich French heritage. Thanks to Louis Stringer for giving me a tour of the museum. Louis is a dynamic personality who cares deeply for Gravelbourg and its history. He is, to be brief, a walking history book. The museum is home to two floors of impressive artifacts and memorabilia from the early 20th century onward.

Then on the Renaissance Gaiety Theatre, another landmark, and home to the Gravelbourg community players.

Lynn Holmes and her group sat down on stage with me and poured out their love of drama, and their passion to keep theatre alive. I was especially impressed with the outreach they do with the senior population of the town. This is one caring and dedicated group of volunteers who have all come to drama on the heels of careers in other fields. This is their time to find their passion and they’ve done just that.

I have over 10 hours of recorded material from this trip and so beings the editing so that you can share the experience with me through the next several SaskScapes podcasts. In the meantime, the next journey is already being booked. More stories to tell and more friendships to make!