You’re invited to join East End Arts and Indigenous, 2-spirit Artist Adam Garnet Jones for BYOBeads Online, taking place every second Thursday evening this summer!
BYOBeads Indigenous ONLINE Beading Circle
ONLINE USING ZOOM (email for the link)
June 11 & June 25 2020
7-9pm – tune in any time!
FREE
Led by Queer Metis bead-artist, novelist, & film-maker, Adam Garnet Jones and hosted by East End Arts, BYOBeads is an intimate, opportunity for traditional bead artists, hobby-beaders just learning their craft, experts, elders, and enthusiasts to gather and work together on current project(s), share skills, and show off the beautiful things they’ve been working on!
In the past couple of months, BYOBeads Online has become a gathering place for a network of Queer, 2-spirit traditional bead artists, and their allies, to discuss craft and connect from the safety of home – and in many cases home for participants has been from all over Turtle Island. We are thrilled to have been joined by beaders from Newfoundland to Vancouver, and even many from south of the border!
SPECIAL SUMMER UPDATE:
Starting in June, each month we will invite a special Indigenous guest artist from multi-disciplinary art forms to share their work, and for a discussion about beads and beyond! Guest artists will be drawn from Indigenous arts communities all over Canada, featuring music, playwrights, actors, storytellers, visual artists and more, celebrating the broad range of Indigenous artists from east Toronto and beyond.
Meet online and chat, bring a cup of your favourite tea, share your bead work, share your tips, and gather socially (from a distance!) with people who share your love of this traditional craft.
NOTE: Participants are not required to call in with video – We all know how zoomed out things can get these days, so please, feel free to join us however you feel comfortable (though we would LOVE to see your work!!!)
JUNE GUEST ARTIST: FALEN JOHNSON
Join us on Thursday June 25th to experience a special performance from Falen Johnson! Falen Johnson is Mohawk/Tuscarora (Bear Clan) from Six Nations Grand River Territory. She is a writer and podcaster. Her plays include Salt Baby, Two Indians, and Ipperwash have played across Canada. Her writing has been featured in Brick, The Canadian Theatre Review, and Granta Magazine. She co-hosts The Secret Life of Canada (CBC Podcasts) with Leah Simone Bowen. She has written for Urban Native Girl and Merchants of the Wild on APTN and was scripted the 2020 Inspire Awards which will air on CBC in June. She was named one of Maclean’s 20 to watch in 2020.
*Falen Johnson is being presented and paid by Playwrights Guild of Canada, and Canada Council for the Arts.
CIRCLE SCHEDULE:
BYOBeads is a very casual vibe, but for those of you looking for a bit of structure this is the approximate schedule for the evening:
7:00-7:15 – Welcome, Introductions
7:15 – Show and tell/update on Beadwork Projects
7:30-7:45 – Presentation by Guest Artist
7:45-8:00 – Discussion
8:00-8:45 – BEADS, BEADS, BEADS!
8:45-9:00 – Final Presentation by Guest Artist & Closing Thoughts
ZOOM LINK
For those interested in joining us, please email Adam Barrett our Programming Coordinator at Adam@eastendarts.ca to be sent the Zoom link, or reach out to Lead Facilitator Adam Garnet Jones @adamgarnetjones on Instagram.
UPCOMING BEADING DATES
- Thursday Jun 11, 2020 at 07:00 PM (Eastern Standard Time)
- Thursday Jun 25, 2020 at 07:00 PM (Eastern Standard Time)
ABOUT LEAD FACILITATOR ADAM GARNET JONES
Adam Garnet Jones (Cree/Métis/ Danish) is a Two-Spirit screenwriter, director, bead-worker and novelist from Amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta.) Although he had been making short films for quite some time, Adam came into his own as a filmmaker with the release of his first feature, Fire Song, at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015. Fire Song went on to win the Audience Choice Award at ImagineNATIVE, before picking up three more audience choice awards and two jury prizes for best film at other festivals. Before going into production, the script for “Fire Song” won the Writer’s Guild of Canada’s Jim Burt Screenwriting Prize. Adam was nominated for a Canadian Screen award for Best Original Screenplay for his second feature Film, Great Great Great, which also won Best Script, Best Performance, and Best Film at the Canadian Film Festival.
Adam has recently shifted his artistic practice away from writing and directing film and is focusing on writing fiction and creating custom beadwork, primarily for Indigenous artists. His first novel, Fire Song (based on the film) was published in the spring of 2018. Publisher’s weekly called it “striking and remarkable” while the Globe and Mail said “Fire Song is unquestionably necessary . . . because of its subject matter, perspective and voice.” The book received a starred review from Kirkus, and was named an honour book from CODE’s Burt Award for First Nations, Inuit, and Metis Literature. It also won a bronze medal for Young Adult fiction from the Independent Publisher’s Book Awards. Fire Song has topped innumerable “best of” lists of the year’s LGBT YA literature in the US and Canada.
To learn more about Adam Garnet Jones, the lead facilitator, visit his Instagram page, or his website.
JUNE FUNDERS
