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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 each month!

BYOBeads Indigenous ONLINE Beading Circle
ONLINE USING ZOOM (email for the link)
Thursday Evenings – ON HIATUS FOR THE MONTH OF AUGUST
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!

Each month we invite a special Indigenous guest artist from a multi-disciplinary art form to share their work at one of our beading circles, and to have a discussion with our participants, making it a true celebration of Indigenous artistry & talent! Guest artists are 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. 

So come meet online, bring a cup of your favourite tea, share your bead work, share your tips, enjoy a performance, 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!!!)

AUGUST UPDATES:

Please note that BYOBeads will be on hiatus for the month of August. Stay tuned for exciting announcements regarding a new partnership with NWIA (Native Women in the Arts), and a very exciting roster of Indigenous Guest Stars for the fall of 2020! Stay tuned for announcements on our social media and in our September newsletter.

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 Star
7:45-8:00 – Discussion
8:00-8:45 – BEADS, BEADS, BEADS!
8:45-9:00 – Final Presentation by Guest Star & 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

Stay tuned for new Circle dates for September-December, 2020.

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.

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