Season 12 Farewell!

Thank you to all the participants, supporters, and community organizations that worked with Art Bikers during the summer! We were thrilled to reunite with families and return to magical gardens and green spaces throughout the city! We were also delighted to meet new faces and make art together throughout the hot summer months! Thank you all! Stay tuned for more photos, recaps and sharing on the blog in the next week.

As we wrap up this summer's program, we welcome your ideas, suggestions, photos and feedback year round!

Wonder'neath Art Society was thrilled to be a part of the Art Bikers program for the second year in a row and we are deeply appreciative of the opportunity to work with 4Cs Foundation in support of this beautiful program.

Mural Repair at Bayers Westwood

Art Bikers are excited to be returning to the community of Bayers Westwood Friday, August 17th from 11:30am-3:30pm for mural repair work! A fresh batch of paints have been sourced and mixed. Aprons, brushes, drop cloths and tools are all packed, and we can't wait to work together on this mural!

This will be Art Bikers last trip to Bayers Westwood drop by to say hi, or put on an old shirt and a sun hat and join us in brightening up this fabulous mural. All welcome! No painting experience necessary!

Schedule Change

We are concerned about the extreme heat/humidity and possibility of lightening on Thursday, August 16th.

YIKES!!

Instead of biking to the Pizza Oven in Dartmouth - where we were scheduled to be - the studio will be open from 2-4pm for Pizza bunting making! Add your favourite pizza toppings to our awesome pizza-themed bunting and then Art Bikers will deliver it to the Pizza Oven once it's done! The studio address is: 2891 Isleville Street, in north end Halifax.

Upcoming:

Bayers Westwood mural repair on Friday, August 17th from 11:30-3:30.
Ardmore Park (at Almon and Oxford Street, Halifax) ...more cats

Saturday, August 18 from 11:30-3:30.

Last Visit to the Green in Fairview

Art Bikers will be visiting the Green today, Wednesday, August 15th from 11:30am - 3:30pm! It's the last visit of the summer to one of our favourite spots in the city! Please join us in making comics! At the request of folks at this location, we will be drawing and telling stories - both large scale and small scale in a collaborative book and a whole batch of mini comic books!

Welcome To This Place - a national art project

The Art Bikers team is excited to be joining community members, artists, and ISANS and Mabelle Arts for the Halifax launch of Welcome to this Place - a national art project.

Please join us August 10 from 2-4pm for Cyanotype Printing (an historic contact print method using sun and natural objects!) at Glen Garden in Clayton Park. We'll be turning our prints into buttons and then joining in the picnic from 4-6pm. All welcome, free, interpreters on site!

For more information, check out these links or see contact details on the poster.

http://www.isans.ca/get-involved/community-gardens/
http://www.mabellearts.ca/…/25/welcome-to-this-place-toronto

Pop Up at Mosaic Garden with ISANS and Garden Friends!

Art Bikers will be working alongside staff of ISANS at the Mosaic Garden August 8th from 12-3:15pm. The location of Mosaic Garden is 28 Willet Street in Fairview and there's lots of shelter if the weather is uncooperative!

Join Art Bikers and friends in making garden-inspired costumes and props to animate the ISANS garden parade later this season. All welcome: all ages, all levels of artistic experience. Free!

Late Season Schedule

Art Bikers have a busy second half of the season. Here are our locations until the end of our season on August 25th.

Please follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for updates pertaining to weather or last minute changes!

Isleville Park Community BBQ & Halifax Bikeweek Updates

Pop-up events are a great way for Art Bikers to test ideas and connect with various communities and groups across the Halifax region. This year, we were invited to join the Halifax Cycling Coalition at the Commons for Bike Week Halifax.

Joined by children and families enjoying a sunny evening at the Oval, we created bike and scooter wheel designs that flashed and swirled as wheels turned. This was a delight for younger children especially!

New signage welcoming folks in multiple languages was a great source of conversation as folks recognized their language or characters from their alphabet!

The North End Community Circle’s Annual Isleville Park BBQ is always a well-attended community event! This year, Art Bikers set up a dynamic and interactive pop-up postcard exchange inspired by an art project called City Mail*.

With a temporary post office, mailbox, and mail carrier bags, there were jobs for everyone to do!

This is our very first letter carrier about to deliver the first Isleville Postcard! Who's the lucky recipient?! Councillor Lindell Smith!

Writing and mailing postcards within the park, tracking down recipients, gathering and sorting kept everyone very busy and engaged.

We had volunteers from the community delivering silkscreened “Isleville Post” postcards all through the event! Councillor Lindell Smith was among the lucky recipients!

A highlight was sharing postcards with maintenance crew members and firefighters!

An extra special thanks to all of the children, teens, and community leaders who helped animate this project!* Artist Alison Creba and friends are inspiration for Isleville Post. Creba’s Citymail was a project that happened in Halifax and by invitation at festivals and events in Atlantic Canada. Alison Creba was also an Art Biker for three seasons, from 2007 - 2009!

Art Bikers Season 12 Extra Training Highlights!

So as we've highlighted on the blog earlier, the beginning of the Art Bikers season is all about training! Because the Art Bikers program is designed with lots of learning and exploration in mind, a range of workshops and skill shares take place over the first several weeks in support of the facilitation the artists will do in neighbourhoods all around the Halifax area. Here's a window into those first few weeks:

This year, Art Bikers participated in a Child Development Workshop led by Sheila Davis who works with young children at Bryony House. Sheila helped us understand different stages of child development, and responded to some of our questions about past work with children and families.

Art Bikers have the opportunity to work with new Canadians and families from a range of places. We encounter many languages in our fieldwork and want to welcome everyone, so we participated in a Non-Verbal Communication Workshop with dancer and actor Liliona Quarmyne. She helped us develop awareness about our body language and gestures. Through role playing and theatre games, we learned so much about ranges of emotions, inclusion, and expression.

Art Bikers work from a community development perspective and an anti-oppression framework.
This season’s Anti-Oppression Training was with Carmella Farahbakhsh from South House.
Art Bikers asked Carmella how to develop and think more about anti-oppressive language and
how to help connect and share the stories of our participants.

Other highlights included joining ISANS for their Building Intercultural Competence Workshop, having
our Basic First Aid Training updated, and a whole host of skill shares that let us share our facilitation
skills; a favourite project, art medium or idea; and a brainstorming session to dream big and imagine
these new skills in our work with communities.

After a Basic Screenprinting Workshop, Art Bikers joined Wonder’neath in their annual tradition of
screenprinting tshirts with grade one students at Saint Joseph’s A. MacKay Elementary School.
We taught students how to make paper stencil designs using geometric shapes to create a unique tshirt.

Former Art Biker Merle Harley, and current staff Eric Diolola, led us in a Community Mapping Workshop
that embraced teachings from both Jumblies Theatre in Toronto and their respective art/music practices.
This allowed us to learn more about each other and explore our vulnerabilities.

Our beginning of season pop-ups included Switch! Dartmouth, Halifax Bike Week, O’Baby at the Khyber
as part of the Obey Convention, and the Annual Isleville BBQ.

Other highlights included:

• a program overview by co-founder Terri Whetstone;

• book binding by Imogene;

• mindfulness by Devon;

• sound exploration by Eric;

• mapping our skills, talents, gifts by Terri;

• and stop motion animation by Jessica!

Our beginning of season pop-ups included Switch! Dartmouth, Halifax Bike Week, O’Baby at the Khyber
as part of the Obey Convention, and the Annual Isleville BBQ.

We also developed a Working Together Agreement that highlights the emotional, physical, and spiritual
needs of the team. We do this to better understand each other and to anticipate the needs of people we
will encounter throughout our work during the summer.

Now that our season is underway, we will keep you posted about our upcoming locations and projects!

Schedule for the first weeks of July 2018!

We are so excited to begin our work outdoors in communities around the Halifax area! Here is our schedule for the first few weeks of July! The remaining July/August dates will be posted once they have been confirmed. Please reach out to us on our blog or social media accounts if you have ideas, comments, or questions and check for any updates if the weather isn't cooperative!

Art Bikers first visit of 2018 to Ardmore Park!

Saturday, June 30th from 12:00 - 4:00 Art Bikers will visit Ardmore Park to meet local families and begin repairing the Silly Faces fence! We'll bring paint, brushes, and all the materials needed to freshen up the art along the fence that has been made over the last few summers. Meet the full Art Bikers Team, share your art ideas for the park and help make the fence fresh and bright!

Isleville Post!

Preparations are underway for Art Biker's contribution to the North End Community Circle's annual BBQ - a big, all-ages gathering of folks from the north end of Halifax. This year, we are bringing to the Isleville Park a collection of trailers filled with supplies for creating a pop-up post card shop!

Look for the Isleville Post sign, post card writing booth, and letter carriers with their mail satchels throughout Isleville Park in Halifax from 4-6pm on June 20th. The whole event is free, there will hot food on the BBQ, fresh watermelon and lots of community members there to celebrate! Send a friend or neighbour a postcard during the event!

This project is inspired by City Mail, a unique art project by Alison Creba and friends, where letters were shared with recipients throughout Halifax and beyond through DIY delivery systems. Fun fact: Alison Creba was also an Art Biker!

Brainstorming Session at The Green in Fairview!

The Art Bikers will be at The Green - a special gathering space for many children and community folks in Fairview at the end of Randall Ave - on Saturday, June 16th from 11:30-2:30 for this season's very first brainstorming session!

Art Biker Devon is holding up a giant scroll that we will use to keep track of all the great ideas! Write, draw, doodle and share your art ideas with us so we can plan our dates and projects together!

Cyclozoatrope Pop Up on the Halifax Commons!

Cyclozoatrope making in the Halifax Commons (by the Oval) as part of Bike Week! Join Art Bikers and play with colour and animated possibilities on your bike and in the Spiral Garden!

Pop up from 4-7pm, then popcorn and a movie as part of Halifax Bike Week! We would love to see you there!

Sculpture Factory at Switch Dartmouth!

More than 200+ participants were eager to do their shift at Shift Factory – a collaborative station-based sculpture project – alongside the Art Bikers on a windy Sunday in celebration of Switch Dartmouth. Families and children worked at crafting brightly coloured felt balls connected with long tubes throughout the busy afternoon to create an evolving sculpture!

The first task was to collect a lanyard, draw your picture and add your name to an ID tag, and get signed in for a shift. A highlight was a child who rushed up to Art Biker Devon and exclaimed,

“This is my first shift! I’ve never had a job before!”

Next came the task of wet felting in the wind! The process of wet felting is exciting because it involves soaking colourful dyed wool with soapy water, massaging it for about 5 minutes so individual fibres stick together, and then tahhh-dahhhh: a felted ball!

Many children tried wet felting for the very first time!

Next was the rinse bucket and the exciting salad-spinner drying station to remove excess water. A few towels helped dry off the balls before they were delivered to the crew making the growing sculpture out of tubes and felted balls.

Parents and children worked together to make more than 100 balls!

The added challenge of building out in the elements meant that teamwork – and lots of emergency hockey tape – was needed, but over the course of the day the sculpture grew and changed form thanks to many children and families!

Our first event is: Switch Dartmouth!

Switch Dartmouth!

Join Art Bikers for their first outdoor event of the season: Switch Dartmouth!

We are so excited to load up the trailers full of art materials and bike across the bridge to Dartmouth! We have been designing and building for the past day or so and we are ready to invite you to: Switch Factory - a sculpture building assembly line involving tubes, tennis balls, elastics and wool! We are excited to build a wild and weird sculpture with you so please join our absurdist assembly line!

This is the 5th year for Switch Dartmouth and Art Bikers are 1 of 100 booths to visit, so it will be a fantastic day!

Time: Noon to 4pm

Date: Sunday, June 3rd

Location: On Portland Street, on the block between King and Wentworth

Look for our Help Wanted signs and Art Bikers t-shirts!

Free Time and You!

On June 1st, Art Bikers connected with adults and seniors through an opportunity with The Community Health Team (CHT). CHT focuses on the promotion of health and wellness and help individuals and families to build knowledge, confidence, and skills to make healthy lifestyle choices. This session called “Free Time and You: Try Something New” was designed to introduce community members to Wonder’neath as a resource for art making explorations and social interaction. Art Bikers designed and led a session exploring basic book binding and string art design, which also was the focus of our weekend Open Studio drop-in program.

Training also included learning about non-verbal communication from Liliona Quarmyne, a dancer, performer, and Youth Programs Facilitator at YWCA. Liliona led us through theatre games and facilitated discussions about body language, masked emotions, and how we communicate with one another. Here’s a photo of our most experienced Art Biker, Eric, warming up over the campfire after a skit!

Additionally, Art Bikers have been busy finalizing their set up out in the field. Look for these designs and be sure to come and say hi!

More Highlights of 2018 Training!

Cylinder Forest!

Cylinder Forest was a pop up event for babies, toddlers and families at the Khyber Centre of the Arts as part of the experimental music and art festival Obey Convention.

Wonder’neath was invited to participate in a fun annual event called O’Baby and Art Bikers coordinators Melissa and Heather responded with an idea called Cylinder Forest: a play space using only tubes and cylinders. Together with the Art Bikers, they spent time transforming the Khyber space on Barrington Street for more than 80 participants of all ages. There were whisper tubes, test tube babies about to hatch, shadow puppets and even some cylinder creatures that loved adventure but were very shy. The cylinder creatures needed a friend to help them discover the play spaces of Cylinder Forest!

Did you know that as part of their training Art Bikers learn about child development and what to anticipate when working with children of different ages? After spending several hours with young children and their families in the Cylinder Forest, Art Bikers made a list of questions and observations to discuss during the workshop!

Art Bikers Season 12 Training Moments

Young participants engaging with our newest Art Biker during a training session at Wonder'neath's Open Studio.

Art Bikers hone their facilitation skills and support the creative ideas of youth and families during lively drop in sessions that are free to the public!

The whole team works with Art Bikers co-founder to learn about their gifts, talents, and skills and then discusses what we are bringing individually and collectively to communities around Halifax. Beginning our brainstorming session is always a season highlight!

A trip to the storage locker is always part of our preparation: inspecting trailers and bikes, restocking first aid kits, checking supplies... these are some of the specifics that keep us busy before we meet with all of you this summer!

The first ride of the season was to Bayers-Westwood to check on a mural that Art Bikers helped create. It was a gorgeous sunny day and children were eager to inspect the mural with us and share their cartwheels and back flips! Looking forward to returning to this community in the summer.

2018 Art Bikers Team

We are so lucky to have three returning Art Bikers this year - Devon, Eric and Jessica - and we are super excited to welcome Imogen to the team. Training started yesterday with co-coordinators Heather and Melissa at Wonder'neath Art Society, where our studio is located this summer. We are off to a good start and look forward to connecting with you in the community!

Visit here again soon for updates and our schedule.

~

2018 Art Bikers Team (Left to right: Standing - Devon and Jessica. Seated - Eric, Imogen, and Terri, guest and Art Bikers co-founder. In front, Heather. And, Melissa, behind the camera.)