Festival Applications will look different this year. Instead of the traditional format for Community Booths, Craft Vendors, Displays, Food Booth Vendors, Marketplace Vendors, Martial Arts Participants, Performers and Demonstrators, we have two forms of Community Initiative Grants that you can apply for.
We are looking to facilitate community connection and create festival vibrations across the Lower Mainland and beyond. We invite you to play an active role in safely celebrating your favourite parts of the festival within your own bubbles.
Applications will fall into three categories:
Tier 1 - Safe-Bubble Community Gatherings
Tier 2- Workshop and Resource Production (Pre-Festival)
March 15-26, 10-11:45 am PST
Free Event at Strathcona Community Centre, Register HERE
Learn the Paueru Mashup, a new community dance drawing on elements of Radio Taiso and Tanko Bushi. Commissioned by the Powell Street Festival Society with music created by Onibana Taiko and movements by Company 605, this high-energy dance is accessible for all ages and abilities. Paired with this dance, participants will also learn the fundamentals of taiko, and to conclude the workshop, we will end in a culminating performance combining the two art forms.
This fun and physical workshop will have your feet tapping and arms waving, as we move to the beat of the drums. All participants are requested to wear a mask that covers the nose and mouth for the duration of the workshop.
Paueru Mashup in Crab Park
To kick off a season of Paueru Mashup community dance, friends of Powell Street Festival and TD Park People gathered at Crab Park for a socially distanced dance practice. In conjunction, the WePress Community Kitchen distributed over 200 Japanese curry beef on rice through its DTES distribution network. We hope to continue sharing our food, culture, and movements through more of these dance workshops. Thank you to TD Park people for their support of this project!
Paueru Gai Dialogues #2 on YouTube
If you missed the second of the Paueru Gai Dialogues or just want to relive the experience, you can now watch the presentations by erica hiroko isomura, Carmel Tanaka, Kage, and Ingrid Mendez de Cruz — as they share stories on how food and culture contribute to their experiences of building community in Japanese Canadian, DTES communities, and beyond.
Thank you to Hapa Collaborative, The Bulletin (JCCA), ElementIQ, SFU David Lam Centres, The Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council and City of Vancouver for their financial and in-kind support of this program.
The Paueru Gai Dialogues #3
The third event, On Memory, Mythmaking and Community Resilience, is at 1 pm Pacific/4 pm Eastern on Saturday, March 27, 2021. The event is free! For more information visit: www.powellstreetfestival.com/dialogues
What, if anything, have we learned from our past? Are there ways we can harness this renewed sense of connection to heal a fractured community and open the future to new possibilities?
Guest host John Endo Greenaway will facilitate a discussion with panellists Bryce Kanbara, Sherri Kajiwara, and Michael Prior exploring their work and these questions.
The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns have us looking back at the 1940s internment, dispossession and dispersal of Japanese Canadians through a new lens, bringing up questions of community resilience and cultural values and how they may have been passed down through the generations.
Participants will be invited into breakout groups to share their perspectives with one another. To wrap up the event, everyone will reconvene to offer questions and debrief together.
Bryce Kanbara is the 2021 winner of the Outstanding Contribution Award for the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts.
Bryce Kanbara was born and educated in Hamilton, Ontario. A visual artist and the curator and proprietor of the you me gallery since 2003, he was also the founding member and first administrator of Hamilton Artists Inc. He has held curatorial positions at the Burlington Art Centre, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant and the Art Gallery @ the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, in Toronto. In addition, he has served as the executive director of the National Association of Japanese Canadians’ Toronto chapter and as the Chair of the National Association of Japanese Canadians (NAJC) Endowment Fund. Over the years, he has also been a National Executive member of the NAJC, a Visual Arts, Crafts & Designer Officer at the Ontario Arts Council, the co-Chair of the Board of Directors of the Workers Arts & Heritage Centre and a Governing Council member for the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion. Bryce Kanbara lives in Hamilton, Ontario.
10th Anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake: Online Curator Tour of A Future for Memory
March 11, 7-8 pm PST
March 12, 12-1 pm Japan Standard Time
Free Online: Zoom, Register HERE
To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake, please join MOA Curator Fuyubi Nakamura for an online tour of A Future for Memory: Art and Life After the Great East Japan Earthquake.
This exhibition derives from Nakamura’s personal experience in the disaster region. She was involved with relief and recovery activities as a volunteer from May to August in 2011 in three different locations in Miyagi Prefecture, which suffered the largest number of casualties. This is your chance to virtually experience this powerful and moving exhibition. Nakamura will share what went into making the exhibition and what the artists and other collaborators from Japan say about their experience of the disaster and the recovery process in relation to their work.
This is your chance to virtually experience this powerful and moving exhibition. The event includes a pre-recorded tour—in Japanese with English subtitles—followed by a live, bilingual Q&A session with the curator.
Ainu, Okinawa and Indigeneity Series
Ainu: 150 years of resilience
March 15, 12-1 pm PST
Free Online: Zoom, Register HERE
&
Re-thinking Okinawan Indigeneity: Articulation and Activism
March 29, 5-6 pm PST
Free Online: Zoom, Register HERE
This series examines histories of colonialism and its impacts on Indigenous peoples. The Japanese Diet on April 19, 2019 approved a bill to officially recognize the Ainu as Indigenous to Japan and to promote and protect Ainu culture. But, has anything changed since then? Uchinānchu/Okinawan people continue to face different types of challenges and struggles as they are not officially recognized as “Indigenous” or even as “a minority group.” While Ainu and Uchinānchu people are distinct groups, and “Indigeneity” is an identity embraced by some and not others, we are keen to continue exploring issues facing these people as we renew our mutual commitment to justice, truth, and reconciliation.
Powell Street Festival Society is proud to present this resource in partnership with the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre (Toronto) and the National Association of Japanese Canadians.
