adventures of hazel

 
Co-sponsored by Transformative Learning Centre in collaboration with the Indigenous Education Network and The Wildflowers Collective with the support of The Toronto Arts Council

OISE, University of Toronto

We invite you to Spirit Matters, an intergenerational gathering and celebration that joins Youth and Elders together in hearing and listening, play and action, and story and place. This gathering will bring Youth and Elders together to enter into deep dialogue on the profound challenges that we are facing in the first quarter of the Twenty First Century. We will spend three days playing, sharing, listening, eating, making music, and finding ways to understand each other’s sacred viewpoints.  This Spirit Matters is an opportunity to voice the collective fears, desires, and dreams that we all carry with us as we face the formidable challenges of this moment in time.

Spirit Matters is three days of workshops, circles, councils, art and wisdom instillations. It all begins on Friday night June 18th with an evening of three councils; a Youth council, an Elders’ council, and an Adult council.

These councils will meet separately and then come together to set the intentions and questions for Spirit Matters.

Saturday is a day of workshops, storytelling circles, community mapping, art making, sounding, drumming, earth wide circles, seed bombs, break dancing, movement, spoken word, traditional healing, prayer, and ceremony.

Saturday Night is a fund-raising cabaret and dance party drum circle, open to friends, family and community.

Sunday June 20th, 10 am to 1pm we will gather for Sunday Morning Sing Along before we return to our councils.  In our finale, we will put our prayers into the World Drum (www.theworlddrum.com), and we will voice our intentions and dreams for the future.

Spirit Matters is weaving many individuals and organizations from across Toronto and from other corners of the planet.  The World Drum will be joining us from it’s travels of peace and prayer, held for us by Jeannette McCullough.  Youth and artists from Sketch and 7th Generation Image Makers will lead us in a community mural, Red Slam Collective will rock the house with spoken word and hip hop coming from the heart with words of freedom and hope, Velcrow Ripper acclaimed documentary filmmaker will led us in his Fierce Light workshop, Marcio Mendes will lead us in a capoeria movement workshop, acclaimed storytellers Mariella Bertelli, Ron Cook, and Norman Perrin will take us on journeys through time, around Toronto and to other corners of the Universe, Larry Nusbaum will help us to make noise and music with his instruments of mass percussion, and the wildflowers will honour us with award ceremony and encourage us to make our own homemade handkerchiefs and napkins.  Elders, educators, and visionaries from the Transformative Learning Centre and the Indigenous Education Network will inspire deep dialogue and hold the gathering, allowing for wild inspiration and nourishing community engagement.

These are but a few of the tasty and fun offerings at Spirit Matters.

There will be a quiet room for meditation and prayer, an alter for people to place sacred objects, and a place to honour water, animals, earth, air, fire, and the Universe.

Spirit Matters is free of charge.

Lunch and Dinner will be served on the Saturday.
Light Breakfasts on both Saturday and Sunday.

This was a map of the districts of Toronto surrounded by a map of the world.  We painted it at Sketch!  People at Spirit Matters were invited to locate where they come from in the world and attach a string to the neighbourhood they live in Toronto.  It became a visual representation of the multicultural web that we weave in our toronto.

On saturday June 19th we rocked out to the music and poetry from our intergenerational community.
Red Slam and Red Soles called out to the ancestors and woke up our spirits!  One Earth Spirit got us dancing and swaying.