WaterBody: Where conservation and art flow in harmony

Leading up to World Water Day on March 22nd and Earth Day on April 18th Watershed Watch Salmon Society is teaming up with me and community members to bring the conversation about our home waters to the forefront. Through a series of dialogues and a water-inspired performance piece – one in Pitt Meadows on World Water Day March 22 and the other at the Earth Day celebrations in Maple Ridge April 18 – we hope to inspire an alternative perspective on how we view our home waters and become good stewards.

My collaborator on this project Lina Azeez from Watershed Watch says “Often discussions around climate change and its impacts on our watershed happen through processes such as open houses or Council meetings, that can be alienating or overwhelming. Through WaterBody we hope to inspire engagement and dialogue to shape our evolving water conversation both locally and at the Provincial level as the new Water Sustainability Act comes in to effect. We are pleased that we are able to partially fund this project through a Public Art Grant from the City of Maple Ridge.”

Lina and I are inviting residents of Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows to participate in facilitated discussions – we promise they will be educational, fun, interactive and inspirational! We’ll examine our elemental relationship to water and reflect on how we use water in our everyday life while exploring our home watershed and then discover how other communities have expanded the water conversation through the arts.

So what is WaterBody? It is musical meditation on our local watershed, a love song for water. With WaterBody we invite people of all ages that like to sing, dance or create and are curious and/or concerned about water to participate in a choral and movement piece I have composed for this project.

Through shared experiences and everyone’s creative input, we will work together over February and March to expand on this piece and hopefully inspire people to contemplate and engage in the stewardship of our home waters, with performances on World Water Day March 22 in Pitt Meadows and at the Maple Ridge Earth Day Celebration on April 18.

Attending a lead up WaterBody Dialogue is the best way to get involved with the performance creation aspect of the Project. Workshops are free and will be held on:

January 26th @ 6pm - in the lobby at The ACT

January 28th @ 10am – CEED Centre

January 31st @ 12pm - South Bonson Community Centre

February 2nd @ 7pm - Hammond Community Centre

February 4th @ 1:30pm – Ridge Meadows Senior Centre

WaterBody Dialogues are about 1.5 hour long and refreshments will be provided. For more information and to RSVP for a session contact Lina at 604-537-2341 or lina@watershed-watch.org or email me at kat@shinyb.ca

#watersheds #music #dance #movement #environment #arts #water