Jumblies Theatre
 | |
| Non Profit | |
| Industry | Entertainment: Community Art |
| Founded | 2001 |
| Founder | Ruth Howard |
| Headquarters | Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
Area served | Toronto |
Key people | Ruth Howard, Founder and Keith McNair, Managing Director |
| Website | www.jumbliestheatre.org |
Jumblies Theatre is a Community Arts Theatre Company with the overall concept of social inclusion.
Origins
Jumblies Theatre was founded in 2001 by its Artistic Director, Ruth Howard. Ruth’s work is inspired by various artistic traditions, including the British Community Play form, pioneered by the Colway Theatre Trust, and brought to Canada in the 1990s by Dale Hamilton.
In bringing the community play form to Toronto, Ruth Howard and Jumblies Theatre, adapted it to reflect her evolving artistic interests and Toronto’s urban community realities. The company maintains community arts’ guiding principles of inclusive community engagement, a value that ‘everyone is welcome’, and a focus on artistic quality and respect for process and product.
Mandate
"Jumblies makes art in everyday and unexpected places, with, for and about the people and stories found there. Our art weaves into and grows out of life’s details and rituals; our community is open-ended and based on people doing something together. We dismantle boundaries and connect disparate elements. We create fleeting utopias with lasting ripples. We say 'everyone is welcome', and grapple with the implications – aesthetic, social and practical – of meaning it." [1]
Practice
Jumblies has three intertwining strands: Jumblies Projects, creating new works through multi-year residencies, passing through phases of research, creation, production and legacy; Jumblies Studio, training and mentoring artists and providing opportunities for professional development and hands-on learning; Jumblies Offshoots, maintaining relationships with communities, artists, and past projects; Jumblies At Large, collaborating with mainstream arts organizations and infiltrating community arts practice in to mainstream arts.
Jumblies Projects are typically residencies, which involve hundreds of community participants and dozens of professional artists from a range of disciplines and cultural traditions. Toronto residency neighbourhoods to date include South Riverdale, Lawrence Heights, Davenport-Perth and Central Etobicoke, Scarborough.
Jumblies makes art with, for and about people and places, forms cross-sectoral partnerships, employs diverse artists, and engages local people to create new works that inspire, reflect and celebrate a neighbourhood. Jumblies' projects are many-layered, flexible, accessible to all, and strive for artistic exploration and excellence combined with a sense of community that is open-ended and nurturing. Jumblies brings together people who may have distrusted each other, or been kept apart due to history, ethnicity, culture, ability, age and class; taking art to where people are and enticing them to venture out and participate with others.
The Jumblies Studio has several components, including mentorship, consultancy, seminars and symposia, print and digital resources and Artfare Essentials, an intensive week-long course on the principles and practices of art that engages with and creates community. The Studio has delivered Artfare Essentaisl in Toronto and across Canada, including in Vancouver, Nipissing First Nation, Regina and Montreal; trained many interns; held additional professional development workshops and seminars; published two collection of essays (Out of Place); and supported and incubated new projects.
Former Jumblies Studio Interns have gone on to establish independent Offshoot organizations as legacies of Jumblies' former residencies in the Davenport West area of Toronto (Arts4All), Central Etobicoke (MABELLEarts), Scarborough (The Community Arts Guild), as well as other community arts projects and organizations in Toronto and Ontario, including Aanmitaagzi Storymakers in Nipissing First Nation, Edge of the Woods Festival (Huntsville), and Making Room Community Arts (Parkdale, Toronto).
Projects
South Riverdale (2001) Project Partners: South Riverdale Community Health Centre, WoodGreen Community Centre, Ralph Thornton Centre, Jimmie Simpson Recreation Centre and Park, Queen Street East Presbyterian Church, Riverdale Community Business Centre, WoodGreen United Church
Arts4All (2001-2004) Offshoot project (2004-present) Project Partners: Davenport Perth Neighbourhood Centre, the STOP Community Food Centre, Pelham Park (TCHC), Davenport Perth United Church
MABELLEarts (2004-2008) Off shoot company (2008-present) Project Partners: Montgomery's Inn (City of Toronto Culture Division), Toronto Community Housing Corporation, Madbakh, Islington Junior Middle School, Mabelle Community Action Committee
Camp Naivelt (2006-2009) Project Partners: United Jewish Peoples Order, Morris Winchevsky Centre
Jumblies Studio (2007-present) Program Partners: Davenport Perth Neighbourhood Centre, Ontario Trillium Foundation, George Cedric Metcalf Charitable Foundation, The J. W. McConnell Family Foundation
- Launched in 2007 as a training and mentorship program. Through the program, artists participate in workshops, learning sessions and apprenticeship opportunities in community arts.[2]
The Community Arts Guild (2008-2012) Offshoot project (2012-present) Project Partners: Cedar Ridge Studio Gallery, East Scarborough Storefront, Toronto Community Housing Corporation, Ontario Trillium Foundation, George Cedric Metcalf Charitable Foundation,
Touching Ground: Project Partners: Toronto Community Housing Corporation
Productions
- Twisted Metal and Mermaids Tears (2000)
- I’m Taipingi Too! (2001)
- More or the Magic Fish (2002)
- The Land of Three Doors (2003)
- Once A Shoreline (2004)
- Your Name is Written in the Sky (2005)
- Where I’m From (2005)
- Tea and Bridges (2006)
- Bridge of One Hair (2007)
- Hawa Jabril Book Launch (2007)
- Pidgeon Creek Pageant (2008)
- Oy di velt vet vern yinger (Oh, the world will grow younger) (2008)
- Oy di velt vet vern yinger (remount at Mayworks, 2009)
- Nesting (2009)
- Like An Old Tale (Workshop) (2010)
- Like An Old Tale (2011)
- Train of Thought (2015)
Awards and honors
2000 Our Millennium Award for South Riverdale Lives and Legends
2000 South Riverdale CHC, Citizen of the Year (Ruth Howard)
2002 Community Arts Ontario, Best Practices for More or the Magic Fish
2004 Toronto Urban Institute, Urban Leadership Award Nomination
2005 Toronto Community Foundation, Vital People Award (Ruth Howard)
2005 Fresh Ground Commission, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto
2007 Great Grants Award, Ontario Trillium Foundation
2007 nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Costume Design for Bridge of One Hair
2007 participant in the New World Stage Festival, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto
2008 Toronto Community Foundation, Vital Ideas Grant
2012 Ontario Trillium Foundation Provincial Great Grants Award
2012 Canadian Urban Institute City Soul, Urban Leadership Award (Ruth Howard)
2012 TAPA George Luscombe Award for Mentorship in Theatre (Ruth Howard)
Further reading
- Jumblies Poem by Edward Lear
- Easy to Say: Reflections on the roles of art and the artist in Canadian adaptations of the Colway Community Play form funded by Canada Council for the Arts, Rachael Van Fossen and Ruth Howard, Jan 2005
- Produced short video on Once A Shoreline process as part of Documenting Engagement Vancouver, Ruth Howard Jan. 2004
- The Cultural Equivalent of Daycare?, Ruth Howard, funded by In Print Dialogue, Community Arts Ontario, 2004
- The Aesthetics of Including Everyone, Ruth Howard, Alt Theatre, Fall 2002.
- "Is Anyone Political Any More?", Canadian Theatre Review, Edited by Kim Renders, Julie Salverson and Jenn Stephenson, Fall 2011.
- "Out of the Tunnel There Came Tea", Chapter in VIVA! Community Arts and Popular Education in the Americas, SUNY Press and Between the Lines, edited by Deb Barndt, 2011
- "Placemats for September 11th", Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English, Vol.17: Political Popular Theatre, Ruth Howard, Ed. Julie Salverson, General Editor Ric Knowles, Playwrights Canada Press, 2010.
- "Easy to Say", Ruth Howard and Rachael Van Fossen, Off-The-Radar, web publication by the Canada Council for the Arts Interarts Section, 2005.
- "Holding On and Letting Go", Ruth Howard, Canadian Theatre Review, 1997.
See also
- Community art
- Community theatre
- Ruth Howard
- Ann Jellicoe - Founder of The Colway Trust
References
- ↑ "Jumblies Theatre". Retrieved June 4, 2013.
- ↑ Jumbliestheatre.org