Community Knowledge Centre - Toronto Community Foundation

About this organization

Mission

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, and our community is open-ended and based on people doing something together. We dismantle boundaries and connect disparate elements. We create an interplay of imaginary and real time; of virtuosity and inclusion; performer, participant and audience; story and history; installation and performance; activism and art; ''high'' and ''popular'' art; art and life. We create fleeting utopias with lasting ripples. We say, everyone is welcome, and grapple with the implications – aesthetic and social – of meaning it.

We do this by settling in one neigbhourhood for several years, forming cross-sector partnerships, moving through phases of research and development, creation, production, and legacy/sustainability. Each residency and production involves several hundred people of varied ages, backgrounds and abilities and several dozen professional artists.

Jumblies has three intertwining strands:

• Jumblies Projects continuing to create, develop and produce new works;
• Jumblies Studio, training and mentoring artists and providing opportunities for professional learning and play; and
• Jumblies Offshoots, maintaining relationships with communities, past projects and emerging arts leaders.

History of Organization

In 1990, Ruth Howard encountered the British Community Play, as imported to Canada by Dale Hamilton, a form that combines theatre on an epic scale, a philosophy of wholehearted social inclusion, and an astonishing capacity for social change. After producing a range of community arts projects, Ruth founded Jumblies in 2001. We have since embarked on multi-year community arts residencies across Toronto - in Davenport West, Central Etobicoke, and with the Camp Naivelt community. We are currently in the second year of our Community Arts Guild residency in East Scarborough.

Due to a groundswell of interest in or work, Jumblies is increasingly beset with requests to undertake new projects, and sought out by emerging and established artists interested in gaining first-hand experience in community-engaged arts. Having recognized the urgent need to equip others as community arts leaders, and that Jumblies is positioned to make a significant contribution to the evolution of community arts in Canada, we launched the Jumblies Studio in 2006.

Jumblies supports two Offshoot Projects that have emerged from our residencies: Arts4All in Davenport West and MABELLEarts in Central Etobicoke. Under the leadership of former Jumblies Studio interns, they have evolved as distinct, dynamic community arts ventures.

Accolades and Accomplishments

Jumblies Theatre and Ruth Howard (2005 Vital People Award winner) have gained national and international recognition for our integration of high-calibre aesthetics and meaningful community-engagement. In 2000, Ruth’s South Riverdale project Twisted Metal and Mermaids Tears won the Our Toronto Millennium award in the Culture category. Our Arts4All Festival in 2002 won a Theatre Ontario Best Practices award. Our residency project in Etobicoke engaging Somali, Caribbean and other Toronto Community Housing residents won an Ontario a Trillium Foundation “Great Grants” award, and the resulting production of Bridge of One Hair, featured in Harbourfront Centre’s 2007 New World Stage and Fresh Ground festival, received a Dora nomination for costume design.

Jumblies maintains strong relationships with artists and arts organizations in theatre, community arts, music, puppetry, visual arts, dance, new media and with companies and artists representing a variety of cultural traditions; and with other sectors such as social services, urban development, education, scholarship and research, housing, and community health. We play an active and leadership role at local, regional, national and international levels through our projects, productions, mentorship practice, cross-sector networks and ongoing interchange and consultancy with professional colleagues and companies. We are increasingly turned to for support and guidance from many quarters.

Programs

>Community Arts Guild
>Jumblies Studio Training Courses
>Jumblies Studio Internship & Mentoring Program

The Community Arts Guild - Jumblies’ 4-year residency in East Scarborough - workshops with hundreds of diverse community members of all ages; building towards an epic-scale, interdisciplinary production in 2011, followed by a year dedicated to legacy and sustainability. Components include:

• In the Picture Youth Project, currently supported by Toronto Community Foundation’s Vital Youth Program; engages children and teens living in motels and the City-run Family Residence (homeless shelter).
• Workshops with participants from Toronto Board of Education’s Willow Park Public School and Newcomer Services for Youth.
• The Family Suite - artists collaborate on special projects with families referred by Family Residence.
• Tamil Seniors workshops - with West Hill Community Services and the East Scarborough Storefront, our largest participant group to date.
• Lido Motel Arts Room - launched February 2010, in partnership with Family Residence.
• Workshops and Lobby Art at local Toronto Community Housing sites.
• Drama group at Pine Tree Senior’s Centre.
• Workshops with Native Family & Child’s Early Years and Thunderbirds Youth Dance Programs.

The Jumblies Studio is a flexible, integrated and itinerant program for learning, mentorship and exploration in arts that engage with and create community. Studio components include:

• Arts For All Essentials - an intensive 6-day course on the principals and practices of community arts,
• Jumblies Internships – immersion in active community arts ventures.

Seminars and Workshops on topics related to practice and theory Support to and Collaboration with Jumblies Offshoots – ongoing relationships with communities and arts leaders at Arts4All and MABELLEarts: consultancy, collaborating on internship placements, joint ventures and project and resource development.

New Works Development – We are re-configuring material from several of Jumblies past productions to be presented to new audiences, supported by Toronto Arts Council and Luminato and a commission from the Toronto Children’s Chorus.

Community Arts Guild

In 2009, Jumblies Theatre embarked on a new residency in Scarborough’s Kingston Galloway-Orton Park area: a place where dislocation, transience and social disparity are (for Toronto) at an extreme. In a trajectory spanning 4 years and engaging hundreds of people, multiple communities and different languages, disciplines and traditions, we are inhabiting a creative process that explores and expresses common and specific themes and stories across wide gaps of time and space. Our artistic and social development goals are interwoven. As we promote an expanded sense of art and its power to engage with and create community, we:

• bring together individuals and groups across ages, cultures, abilities, economic differences, geographic distances, shyness and fears - often for the first time;
• provide employment and training for local youth;
• explore Shakespeare’s Winters Tale as a catalyst to express the themes, images, stories and traditions of East Scarborough;
• produce a large-scale theatrical performance in summer 2011, involving transient and marginalized people in meaningful ways; and
• pave the way for a subsequent year-long phase of legacy and sustainability, generating momentum for longer-term inclusive arts in East Scarborough.

Funding and Program Partners

The Community Arts Guild has been generously supported by the Toronto Community Foundation Vital Youth program, Ontario Trillium Foundation, HRSDC Social Development Partnerships and New Horizons For Seniors, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council.  This program is delivered in partnership with City of Toronto Cultural Services, Cedar Ridge Gallery & Creative Centre, City of Toronto Family Residence, Toronto Community Housing Company, Newcomer Services for Youth, West Hill Community Services, Pine Tree Seniors Centre, Willow Park Public School, Vasantham Tamil Seniors, Arts4All, MABELLEarts, Aanmitaagzi Collective, Thunderbirds Youth Dance Theatre, and members of the Kingston-Galloway/Orton Park Neighbourhood Action Partnership.

Program Impact

Since winter 2009, we have formed partnerships with City and community-based service providers; run workshops with 450+ people of all ages and diverse backgrounds; employed 25+ professional artists of different ages, backgrounds and disciplines; produced “Nesting”, a 2-week interactive gallery (May 2009); launched the Lido Motel arts drop-in centre at the; initiated arts projects with “family units” recommended by the Family Residence; presented “Like An Old Tale” (May 2010), an multidisciplinary exploration of Shakespeare’s The Winters Tale; bridged differences of age, race, culture, religion, class and abilities; inspired positive interaction and sense of belonging; and fostered transferable creative and collaborative skills.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

“Most Torontonians feel they belong to their local community, but discrimination erodes a sense of being Canadian… Canadian-born minorities are less likely to feel a sense of belonging” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2009)

Jumblies’ Community Arts Guild bridges differences of age, race, culture, religion, class and abilities; inspires positive interaction and sense of belonging; and fosters transferable creative and collaborative skills.

Participant Vignette

"We have been involved with Jumblies Theatre for over a year, at first through a youth program offered at Cedar Ridge Creative Centre. Being a family with five teenage children, we needed a creative and social outlet for them. They worked with Jumblies in different aspects of performing arts: they built puppets and sets, wrote scripts and performed in front of an audience. After the first program, we (their parents) and the children got involved in an interactive play composed of different groups, culminating in a two-week presentation. People of diverse backgrounds were incorporated into a beautiful, cohesive group.

All of this is only possible because of the people involved in it. They make the events wonderful and engaging. Throughout each program they treated us with utmost respect. They made everyone want to stay and work with them, as they were a joy to be around. After each program ended we hoped for another one.

Although our association with them was unique to us, it undoubtedly was echoed in everyone who has come into contact with them. You do not just see art; you are a participant and become part of the Jumblies family. Now we feel we are part of this artistic family and eagerly await the next time to get together with people we know and do not know, to make art and new friends."   - The Hutchcraft Family, temporary Scarborough residents, now living in the West End, but still traveling across the city to join in the project.

Jumblies Studio Training Courses

Based in Toronto with a national reach, the Jumblies Studio is a full-time, flexible, integrated and itinerant program for learning, mentorship and exploration in Arts that engage with and create Community. The Studio’s goals are to ensure artistic vigour, variety, growth and excellence in the field of community arts; bridge the gap between college and university (or other forms of training) and the working world, through hands-on advanced training and mentorship; help artists to combine their expertise and passions with processes of meaningful social inclusion and transformation; maintain and share a body of knowledge in community arts theory and practice; and engage knowledgeable colleagues in the ongoing development of the Studio’s curriculum.

The Arts For All Essentials course, delivered at least once per year in Toronto, and at least once per year as an itinerant institute in other and varying regions of Canada, is a key component of the Studio. The curriculum builds knowledge and skills about the principles and practices of community arts: project development, arts-based research, group facilitation, documentation and evaluation, aesthetics and ethics, creative process, managing conflict and challenges, and working with diversity (of culture, age, ability).  In addition to this course, the Studio delivers a range of creative and administrative-based public seminars and workshops.

Funding and Program Partners

The Jumblies Studio Training Courses program has been developed and delivered with generous support from the Toronto Community Foundation, Ontario Trillium Foundation, George Cedric Metcalf Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council.  This program is delivered in partnership with City of Toronto Cultural Services, Cedar Ridge Gallery & Creative Centre, Arts4All, MABELLEarts, the Aanmitaagzi Collective, Davenport-Perth Neighbourhood Centre, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education Centre for Women’s Study in Education, Montgomery's Inn, Vancouver Moving Theatre, Concordia University, Toronto Art Therapy Institute, and workshop and seminar presenters from the Arts, Social Services, Business, and Academic sectors.

Program Impact

Since launching the Jumblies Studio in 2006, we have delivered Arts For All Essentials 5 times (once in Vancouver), offered several dozen seminars and intensive creative exploration workshops; and delivered specialized courses at ISIS Art Therapy Institute and Concordia University’s Theatre and Development Department. These activities have been well-attended (with participants from across the country and abroad) and received enthusiastic feedback and we now have great demand for their continuation. Approximately 500 artists, arts administrators, community workers and art therapists, scholars and students have benefited from this training; while 35 have gone on to become Jumblies Interns and/or Associate Artists, and embarked on successful careers.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

“Most Torontonians feel they belong to their local community, but discrimination erodes a sense of being Canadian… Canadian-born minorities are less likely to feel a sense of belonging” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2009)

Jumblies’ Studio Training Courses support artists to learn about how to foster meaningful social inclusion and transformation through community arts practices.

Participant Vignette

“My childhood was spent living in remote communities of Canada. Community arts were fully integrated within the community gatherings, events and celebrations. Art happened anytime, everywhere and with everyone.

I then spent fifteen years living, studying and working in Toronto, at times engaging in community arts, but largely working with other professional artists. Although I had worked within communities in the past, I had not experienced the level of commitment to inclusiveness and professional artistic production that Jumblies rises to.

When I walked into my first workshop with Jumblies and saw the multi-generations, diversity of culture and experiences, people that identified as artists and those that did not but still had a strong need and want to participate, I was elated. It was both familiar and exciting for me and I saw the opportunity to bring forward my unique childhood experience and my skills as a professional artist.

Working with Jumblies, and being part of Arts For All Essentials, has provided an exciting opportunity to really develop my facilitation skills and offered first hand experience in engaging entire communities in our work as professional artists. This in turn gave me a sense of how I can be part of fostering a return to professional art making in the everyday lives within my own community; arts that are fully integrated within our economic, political, social and cultural lives.”  - Penny Couchie - First Nations choreographer, participant in Arts For All Essentials 2009, and collaborating artist with Jumblies on several current projects.

Jumblies Studio Internship & Mentoring Program

Due to the groundswell of interest in Jumblies’ work, we are increasingly sought out by emerging and established artists interested in gaining first-hand experience in community-engaged arts. When contemplating these requests several years ago, we recognized that it is important to the integrity of our work that we meet this important demand while not losing focus on our core projects. This pointed to the need to equip others as community arts leaders able to do comparable work and become mentors and trainers themselves. Our Internship & Mentoring Program is an immersion experience. Interns who have completed the Arts For All Essentials course are matched with Jumblies lead artists working in community settings. They assist in workshops and activities with diverse participants and projects and can design and lead their own activity that matches their learning needs, take on a responsible role within one of our projects, or undertake a self-directed initiative with an external partner. Internships range from 5 to 18 months, during which interns attend evaluation sessions and Jumblies workshops and seminars. The efforts of graduating Interns are celebrated in public presentations, and many avail themselves of ongoing mentorship as they establish themselves as community artists.

Funding and Program Partners

The Jumblies Studio Internship & Mentoring Program has been developed and delivered with generous support from the Toronto Community Foundation, Ontario Trillium Foundation, George Cedric Metcalf Foundation, Theatre Ontario, Toronto Funding Network (Tides Canada), Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council.  This program has been delivered in partnership with City of Toronto Cultural Services, Cedar Ridge Gallery & Creative Centre, OISE, Arts4All, MABELLEarts, Davenport-Perth Neighbourhood Centre, and professional artists of diverse backgrounds and disciplines.

Program Impact

Jumblies Theatre has hosted 32 Interns – visual artists, writers, musicians, composers, actors, directors, clowns, puppeteers, designers, producers, administrators, photographers, dances, choreographers and community workers; 26 continued to work with us as lead and associate artists and administrators; 3 became Artistic Directors at our Arts 4All and MABELLEarts offshoots, which engage hundreds of people in their communities; and 30 have gone on to establish themselves as working artists and arts administrators. All Interns reported that their internships significantly enhanced their artistic, community facilitation, project development, and administrative skills.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

“Most Torontonians feel they belong to their local community, but discrimination erodes a sense of being Canadian… Canadian-born minorities are less likely to feel a sense of belonging” (Toronto’s Vital Signs®, 2009)

Jumblies Studio Internship & Mentoring Program supports artists through immersion in community arts projects to integrate ideas and methods of how to foster and participate in meaningful social inclusion and transformation through community arts programming.

Participant Vignette

“I came to Jumblies, after graduating from theatre school and teaching theatre to youth. I had a strong desire to include everyone, even the most challenging of the kids that I met, and often struggled to find a way to do that.

Through my Jumblies internship, I found a place where these values were at the heart of the work. I have met people from every corner of the world, learned words of their languages, directed them in performances, tried dance steps and marveled at their different traditions; I’ve been in groups of people that would never have otherwise come together – old, young, new to Canada, new to art, with mental, physical and emotional challenges, homeless people, community leaders, the ambivalent and the enthusiastic.

One of many highlights has been working with Tamil seniors, who told so many stories of their lives – stories of war, love, friendship and nature. I would teach them an acting game and they would teach me a folkdance.  When it came time to perform, they gave me a beautiful sari to wear and insisted that I dance with them. I was overwhelmed by their warmth and enthusiasm. Here is some of their feedback: “This is a precious time for seniors to enjoy this program. We recollect our childhood also; We are inside the apartment and lonely, so this is a very important program; We are aching for this program.” - Beth Helmers, Theatre Artist & Jumblies Intern 2009-10, partly thanks to the Metcalf Foundation.