Presented by the Arts in Action Society in partnership with the Little Mountain Neighbourhood House
Through embodied learning and collaborative creation, Soil for the Soul cultivates intercultural solidarity and affirms that Vancouver’s artistic future lives not only in institutions, but in gardens, shared harmonies, ancestral memory, and collective making.
On August 22, we will learn about the unique soil composition and ecological history of Vancouver’s Riley Park. Then, led by creative duo Alima (Soliman Ponoon and Andrea Vargas), participants will make individual soil paintings expressing their relationship to Riley Park.
In Binuked language Alima means “the act of care in life and relationship”. Together they have over thirty years experience farming, soil painting and teaching music and dance.
Participants will also learn songs or dances connected to the earth from three different cultural traditions:
Tiddley Cove Part of a worldwide family of ritual ceremonial dancers sharing the common features of colour, vitality, disguise, patterned choreography and processions.
Oleksiy Grynishyn His work focuses on teaching village-rooted repertoire and folk vocal technique from Ukraine, as well as the cultural context behind ritual songs.
Kung Jaadee Belongs to the X̱aayda (Haida), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Tlingit, Tsleil-Waututh Nations, and is also part Hawaiian. Over the past three decades, Kung Jaadee has performed at hundreds of festivals, schools and Aboriginal celebrations.
September 19, we will host a dinner, celebrate our community learning, and exhibit the soil paintings at Feast and Fallow (305 W. 41st Ave). Please pre-register HERE.
On October 10, we will install the soil paintings on the raised planter boxes in the Riley Park Learning Garden. Kathara Indigenous Arts Collective will guide participants in a ceremony to honour place and relationship. Kathara brings ancestral land based ceremonies of indigenous Filipino inspired rituals that connect the spirits/ancestors to the Unceded Coast Salish lands, creating opportunities and experiences for those in the diaspora to learn music, agriculture dance, and rituals that bless and deepen the relations between peoples and land.
Soil for the Soul is grounded in the understanding that Indigenous and diasporic cultural knowledge systems are living practices that sustain community health, intergenerational continuity, and ecological responsibility. These practices are neither nostalgic nor symbolic; to embody them is not simply to preserve tradition, but to participate in regenerative ways of being that sustain both community and Earth. All peoples carry language, ritual, and ecological memory across generations. Within diasporic communities, cultural practice becomes a vital site of belonging, well-being and resilience. Ecological art-making deepens material connection to land and place.
Join us!
The Soil for the Soul project takes place in three parts:
Event 1: Soil Painting Workshop
WHERE: Riley Park, 50 E 30th Ave, Vancouver, BC V5V 2Y1
WHEN: Saturday Aug 22 10:00am – 3:00pm
HOW: Pre-registration HERE
Event 2: Soil Painting Exhibit and Community Dinner
WHERE: Feast & Fallow, 305 W 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC V5Y 3K1
WHEN: Saturday Sept 19 6:30pm – 9:30pm
Event 3: Soil Painting Installation Party
WHERE: Riley Park, 50 E 30th Ave, Vancouver, BC V5V 2Y1
WHEN: Saturday Oct 10 1:00pm – 3:00pm
