Please join us for Re-Imagining Stories of Care Work - a collaborative storytelling and audio-visual art performance about the invaluable contributions of migrant caregivers to Canada’s social, economic, and political past, present and future.

Collaborative storytelling by Caregiver Connections, Education & Support Organization (CCESO) and audio-visual art performance by Kwentong Bayan Collective (Althea Balmes and Jo SiMalaya Alcampo) With support from Karen Ancheta, Storyteller/Facilitator and Leon Aureaus, Artistic Director, Carlos Bulosan Theatre. Presented by the Myseum Intersections Festival.

Seed Bombs & Singing Plants
Subtle Technologies Festival
Co-Presented with Evergreen

Featuring the work of
Jo SiMalaya Alcampo
Amy Desjarlais (nee Tabobandung)
Ester Dulawan Tuldague
& Members of Kapwa Collective

Sunday June 25th, 2017
11:30 AM to 1 PM

Chimney Court in the Children’s Garden
at Evergreen Brick Works
550 Bayview Avenue, Toronto
Admission is free. All are welcome.

In celebration of National Aboriginal Day and the radiance of the Summer solstice, Jo SiMalaya Alcampo and friends will facilitate an all ages seed bomb playshop followed by a performance that features the Singing Plants installation as a live instrument. The afternoon’s activities will include traditional prayers, chants, and a participatory jam session with singing plants and indigenous instruments.

PROGRAMME:

11:30-12:00 PM
Native Wildflower Seed Bomb Playshop with Kapwa Collective
This playshop will feature a hands-on demonstration on how to create seed bombs, an age-old agricultural practice now used for guerrilla farming. Participants will combine seeds, clay and compost into small balls perfect for tossing in places in need of native wildflowers!

Singing Plants (Live)
12:00-1:00 PM

Amy Desjarlais (nee Tabobandung), Michele Perpaul, and Jen Maramba will open the event with songs from the Sacred Water Journey album.

Ester Dulawan Tuldague will share a solidarity statement and talk about the Hudhud, one of the songs that the plants sing. It is a epic chant indigenous to the Ifugao People.

Jo SiMalaya Alcampo will introduce the Singing Plants and will invite them to play with us!

Kapwa Collective members will engage the audience in an interactive activity that embodies the elements of wind, water, air and fire; and introduce us to the rhythms of Isinay gongs.

Kapwa Collective will then invite Jo, Ester, Amy and the audience to join in a group jam session with singing plants and indigenous instruments.

Visitors: Singing Plants (Redux)
Subtle Technologies Festival
Co-Presented with Evergreen
Featuring the work of Jo SiMalaya Alcampo

June 3rd–25th, 2017
8am-5pm, Saturdays and Sundays
Weekday viewings by request

Children’s Garden Greenhouse
at Evergreen Brick Works
550 Bayview Avenue, Toronto

"An interactive sound art installation situated in the greenhouse of the Brick Works, Alcampo’s singing plants are potted banana plants that respond to human hand gestures to emit soundscapes of Indigenous chants, songs and spoken words.

The project’s title “Visitors” calls attention to the insertion of these foreign flora into the otherwise completely native gardens of the Brick Works and raises important questions around responsible horticulture, embedded forms of knowledge and the importance of asking the land for permission to access its resources." - from Subtle Technologies website

I am honoured to share Singing Plants Reconstruct Memory at the 4th Annual Asinabka Film & Media Arts Festival. Celebrating Indigenous Arts in unceded Algonquin territory.

August 19-23, 2015
www.asinabkafestival.org 
twitter: asinabkafest

Labour + LOVE is a celebration of Caregivers featuring storytelling, spoken word, and musical performances.

Kwentong Bayan in collaboration with CCESO (Caregiver Connections) will present stories from their comic book combined with live illustrations and audio soundscapes.

Special guests include Mahlikah Awe:ri, Lishai, Haniely Pableo, PANTAYO, Zak’isha Brown & Randell Adjei.

Kwentong Bayan: Labour of Love is a community based comic book project, created by Toronto-based artists Althea Balmes (illustrator) and Jo SiMalaya Alcampo (writer) in collaboration with caregivers and supporters, about the real life stories of Filipina migrant workers. Caregivers share how they resist the exploitative structure of the Live-in-Caregiver Program, while creating a community where they can care for their well-being.

Sunday May 11, 2014
2 pm - 5 pm
Beit Zatoun, 612 Markham Street
$5-10 PWYC admission, no one turned away at the door.
Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible ramp at entrance, washrooms are not accessible

Co-presented by Beit Zatoun.  Co-sponsored by Neighbourhood Arts Network, Another Story Bookshop, and FADO Performance Art Centre

This event is part of the 29th annual Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts, taking place from May 1 - 15, 2014 at various GTA locations.  For more details on this year's program, artists, and festival partners, please visit www.mayworks.ca

Kapwa Collective members - Jen Maramba, Christine Balmes, and Jo SiMalaya Alcampo - will develop new work for Restless Precinct, a site-specific, group exhibition and performance series developed by curatorial collective SUM°, which involves a number of commissioned artworks by multiple artists working with land, identity and colonization. 

The site is situated in Scarborough's Guild Precinct, a park full of transplanted European facades.  www.restlessprecinct.ca