Join us for a conversation of what the past year held and for a quick dip into the official business of our finances and election of Board of Directors! As per changes at last year’s AGM, voting members are those who held volunteer positions of responsibility and those paid as skill holders through the year. Regardless of whether you have a vote, we would love to have you present virtually! Get a ticket by Feb 11, then pour yourself a morning cup, grab your hand work and log on!
Thursday evenings, 7:00-8:30 pm (PST)
4 virtual sessions: Feb 3, 17, Mar 3, 17
This mending guild is not about doing it the “right” way. It’s about trying new things, playing, and having fun as we repair our clothes and other textiles. Rather than subtlety and blending in, we encourage creativity and celebration of the mend!
We’ll share instructions and resources for a variety of mending techniques and focus on your specific questions. We’ll discuss how repair culture connects with our lives. All skill levels are welcome, beginner to advanced. Everyone has knowledge and experience to share and we look forward to a lively discussion and group learning environment.
A lifelong cyclist, Amy ‘Biker’ Walker delivers sociable arts activities by Makemobile, a cargo bike / studio. She wants to live in a world where we listen to each other’s stories as we darn each other’s socks. Visit makemobile.ca.
As a virtual series, Zoom and camera capability is required to participate.
This is a paid guild with tiered pay-as-you-can tickets:
$72 – Sponsored Placement (SP)
$87 – Volunteer Supported (VS)
$102 – Community Patron (CP)
Subsidized spaces in this program are available thanks to the generous donations of EartHand community members. For more information about our pricing scale see this blog post.
Get your ticket here!
Join us online the last Monday of the month from January – November 2022, 7-8:30pm
11 virtual sessions: Jan 31, Feb 28, Mar 28, Apr 25, May 30, Jun 27, Jul 25, Aug 29, Sept 26, Oct 31, Nov 28
Join Jaymie Johnson (Nelson) and Sharon Kallis (Vancouver) to foster mindfulness for resilience by cultivating a creative practice of recording internal and external seasonal observations.
This year-long monthly guild will synthesize our collective learning from last year’s Seasonal Almanac guild with increased structure and guidance for participants. For this 2022 rendition, we will encourage creative record keeping to include seasonal observations alongside personal journaling with a focus on where we’re seeing, hearing and reading notes of resilience in the world around us, so that we can reflect back on this in the following years for future buoyancy.
Taking inspiration from Arzu Mistry and Todd Elkin’s Unfolding Practice: Accordion Book Project, we invite participants to deconstruct how they think about record keeping, journaling and collecting content.
A monthly practice of sharing our notes, drawings, and reflections on the resilience observed around and within us, provides an opportunity to inspire each other in both the mindfulness practice of observing our worlds and the creative practice of recording our observations in ways that are unique to each participant’s skills, interests, and needs.
“My background is not in the arts at all and it was a bit intimidating to meet this group of people who are so knowledgeable and creative. For me it has been an amazing opportunity to learn about everyone’s process of observation and how they document this process. It has been inspiring and I have learned a lot. It has taught me to look at things with a different purpose. Be more conscious about small details and think more about the extraordinary in the everyday.”
– Angeles Hernandez Correa, 2021 Seasonal Almanac participant
This is a paid drop-in program with individual tickets for each month – make sure to register separately for each date you plan to attend. We hope that many will be able to join for most of the sessions however this is not mandatory.
As a virtual series, Zoom and camera capability is required to participate.
Ticket prices per session:
$8 – Sponsored Placement (SP)
$14 – Volunteer Supported (VS)
$20 – Community Patron (CP)
Pay what you can – subsidized spaces in this program are available thanks to the generous donations of EartHand community members. For more information about our pricing scale see this blog post.
Get your tickets for each session here:
Jan 31, Feb 28, Mar 28, Apr 25, May 30, Jun 27
Note: Only tickets for the first 6 months are currently available for booking – the final 5 months will be available upon announcement in late spring.
We are super excited to have Anna Heywood Jones and Meagan Innes joining us for garden time and studio explorations this year as our third year of having an Artists in Residence program that informs the direction of our land-based inquiry.
More information coming soon about the workshops, community skill-share sessions and many ways to get involved… but we promise it will be full of colour and fibre!
Meagan Innes is a Squamish woman, an educator and a multidisciplinary artist. Meagan completed her MEd around examining connection to place, kinship and to spéńem (plant) s7eḵw’í7tel (siblings) péńem (plant things). She is waking up her Ancestral skills by exploring reshaping pedagogy to embody traditional ways of knowing and being. She completed the First Nations Language Program at SFU and is a Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Sníchim speaker. Meagan loves to work with her hands, utilizing traditional materials and objects to create cultural works that are utilized for their intended purposes. Her practice includes weaving with a variety of natural fibres, animal hides, and plant materials as dyes and pigments.
Anna Heywood-Jones is a visual artist and educator based in Vancouver on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations. Through her work, Heywood-Jones explores the complex relationship between human and botanical spheres, articulated through textile materials and processes. Additionally, her artistic practice is dedicated to exploring the slow loss of her father and the recent birth of her son. She holds an MFA degree from NSCAD University, a BFA degree from Emily Carr University and a diploma in Fibre Arts from Kootenay School of the Arts.
EartHand Gleaners works hard to provide low barrier, affordable and deeply impactful programming through our various skill development, artist residency and land-inquiry projects.
Over the last few years as our program offerings have grown, we made the decision not to increase program costs to pay for administration; but instead to dedicate any revenue into paying artists fees. This decision allows us to engage more artists in our Artists in Residence program. However maintaining affordable programming requires hours of administrative work and grant writing. Our core team does this work on an almost entirely volunteer basis.
Currently we are exploring moving towards a more sustainable model with paid administrative hours, while still continuing to honour and support the artists who lead our quality, affordable programs.
So, this year we are trying something different.
You will notice three different types of tickets/fees for EartHand paid programs:
Level One/Community Patron – this standard fee is for those participants who can afford the cost of providing the selected program. The fee covers: the artist/host fee, supports administration costs of the organization, a program coordinator and a few dollars towards the artist in residence fees for the following year.
Level Two/Volunteer Supported Placement– covers a portion of the artist/host fees, a nominal amount of administration costs and relies on volunteer administrative support.
Level Three/Sponsored Placement – covers a portion of the artist/host fee and is supported by other fundraising efforts and volunteer administration.
Our goal in piloting this fee structure is to provide equitable access to EartHand programs. Therefore if a program has 9 spaces, we will offer 3 spaces in each type of fee/ticket. We will be tracking our progress towards this goal during the pilot period. I look forward to hearing what you think and together we will see how this allocation works as a starting place.
Please pay as much you are able, this will allow us to get a better sense of what our overall membership can afford and aid in the making of budgetary decisions that keep us fiscally responsible while supporting those community members needing a financial break in order to participate.
Since starting EartHand as a small, arts-based non-profit, we have always been very rigorous and transparent in tracking where the money comes from and where it goes, but the volunteer time behind the scenes has been much more difficult to track.
As well, you may have noticed that over the past few years we have explored a variety of models to try and put the round pegs of stewardship and making-from-the-land, into the square holes of budget spreadsheets and annual reports. The intricacies of that exploration continues, as we now think ahead for EartHand and what succession could look like.
A Note from the Executive Director:
While I (Sharon Kallis) am not going anywhere soon, I am working to set EartHand Gleaners up for success in the future. The creation of EartHand and it’s continued stewardship has been an important aspect of my creative journey and I have been privileged to be able to spend many unpaid hours devoted to this work. However I would not expect this to be a sustainable model and I feel it is important to develop an organisational structure that supports fairly paid administrative workers in the future. As we explore and experiment with various financial models I will continue to seek funding opportunities to support our programs.
Meanwhile the Board Members and I want you all to know that we deeply appreciate the support from the program participants, volunteers and anonymous community members who make contributions – donations are always welcome as e-transfers to earthandgleaners(at)gmail.com and directly support artists fees for free programs as well as our stewardship projects.
Thank you for being on this journey with us!
Sincerely, Sharon Kallis
Executive Director/Lead Artist
2021 has been a rich year of knowledge transfer in the gardens for EartHand!
We have been so thrilled to have with us this past year three interns from two universities: Sarah Holloway- Rhode Island School of Design and Rebecca Wang and Melanie Camman from Emily Carr University of Art and Design joined us for nearly 500 hours of combined time in the gardens and online doing research and administrative support- understanding how we build programs around the plants that we tend.
Each person was on their own learning journey, but each has involved mapping one of the gardens in some way that takes us forward as a community in better understanding the plants in our stewardship. Also, how we share information with the larger community and our stewardship groups have been enriched by the work each of these individuals has done.
Creating a Digital Means of Production Garden (MOP)-
by Sarah Holloway is ready for you to visit here!
Completed over two summers, this project by Sarah worked to digitize the experience of arriving at the garden and seeing something new every time. Divided into types plants based on use, you can explore the digital garden and get a taste for the plantings at MOP.
Intentionally easy to get lost in, like the wilds of MOP itself, plant locations are not revealed in part to aid in opportunities for self discovery on site and reduce possible plant theft or inappropriate harvests from oversharing information online.
Sarah is back at RISD for another year but has their sites set on settling in Vancouver after graduation so we look forward to having Sarah in the gardens with us in summers to come.
Melanie is currently at Emily Carr pursuing her master’s degree. Weaving is a core part of her practice as is her own ancestral cloth research and she has joined us this summer to help with general stewardship at Trillium Park while working on mapping our seasonal work- giving the stewardship team a better sense of the annual work to be done as well as harvesting and seasonal use opportunities from the plantings on site. The final map is looking beautiful and will be very helpful for garden planning and we are thrilled to have Melanie active in our programs and participating in stewardship, using materials from the gardens in her work whenever school and teaching on the ski slopes gives her space to join us.
Rebecca Wang graduated from Emily Carr in the Spring of 2021, shortly after beginning her internship with us as a part of the Shumka Centre for Creative Entrepreneurship Artists Apprenticeship Network program.
Rebecca’s time has been a blend of online administrative zoom time with Sharon on program creation and support, in the gardens learning about the plantings- recording and transcribing to spreadsheet the seasonal work rhythm of the many plants, and helping out at events with the community.
This Autumn wrapped up the official hours of the program with time spent learning how to develop a community project and writing grants with Sharon. Together they got 2 grants out the door, and if successful it will allow Rebecca to continue working with EartHand in 2022, in a paid capacity as a research artist and program lead in figuring out how we can take our Ancestral Cloth program to a larger and more diverse community. We are looking forward to having Rebecca stay on with us as a garden steward and joining our small dedicated team!
A free, 3-part online conversational series about the history and future of Canadian fibresheds with Anna Hunter from Longway Homestead (Manitoba) and Nicola Hodges (Sunshine Coast), hosted by Sharon Kallis ( Vancouver).
Wednesday nights 7:00-8:30 pm PST
Nov 3, 10, 17
Recorded with time-limited access. Registration required for each event.
Nov 3 – Canadian FibreShed: Wool Processing, Weaving and Knitting Mills
Anna Hunter will share her current research into the history of wool processing, weaving and knitting mills in Canada, including the challenges that led to the industry decline.
Nov 10 – Canadian FibreShed: Regional to National, a Conversation
Anna Hunter in conversation with Nicola Hodges unpacks the current status of where challenges stand for Canadian textiles. Anna and Nicola discuss how to move beyond the idea that we will alter our fibreshed significantly through niche, small-scale making. So, how do we scale up to a larger industry that has principles based in regenerative land practices?
How do we get “good cloth” into peoples hands, make it the norm and make it accessible beyond a luxury item?
What cross pollinations do we need? The second half of this session will open up to ideas and conversation with participants.
Nov 17 – Canadian FibreShed: Closing the Circle
Identifying the threads and connections we can bring together
Our final conversation will begin by using the SWOT* assessment as a tool to understand the national fibreshed as we have identified from the conversation on the 10th. Then the majority of our time together will be as a circle, each participant invited to introduce themselves and share what their needs are, and what they can offer others towards building a more connected and vibrant fibreshed.
Closing: Anna leads us in thinking about what actions we can take as individuals, can we find our peers or those who can use our support to move certain areas of this work forward? How do we collectively leverage our skills and strengths?
*SWOT: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats
Anna Hunter is a first generation sheep farmer and wool mill owner in Eastern Manitoba, Treaty One Territory. Anna, her husband Luke, and their two sons moved to Manitoba from Vancouver BC in 2015. She started a small sheep farm, raising Shetland sheep for their beautiful wool. In 2018 they established a small-scale wool processing mill – the only one of its kind in Manitoba. They process wool and fibre for themselves and other farmers. Anna is passionate about building community and connecting rural fibre farmers with urban consumers, fibre artists and crafters. Anna believes that regenerative agriculture and climate beneficial food and clothing is integral to moving forward as farmers, fibre artists and Manitobans. To learn more about Anna and her farm/wool mill, check out www.longwayhomestead.com
Nicola Hodges is a textile craftsperson and teacher with an interest in design, local textile manufacturing and fibre farming. She taught for Emily Carr University’s Fibershed Field School, mentoring students in the Warping and Weaving cohort. She has worked with EarthHand Gleaners Society since 2017 teaching workshops on fibre processing and spinning as well as led projects exploring hyper-local natural dyes. She recently had the opportunity to train at Long Way Homestead’s spinning mill as well as travel to study various crafts including traditional knitting design, natural dyes, leather tanning and shepherding. She currently lives on shíshálh (Sechelt) and Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) territories in xwesam (Roberts Creek) where she manages a research garden for Maiwa Handprints studying the viability of growing dye crops in this bioregion.
This series draws to a close EartHand Gleaners 2021 project, Weaving Our Community SkillShed: Tending Our Community FibreShed
We have copies of FIBERSHED by Rebecca Burgess available for loan to those in the Vancouver area thanks to the Shumka Centre for Creative Entrepreneurship. Please email earthandgleaners(at)gmail.com if you would like to borrow a book!
Supported by the BC Arts Council resilience funds, Vancouver Park Board: Neighbourhood Matching Fund, EartHand Gleaners Society and the Shumka Centre for Creative Entrepreneurship.
A free, virtual series to unpack the complexity of decolonizing our tongues and actions. Led by Meagan Innes and Senaqwila Wyss with a weekly guest from our Artist in Residence Program (Jolene Andrew, Cease Wyss, Jaz Whitford and Tori Clark).
4 sessions
Thursdays, 7:00-8:30 pm PST
Nov 4, 25, Jan 14, 28
Registration is required for each event, all of which have a max of 20 spaces.
Events will be recorded for internal use only towards creation of a document that maps the learnings for future sharing.
Many Nations are directing great energy into language revitalization projects. But what are the impacts of settler descendants having access to traditional languages before those whose land we stand upon are themselves able to return to these learnings? This conversation will unpack some of the complexity and begin the conversation around how those of us from other places can support this work.
Pre-work request: Squamish Language Revival (youtube video)
Nov 25 – Names of Plants and Decolonizing our Tongues
A part of how we can build relationships to place is through how we connect and acknowledge plants as kin. Looking initially at Fireweed and Stinging Nettle which are both plants that have rich cultural traditions in many places, let’s look at how many other decolonized names we can collectively share for these plant relatives. Meagan and Senaqwila will share the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh sníchim for these plants and invite you to do your own research on these, or other plants from your own ancestral roots.
Pre-work request:
-Bring plant names in your ancestral language forward to share with the group, have links etc ready to share if relevant
–Knowledge Keepers Medicine Walk (youtube video)
Jan 14 – Language and Place: Pushing Beyond Territorial Acknowledgments
Meagan and Senaqwila will share with the group the Squamish map of place names so we can begin to understand how to deepen our sense of place and territorial acknowledgement- what village site do you live near? What are the true place names for the spots you frequent? Aimed at lower mainland participants, this session is an opportunity to unpack the complexity of geography, borders and regions.
Pre-work request:
Land Acknowledgement | Baroness von Sketch Show (youtube video)
Territory Acknowledgement Protocol (youtube video)
Jan 28 – Honouring the Life of Plants
This final session will be part conversation and part workshopping the creation of personalized prayers or intentional words and actions we can each imbed in our harvesting practice. How do we ask and honour the life of the plant from which we will make food, medicine and crafts?
What is our responsibility as a human in relation to that plant? What are words or offerings from our own ancestral lineage we can bring into this practice?
Meagan and Senaqwila share a conversation around teachings within the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Nation that may be brought into our personal rituals and collectively the group will discuss other current practices and research into our own ancestral ways.
Pre-work request:
-Read the honorable harvest by Robin Wall Kimmerer
-Personal research into harvest and planting rituals for your own cultural roots,
-Watch Spirit Doctors (film)
EartHand gratefully acknowledges the support of BC Arts Council resilience funds and City of Vancouver for making this program possible.
Many of our online Guilds have begun, but we are still meeting outdoors and celebrating the bounty of this season; finding ways to celebrate and honour the plants that feed and nurture.
SEPTEMBER 25 7.30pm- Documentary Movie Night
Join Martin Borden and Sharon Kallis at the outdoor screening of the now completed, Wild Fibres short film Martin has created around Sharon’s making of the nettle coat.
Hastings and Kamloops pop-up plaza, a part of the Neighbourhood Food Week!
SEPTEMBER 26 1.30-3pm- Rosehips and Stories
Join Meagan Innes and Sharon Kallis for traditional stories of the place we now call Trillium Park, and gathering of rosehips for winter medicine, and gifting nourishment back to the roses.
Please pre-register here, bring an umbrella, and a cup to join us at the Strathcona garden cider pressing right after
RECRUITING NEW TRILLIUM STEWARDS
Want to get more involved with EartHand and live in the East Vancouver or downtown core?
We are now seeking new volunteers to join our awesome stewardship team in time for fall planting.
The team meets weekly in the summer months, tapering off to twice a month through winter and uses Slack to stay in touch about projects and upcoming work. Perks include learning about pruning, weaving garden fences, opportunities to work creatively with the plants on site. Small discount for Earthand paid programming and learn more about hand crafting with seasonal abundance with a great group of people.
Upcoming Site Orientation session is October 2, 2-4pm, planting date October 16 1-4pm
email earthandgleaners(at)gmail.com to apply, send a short email with your name, phone number, and let us know if you live in the area, are an artist or maker or other current relationships to gardens and plants that inspire you to join our EartHand Trillium team.
Sharon has been busy designing the autumn workshop and guild schedule which features collaborations with artists near and far including past and present Artists in Residence – now is the time to design your own Autumn learning journey with us!
Four consecutive nights to get your weave on! Weaving all things basket related with Sharon and Amy at Trillium North Park
Aug 23, 24, 25, 26 / 6-8pm / Free, registration dependent upon skill level (see post) / Trillium Park
Spend a Sunday afternoon helping prepare wool for EartHand’s Artists’ in Residence T’uy’t’tanat (Cease Wyss) and Jolene Andrew in time for their winter weaving.
Sundays / Aug 29, Oct 3 / 1-4pm / Free, registration required/ Trillium Park
Colours: From the Land to Fleece
This dye studio intensive over four Sundays is a chance to work with some of the iconic dye plantings from the Means of Production and Trillium gardens. Over the sessions we will dye two small white and grey sheep fleece that have been pre-mordanted with alum. The group of 7 will collectively share the raw dyed wool coming from each dye bath, giving everyone a wide library of local colour for autumn spinning, felting and other winter fibre work.
Sundays / Sept 12, 19 Oct 17, 24 / 1-5pm / $270 incl. materials / Trillium Park
Guild: Lessons from the Nettle Sister
The six months of virtual monthly meeting times will lead us through from green unretted, water retting stalks, nature/root retted stalks into spring tea and medicine gathering and provide the space and time to come together and share and celebrate “All Things Nettle”.
Mondays / Sept 20, Oct 18, Nov 15, Jan 17, Feb 21, Mar 21 / 7-9pm PST / $180 / Virtual*
*guild members in the Vancouver area can have access to EartHand gardens for limited amounts of nettles, flax and dogbane.
Indigo Vat Research Support Group
Are you new to Indigo or Woad vats and feeling a little nervous and intimidated? So are we!
Join Sharon Kallis (EartHand Gleaners Society) and Ivy Stovall (Rewild Portland) for this online research and support group as we learn and share together.
Tuesdays/ Sept 21, Oct 19, Nov 16/ 7-9pm PST / $90 / Virtual
Colour Blending and Spinning Guild
Inspired by seasonal bounty coming from our gardens and kitchens, let’s look at colourways with a different lens. Consider the bounty of autumn apples; flecks of purple, gold, cool yellows and a base line of red- how might that translate to coreopsis, tansy, madder and pokeberry dyes?
Although this focus is on blending and fibre preparation, if you are new to spinning this is a fantastic way to jump in and fall in love with preparing your own yarn for knitting or weaving projects. Led by Karen Barnaby and Sharon Kallis.
Fridays / Oct 15, Nov 19, Jan 21, Feb 18 / 7-9pm PST / $90 / Virtual
Past Threads: Present Place – Winter Ancestral Cloth Guild
What might your ancestors have been wearing 1000 years ago?
Weekly virtual gatherings include discussion time for sharing what we individually are learning in our research with short, supportive tutorials into spinning, dying and weaving using materials locally available to where we each now live. Each step we discuss what we might already know about our personal ancestral connections to those materials or discover what would be the place-specific equivalent.
Tuesdays / 10 sessions Nov 23 – Feb. 8 / 7-8.30pm PST / $210 / Virtual
We have more community events – both virtual and in person – yet to come, so keep an eye on our events listing for up to date information!
EartHand Gleaners Society 