Project Descriptions
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Anatomy of a Trio : Justin Million, Bennett Bedoukian, Irèni Stamou: Anatomy of a Trio sees local artists Bennett Bedoukian (drums), Irèni Stamou (dance), and Justin Million (poetry) create a unified artistic experience, intuitively working off each other’s tones, movements, and moods. The result is an event that celebrates collaboration and trust among artists of different backgrounds, and practices.
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The Boards : Chalkboards and Bulletin Boards line the walls of every school. Over time, lessons, graphs, chalk drawings and rebellious scribblings all find their place on these reusable surfaces, and then succumb to erasure and removal, slipping into a long history of text and image-based communication. The Boards Project contributes to this fleeting exchange of information at King George Public School. 16 artists present a combination of thoughtful, site-responsive work and poetic, personal work inspired by lived experience, on boards throughout the school. Each piece imparts an idea that materializes briefly for two weeks and then is erased, becoming part of the school’s rich history.
Artists:Kim Beavis Sanderson 3Hall, Bennett Bedoukian & Justin Million & Ireni Stamou 2F, C.M. Duffy 3E, Laura Fedynyszynn 3E, Garrett Gilbart 2G, Lesley Givens 2F, Miguel Hernandez 2B, Beth LeBlonc 1East Hall, Casandra Lee 2Hall, Josh Morley 3Hall, Brian Nichols 2G, Janette Platana 3E, Laura Thompson, Gillian Turnham 3D, Ziysah von Bieberstein 2E, Charlie Watson 2Hall
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Care : Peyton Le Barr, Morgan Brie Johnson, Alexandra Simpson : Care is tired of going unnoticed. She’s ready to be seen. In this immersive performance, we explore care work and the ways in which this labor is celebrated and at the same time, made to be invisible. Using mask and live music, this piece is inspired by interviews with care workers and asks: how can we care (better)?
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Circus Repurpose : The Pocket Collective: Brian Nichols, John Marris, Jane Lowbeer, Patrick Moore, and Ann Jaeger will conduct a series of art-making workshops for the public to participate in. The range of activities to which the public is invited includes making masks and puppets, storytelling and poetry, flag making, sculpture, collage, printmaking and exploring three dimensional objects and new responses to the materials of our everyday lives. Reflecting the repurposing theme that is at the heart of Erring’s occupation of an empty school, the ‘Circus’ will contribute a creative, spontaneous art-making energy to the festival.
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Dancers Playing Basketball: Nogojiwanong Edition : A performance installation exploring parallels between dance and sport. Created by Deanna Peters and Katie Lowen, the project is a community-building exercise for dancers to gather, play and learn together. Peters and Lowen are Vancouver-based dance artists who have previously created Dancers Playing Basketball for Dance in Vancouver and the Vancouver International Dance Festival. The basketball playing dancers are Amelia Ehrhardt, Lia Grainger, Kerith Paul, Becca Partington, Deanna Peters, Oriah Wiersma, and apprentices Abigail Parsons, Sam Wotten.
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David Bobier : As a hard of hearing and disabled-identified media artist my creative practice evolves around researching and developing multi-sensory and vibrotactile technology as a creative medium and as a path of access into experiencing art in its many forms. My multi-location installation draws attention to language, communication, accessibility, sensory immersion, memory, and perceived magic. Employing vibrotactile technology, sound, photography, projection, voice recordings and familiar objects the installation aims to provide immersive and surprising experiences for people of all ages and abilities. Presented by Artspace
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DO BETTER : Kaawaate East City P.S Art Teacher Jenny Pink’s Homeroom Class : The theme guiding our work is “DO BETTER”. Specific areas within the Erring at KG classroom are dedicated to designs by grade 7 & 8 Kaawaate students. Students are recognizing current global issues that matter to them and bring awareness through art, with the intention of visitors reflecting on how they can ‘DO BETTER’. Issues around school waste, plastic use and disposal in the ocean, devastation of ecosystems and finally the reconciliation that needs to happen to restore our relationship with Indigenous Peoples. The art installation of eyes, made of mixed materials, represents the personal reflection that needs to take place for us to DO BETTER now and in the future. DO BETTER: for our earth, our animals, our oceans, our forests and for our children.
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Experimental Filmmaking Drop-In : With guidance from the Canadian Images in Conversation (CIIC) collective, explore experimental filmmaking techniques during this interactive drop-in event. Turn a section of 16mm found film footage into your own creation. Scratch, draw, colour, cut, splice and watch your film play back on our 16mm projectors. Presented in partnership with the Reframe Film Festival
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The Fewings 16mm Educational Film Collection : More than 120 16mm films are available for viewing, from a collection of over 2,000 films amassed by former school teacher, Dan Fewings and now being looked after by his son Josh Fewings. The films were acquired from the region’s school systems when they converted to digital in the 1990s. They span the gamut from NFB art films to adolescent puberty lessons and outdated documentaries revealing dramatic shifts in societal attitudes. There will be two sessions daily: 1) Selections From the Collection. Josh will screen a group of films selected around a different theme each day. Drop in any time during the session. 2) Audience Choice. Drop in, browse the list of films and choose one that sounds intriguing. Josh looks after the collection but has not had a chance to screen all the films, so he is hoping to discover some hidden gems with your help. Drop in any time during the session.
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Historic Images of the Armour Hill Neighbourhood : Peterborough Museum and Archives : The Peterborough Museum & Archives (PMA) is proud to celebrate our neighbourhood with two new digital presentations. The first features portraits of WWI soldiers – former students of the Ashburnham School whose names have been commemorated in the entryway of King George Public School for more than 100 years. This exhibition was researched and curated by Bo Pickett during his recent placement from the University of Ottawa and financially supported by Ontario’s CMOG Digital Capacity Grant. The second presentation takes a look at the broader area surrounding the King George P.S. property with images selected from the PMA’s vast collection of historic photographs.
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Ideal School Announcements : Through a series of brainstorming sessions, Laurel Paluck worked with the Kaawaate East City P.S. art class to come up with ideas for an “Ideal School”. From the practical to the fantastical, these students explored and shared their thoughts on where, how and what they wanted to learn. They recorded some of these ideas as “school announcements” to be played over the PA system during Erring at King George.
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Inclusive Dance Workshop with Propeller Dance : Renata Soutter, Liz Winkelaar, Shara Weaver : Experience the joy and sensory experience of an inclusive dance workshop from the Artistic Leads of Propeller Dance. Leaders in Canada for dance and disability arts, they invite you to join in a fun, light-hearted, and warm environment for exploring creative movement, following breath work for tension release, and developing your inner creative dance maker. Workshop will include inclusive technique class warm-up, improvisation explorations, themes from contact dance, and sharing of Propeller’s choreographic creation methods. This workshop is open to all abilities and all levels of dancers and professional performance artists. Also open to education and health professionals wanting to learn more about how to be more inclusive of dancers with disability in their activities.
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in·form : Kelly O’Neill, Leslie Menagh : Factory schooling, a public education model developed in the 18th/early 19th centuries, is an approach to education emphasizing impersonal, standardized teachings to produce a literate, compliant workforce. The neat rows of desks in today’s classrooms echo these origins. Youthful, but deflated stick-figure forms present themselves in fleshy, ordered formation while a wall-to-wall curve-stitching looms overhead. Weaving together symbols of formative school experience, these familiar and uncanny additions to the classroom prompt reflections on one’s experiences within the factory school system. Education comes with a rulebook. Emerging out of rich discussions about their own experiences, Kelly and Leslie’s material interventions explore the exacting conditions informing moral, social, and cultural imperatives entangled within curriculum. In their installation, in·form Leslie Menagh and Kelly O’Neill liken the classroom to a loom – one that threads us into the fabric of society and ties learning to production. Presented by Artspace
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The Lear Project : Actor-puppeteer Brad Brackenridge and dance-theatre artist Dreda Blow join forces to create a production based on the life and poetry of enigmatic Victorian author and illustrator, Edward Lear. Two lonely traveling minstrels explore Lear’s nonsensical world, his dreams of sweet romance and nightmares of frustration and solitude. In a whirlwind of song, dance, and puppetry, they journey to the depths of Lear’s mind- a magical place where crickets chirp while old men make stuffing, and the Owl and the Pussycat waltz in the moonlight. Featuring an original score composed by Bruno Merz, and special Owl and Pussycat masks/puppets created by Clelia Scala.
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No Elevator to Success : Jen Elchuk and the Peterborough Academy of Circus Arts (PACA) : An inter-arts performance, taking place in the central stairwell of King George school to bring attention to the building’s accessibility challenges, and explore broader ideas about disability and difference. The name of the performance is taken from the intendedly inspirational, but clearly ableist messages painted on the school stairs where the performance takes place. Performing No Elevator to Success are Erin Ball, Jen Elchuck, Tegan Moss, Wes Ryan and Thomas Vaccaro, with music by Jared Bremner.
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Of Swallows : Kelly Egan : “Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective…Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of color. Imagine a world before the beginning was the word.” – Stan Brakhage.
A swallow’s eye is longer than other birds. Their visual acuity is said to resemble raptors. For sailors, swallows are good omens signifying a close shore. My father loved birds. Since his passing, I’ve felt afloat. Lost and unanchored. At sea in overwhelming emotions, I look for swallows, as metaphors for moulting oppressive epistemologies and (re)visioning the world. Presented by Reframe Film Festival
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One Day in December : A site-specific video installation that imagines the experience of a teacher and students who witnessed the great fire at the Quaker Oats factory in 1916 from their classroom at King George Public School. Years later, ghosts of memories appear for an older man who vows peace. Incorporating a song cycle by Susan Newman (music) and Rob Fortin (lyrics), media artist/theorist LA Alfonso creates a unique video projection-mapping presentation that transforms the classroom windows in Room 12 into portals of an imagined past to give hope to the present day. Featuring musical performances by singers Marsala Lukianchuk, Rob Fortin and a cast of children.
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Panel Discussions :
Panel 1: King George, Kaawaate : Join a panel of Erring artists who’ve taken over the school at an interesting moment in the history of this land on which it stands. The current generation of students, many of whom began their institutional education at King George Public School, will graduate from Kaawaate. What is in a name? What has changed and what has stayed the same as a new school was physically and conceptually rebuilt in Nogojiwanong on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe? We come together to examine the juxtaposition of these two buildings and consider how we can continue to work toward decolonization as artists, educators and treaty people.
Moderator: Angela Connors
Speakers: Alice Williams, Kelli Marshall, others tba
Panel 2: The Art of Accessibility : Let’s celebrate the bravery it takes to disrupt the status quo and make change for diversity, equality and accessibility. Join a panel of Erring artists and organizers for a conversation about the art of accessibility. Erring embraces the power of making mistakes out loud in contrast to an education in being quiet and sitting still. Have you ever gotten detention for breaking the rules? How does our education system and the culture it serves create barriers and how can we open the door?
Moderator: Nadine Changfoot
Speakers: Erin Ball, Jen Elchuk, Elizabeth Jenkins, Ian Guest
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Resource Room : Alice Williams, Brad Copping : Anishinaabe artist Alice Williams (Curve Lake First Nation) and glass and sculpture artist Brad Copping have created an immersive installation of blown glass, textile, sound, and projection. The vibrant greens of springtime frame envelop the ceiling, light catches a cascade of glass droplets suspended in their fall towards blown vessels full of water, atop quilted medicine wheels. The sound of rain through trees plays as voices speak the names of water in its various forms in Anishinaabemowin and English. By bringing the outside in to this space originally constructed for educating the next generation acknowledges the long tradition of King George Public School’s work to provide specialized environmental and nature-based programs and the intention of Erring itself, bringing unoccupied spaces to life. Presented by the Art Gallery of Peterborough
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Spirit Week : Created/Directed by Kate Story : The audience meets at the main entrance box office for this immersive travelling theatre work. Led through the building by a charming and mysterious custodian, audiences encounter scenarios inspired by actual events and people who worked and studied at King George. Spirit Week was developed through research and collaboration with diverse artists working in dance, theatre, circus, spoken word, music, and film. Featuring original works by: Nora Von Bieberstein, Ziysah Von Bieberstein, Jenn Cole, Rob Fortin, Ryan Kerr, Nicole Malbeuf, Kellie Marshall, Susan Newman, Sahira Q, Daniel Smith, with music by the McDonell Street Gospel Quartet – Colin MacAdam, Kristine Fisher (Rose), Dianne Latchford, Curtis Drieger – and stage management by Shannon McKenzie.
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Spoken Word at Erring : 6 poets, a different one each day, are performing over the P.A. system. They are Jasher, Saleem Ansari, Niambi Tree, D’Scribe the poet, Sarah Lewis, and clifton joseph. “We were honoured to co-curate the spoken word series at the Erring at King George Festival. As co-curators, we always strive to highlight artistic excellent, showcase diverse narratives, and to make space for artists who are not often heard. We’ve chosen poets who reflect both the roots of spoken word in Canada as well as those who illustrate our city’s distinct, ever-changing regional flavour. The work you will hear is political, experimental, and historically significant.” – Curators Jon Hedderwick, Elizabeth Jenkins
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Trace : William Kingfisher 3C, Sheldon Storey 1C, Karyn Recollet 3C, Phuong Nguygen 2D, Elizabeth Fennel : Indicating pathways through lineages, histories, and geographies, traces are clues; they are carriers of stories and of memory. Responding to the school setting on their own terms, five artists employ narrative strategies both speculative and autobiographical. They inhabit offices, closets and display cases guiding passage to pasts, to the present, and to futures. Curated by Kelly O’Neill and Leslie Menagh
