SEEDS festival wrap-up and pictures
This is a modified version of the remarks Maria Meindl made to open the festival on February 21.
First, some big thank-yous.
Sincere thanks to all who took part in our Seeds Festival. The INKspire fellowship program was a truly INspiring partner for this year’s festival, with a special shout-out to Frank Ong and Vivian Zhi, who head up the program. INKspire took on the social media work for the festival, rented the space and provided a feast on the day of live presentations. Our poster was designed by INKspire fellow Yulia Gulyaeva, and fellows Hana Greenberg, Samantha Ti, Yulia Gulyaeva, Sandini Kodikara and Angela Zhang took part in the planning stages.
Hardish K. Dhaliwal is our treasurer and treasured collective member, Rolf Meindl has been present as an immense support, tech and otherwise. A big thanks, also to Aviva Gale-Buncell for getting us through Sunday’s logistics. Another big thanks goes out to Priya Ramsingh, who took photographs on Sunday. Please scroll down to see them, or check them out on the Draft facebook page.
Now I’d like to say a few things about the inspiration for the festival.
We had 49 people doing brief readings over the course of the weekend. The idea of these brief readings arrived several years ago in response to a personal concern I have about the way things are going in literature and the arts generally. There are so many people wanting to write, signing up for programs and workshops. That’s great, I’m all for it, but opportunities and resources are not keeping pace. This is a great community; people support each other, but the feeling of scarcity isn’t good for anyone’s creativity. I think we need deep change, a whole new paradigm, to be truly inclusive of the range of voices out there, and I have no idea what that paradigm, (or paradigms) might look like.
But here’s where the numbers come in. If we have more writers, we have more people who make it their business to put into the world what’s never been there before. On the SEEDS weekend, instead of offering coaching on how people can fit into the increasingly narrow literary world, we set aside times for both audience members and presenters just to talk about ideas, create alliances and collaborations, find like-minded people. Here was the question we invited everyone to contemplate:
How can we make more space for ourselves and each other?
We didn’t solve everything in one weekend but we did … sow some seeds. And we’ll keep talking.
Spreading the word for the festival.
Quite a few folks, myself included, are retreating from social media these days – and I for one have noticed that it’s harder to find out about events like this one than it used to be. For a while there were newspaper listings and list-servs, and then suddenly there was Twitter and there was Instagram and there was facebook. Individuals and small series came to depend on social media to get the word out for their events. Another goal of this weekend was to nurture webs of communication not necessarily instead of social media, but alongside it.
We decided to rely on our email list and word of mouth to get the word out. INKspire also donated the support of their communications team. We used a mixture of channels, with a heavy emphasis on word-of-mouth, and we had a full house for both days. It can be done!
I hope we continue to build and strengthen these networks going forward.
And finally, the pictures.
Many thanks to our wonderful colleague Priya Ramsingh for taking photographs of the live Draft event at East End Arts, February 22.
Here is a slideshow.