Browsing “Family Fun”

Welcome to The Playground, a place for Vancouver families. I’m always on the lookout for fun stuff to do, so if there’s something happening that you think I should know about, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Family Fuse at the VAG
Saturday June 8th & Sunday June 9th
Vancouver Art Gallery
10 am – 5 pm

One of my favourite weekends in the city.  This is a great way to experience the Vancouver Art Gallery with your child through a range of exciting and fun activities, performances and hands-on sessions around the Gallery.

Inspired by the Gallery’s new exhibition Grand Hotel: Redesigning Modern Life, this family event provides travel-themed activities.  Highlights include a traditional Japanese travelling storytelling show called kamishibai, build the hotel of your dreams, The Grand Hotel Ballroom Spectacular, sketch stations and Lego.

Gallery Members and children age–12–and–under are free when accompanied by an adult. Regular Admission Rates apply. $20 Adults, $15 Senior (65+), $15 Student (with valid ID).

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Welcome to The Playground, a place for Vancouver families. I’m always on the lookout for fun stuff to do, so if there’s something happening that you think I should know about, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Forest Fairy Gathering
Saturday May 18th
Meet at the Burnaby Lake Nature House
11 am – 3 pm
Grab your wands and strap on some wings and head down to Burnaby Lake Regional Park.  Metro Vancouver is putting on a FREE Forest Fairy Gathering where families can explore the world of forest fairies and gnomes.  Spend the afternoon looking for flower fairies in the butterfly garden, visit the fairy market for building supplies to construct your very own fairy or gnome home and face painting.

The Beaty Biodiversity Museum is Vancouver’s only natural history museum, dedicated to creating a shared sense of community and wonder. The museum puts UBC’s natural history collections, with more than two million specimens, on public view for the first time. Among our treasures are a 26-metre-long blue whale skeleton suspended in the Djavad Mowafaghian Atrium, the third-largest fish collection in the nation, and myriad fossils, shells, insects, fungi, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and plants from around British Columbia and the world.Come visit us – we’re located at 2212 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC. You can find more info at beatymuseum.ubc.ca

Opening today on the Gallery Wall at the Beaty Biodiversity Museun is a new exhibition, [a]drift, a stunning visual art series by printmaker Edith Kruase:

[a]drift
Edith Krause
May 9 – August 25, 2013

“If we are to protect the world’s multitude of places and creatures, then we must know them, not just conceptually, but imaginatively as well.”

- Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle

In this visual art exhibition by Edith Krause, [a]drift presents human life-sized images of microscopic marine creatures. Merging the worlds of art and science, Krause chose portraiture, an art form traditionally reserved for humans, as her medium to showcase individual organisms while carefully avoiding the scientific habit of splaying them out for identification. She worked with them as characters in the actual poses she observed. While the images are mimetic, these enlarged portraits convey their ecological importance, reveal forms that are unfamiliar and fantastic, and make visible the invisible.

Biography

Edith Krause is a printmaker, currently living in Langley, British Columbia. She began her art studies at Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design and recently completed her MFA at the University of Alberta. Previously, she studied and worked in the fields of marine biology and aquatic ecology at the University of British Columbia and earned a Masters of Science degree in Zoology. Her interest in biology has been a major influence on the subject matter of her artwork and her current art practice consists of an interdisciplinary exploration of ecosystems, employing scientific methodology to collect images and data, and art to express her findings.

For more information on [a]drift and its upcoming artist talk, click here.

PROVOKE, ENGAGE, ANIMATE. Our vision at the Museum of Vancouver (MOV) is to hold a mirror up to the city and lead provocative conversations about its past, present, and future. Linking the historical record and the living experiences of its visitors to what is happening socially, politically, and culturally NOW; we honour the material culture of the city: mixing history, archaeology, visual arts, design, architecture, urban planning, music, performance, new media, design, fashion, popular culture, and photography. Check us out on our blog, talk to us on Twitter, or stay up to date through Facebook.

Talking about apps has been a big thing in the museum world lately – how do you use technology to engage visitors? How can you enhance a historical or artistic experience? What is the role of the museum in using technology to further their mission?

Some museums, like the Guggenheim, launched into the forefront of app development, taking the risk for the rest of us, spending years developing an app that later became irrelevant. Others, like the Museum of London, came in a bit later, developing their street museum only to discover
that it actually increased attendance to their physical location.

When the MOV launched Neon Vancouver | Ugly Vancouver (our neon sign exhibition here at our Kitsilano building) it sparked an unprecedented flow of stories from Vancouverites that
signaled how deeply enmeshed the city’s neon is with local history and ourcivic identity.

Of course, telling the stories of some of Vancouver’s most iconic signs — like the Vogue, Save-On-Meats, or The Orpheum — by bringing them into the MOV wasn’t an option (they’re still in use, and they’re so large they wouldn’t even fit in the building!). So we dreamt up the next best thing: a virtual exhibition and mobile app that would share 40+ stories about 50+ signs and use augmented reality technology to help with the visuals.

At the end of 2011 — with some much appreciated federal funding from Heritage Canada (Virtual Museums Canada) in hand — Hanna Cho, the MOV’s Curator of Dialogue & Engagement, rolled up her sleeves and began work with a talented team of archival researchers, visual storytellers, and interactive producers to create The Visible City.

Just 18 months later we’re thrilled to be releasing an app that is the first of its kind in North America. It takes augmented reality to the streets, and provides countless historical photos, audio stories, and contemporary insights from notable Vancouverites like Dal Richards (legendary big band leader), Vancouver punk icon Joe Keithley of DOA, architect Gregory
Henriquez, and Judy Graves, Vancouver’s advocate for the homeless.

The exhibition traces the rise, fall, and revival of neon in Vancouver, and enables people to explore the rich social and cultural histories associated with the signs. While there are hundreds of neon stories that pepper our city’s historical and contemporary landscape we couldn’t
possibly include them all (there were, after all, an estimated 19,000 signs in the 60s). We ended up focusing on some key signs and stories that illustrate the role of neon in Vancouver’s civic evolution. Do you think we’re missing a sign? We encourage you to add your own photos to the Flickr pool!

We hope you’ll download the app, take one of the two tours with a friend, and contribute your own impressions, stories, and photos to the exhibition!

The app is free to download from iTunes or GooglePlay, or to view online at www.thevisiblecity.ca .