Scarborough Residency & Community Arts Guild

Following the Mabelle/Etobicoke residency and production, Jumblies moved to East Scarborough, at the invitation of Toronto Culture, settling into the Gardener’s Cottage at Cedar Ridge Creative Centre. From here Ruth Howard guided another iteration of Jumblies’ multi-year residency process:

Research & Development: including Nesting, an introductory and portable making activity to get to know the neighbourhood and people living there, culminating in our first evolving gallery at Cedar Ridge (a continuing annual tradition); and  3 Lands of Scarborough, a miniature-world-making project, imagining Scarborough through three lenses: Goodland, Badland and Dreamland. This later grew into Jumblies Four Lands touring project, with the addition of Dreamland.

Creation: exploring and developing our Scarborough adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Winters Tale, leading to a Like An Old Tale work-in-progress presentation at our May evolving gallery, interweaving themes, words and images from The WInters Tale and tales from the community.

Production: Like An Old Tale grows to be Jumblies largest operatic community play production to date, staged in a huge Scarborough film studio, with several hundred community makers and performers, and cohorts from all of Jumblies offshoots as well as partners from as far afield as Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (Vancouver Moving Theatre).

Legacy: Beth Helmers (initially with Sean Frey) takes over leadership of the Community Arts Guild, producing projects including Family Suite (special projects with homeless families living in local motels), and  Lost & Found Trilogy, a film, a radio play and a theatre piece.