The About Face Collective @ Eat In Onatrio and Nuit Blanche!

Hey folks, Natalie here from The About Face Collective! I've been a busy girl lately, day-timing as a community garden coordinator and urban food educator, and night-timing as an (unserious) musician.

This past weekend, I had the privilege of being involved in 2nd annual Eat-In Ontario event, held by FoodShare @ Queens Park. As FoodShare describes it on their website, the event is a "fall harvest celebration"that features dozens of workshops and activities for students of all ages to help teach them about food systems, sustainability, and community.

 My workshop with FoodShare focused on a short reading of the "Stone Soup" story, a classic chinese tale about how food can bring communities together. We then created our own story that had to include elements of food and how a type community comes together to solve a problem with each other. (Photo credit: Laura Berman)

Next up, I was lucky enough to participate in a Nuit Blanche installation, curated by artist Kevin Shmidt entitled "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow". The piece featured dozens of buskers situated up and down Yonge Street, all playing the same 9 songs in their own styles, all of which had to do with the theme of "tomorrow". Songs by Journey, Elvis, The Velvet Underground, The Monkeys, Brian Adams, Johnny Cash, and The Shirells (obviously) were just some of classic musicians that were chosen. The musicians ranged from solo sax to belly bangle shakers to, well, my friend Charlie and I with a borrowed electric keyboard and a tambourine: 

We had a great time interacting with the crowd, eating pizza and watching teens from the 905 lose their mind at the prospect of running around downtown Toronto all night without their parents. We were also asked to play the opening reception for Nuit Blanche, and would like to give a huge thanks to Kevin Shmidt for getting us on the roster at an open bar event. THANKS!

The beauty of this piece is that it snuck up on people; it was un-obvious, and could have gone unnoticed, or else seemingly serendipitous. Many times we would hear people saying with wonder "how is it that they're all playing the same music?" without figuring out that it was actually an art installation. Others would ask "You're all working together, aren't you!?" Either way, people had a great time dancing and laughing down the street, singing into the microphones along with the artists, or drumming along on their own legs to the beat as they went by. Great job Kevin, we hope to see more of this unobvious public art from you in the future!