Blessed are the Kite makers- drop in workshop hosted by Works-in-Progress Thursday June 18th 3-4 pm

Blessed are the Kitemakers April 2008 from tmurdoch on Vimeo.

(3-4pm) Register now for an up-cycled kite making workshop on Thursday June 18th 3-4 pm!  Contact us for a zoom invitation, All ages/families welcome.

Father's day is in a week- make a kite and share with your dad.  We would like to gather some humans for a virtual family kite-making session, lead by a father daughter team (bonus dad points): artist Gomo George and his daughter Abeyomi (Abey) Bird-George.  Abey is a former hairdresser and trained sommelier/ cocktail creator so she is good with her hands, very creative and a most welcome dinner guest.  Gomo is a multimedia visual artist and storyteller;  you can see a storytelling session in this video or check out an article with some images of his beautiful paintings of Dominican Carnival in Moko magazine here. He also has worked in front line social work as a programmer for many years, including institutions like the Stop and Fred Victor, and connected Works-in-Progress with Fred Victor to donate men's clothing after Works-in-Progress swaps events. 

We are also cousins. When my family moved to Toronto in 2000, Gomo and his partner Atik and their kids were our local family, and when our kids were born they were our support- food, childcare, art.  So in the video above, they made a zillion homemade kites for the kids at my daughter's birthday party.  Gomo learned to do this as a kid growing up in Dominica, and has worked on his designs over the years and taught his own kids and  now you can benefit from their experience to make your own kite,  just in time for Father's day. 

I also found this comic (below) I made back in 2010 about the kite teachings of "Aunty Omi" and Gomo. There are more of these comics on the Tanya Murdoch portfolio website here.

Upcoming workshops: we will be co-hosting a visible repair workshop at the Textile Museum of Canada on June 17th (already booked up) and then return on the 25th of June with Marnie Saskin for a WIP drop in version of the same workshop - same time as the kite workshop and then, two weeks later, we hope to return with some practical tips on altering clothes.  You can contact us if you want to receive the zoom invitations to these drop in workshops.