Schedule

Ləléʔnəŋ Listening-With

April 22 through June 2, 2024

All events are free of charge, and open to anyone. Registration is recommended for some events as space is limited. Times and locations subject to change, please check back often.

Launch of Listening Practices, audio, and video files

DATE: Monday, April 22, 2024
TIME: Ongoing
LOCATION: Online

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Listening With Ourselves: Welcome Gathering and Introduction

DATE: Sunday, April 28, 2024
TIME: 2:00 – 5:00 pm and 6 – 8 pm
REGISTRATION: Eventbrite
LOCATION: Wingate Studio, Baumann Centre, 925 Balmoral Rd, Victoria

  • 2:00 – 2:30 pm Opening of Ləléʔnəŋ Listening-With
  • 2:30 – 5 pm Workshop: Sxwamales: gifts from our ancestors, led by Yuxwelupton Bradley Dick, who will introduce traditionally inclusive ways of creating circle agreements with one another during shared times in Ləléʔnəŋ Listening-With. Participants are invited to bring an item that reflects the work we are coming collectively to do and how it forms their Identity. The workshop is offered to prepare us for how we work with like hearts and like minds. 
  • 5:00 – 6:00 pm Dinner Break (a light meal will be provided)
  • 6:00 – 8:00 pm Workshop: Deep Listening and Reciprocal Listening led by Tina Pearson will bring elements from Deep Listening; Biospheric Art Practice; and compare listening strategies from activities such as hunting, soundwalking, dreaming, and dancing; and ways to consider collective listening and sounding.

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Workshop #1
Story of Camosung

DATE: Saturday May 4, 2024
TIME: 1 – 4 pm
REGISTRATION FOR ALL WORKSHOPS: Eventbrite
LOCATION: Church of Truth, 111 Superior St, Victoria, BC

  • In a series of four workshops for Ləléʔnəŋ Listening-With, Yuxwelupton Bradley Dick will offer key traditional lək̓ʷəŋən stories and guide participants to reflect on their soundscapes, asking how the process might influence their relationship to the lands and waters of this place, home to the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples since time immemorial.
  • Led by Yuxwelupton Bradley Dick

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Listening and Speaking With the Land: An invitation

DATE: Sunday May 5, and Saturday, May 11, 2024
TIME: 8 am – 12 pm (drop in any time)
LOCATION: Meeqan (Beacon Hill Park) camas field below lookout: MAP LINK

  • Listening and Speaking with the Land is an outdoor recording session that invites people to consider their relationship to the lands and waters around them and to offer messages for Ləléʔnəŋ Listening-With project audio installations June 1 and 2, 2024
  • The Meeqan site was chosen by Yuxwelupton Bradley Dick for its cultural relevance: The camas field on the south edge of Meequn was cultivated for centuries and managed by the women of the lək̓ʷəŋən as a primary source of food.
  • Participants are invited to drop in any time from 8 am to noon to experience this place and to offer a word, a phrase, a thought, something in your birth language, or simply a sound, to the lands on which we stand.
  • Audio recorders will be provided.
  • Coordinated by Michael Benneyworth

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Decolonizing Sound:
Ideas and practices for ecologically, and socially sustainable relationships

DATE: Thursday May 9, 2024
TIME: 6 – 9 pm
REGISTRATION: Eventbrite
LOCATION: Church of Truth, 111 Superior St, Victoria, BC

  • An Open conversation and demonstration
  • Led by Giorgio Magnanensi, with special guest Peter Hatch
  • Demonstration of West Coast Radians wood resonators

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Workshop #2
Story of the Two Sisters

DATE: Friday May 10, 2024
TIME: 6-9 pm
REGISTRATION: Via Eventbrite for all 4 workshops
LOCATION: Church of Truth, 111 Superior St, Victoria, BC

The second in a series of four workshops for Ləléʔnəŋ Listening-With, where Yuxwelupton Bradley Dick will offer key traditional lək̓ʷəŋən stories and guide participants to reflect on their soundscapes, asking how the process might influence their relationship to the lands and waters of this place, home to the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples since time immemorial.

  • Led by Yuxwelupton Bradley Dick

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Listening and Speaking With the Land: An invitation

DATE: Saturday, May 11, 2024
TIME: 8 am – 12 pm (drop in any time)
LOCATION: Meeqan (Beacon Hill Park) camas field below lookout: MAP LINK

  • Listening and Speaking with the Land is an outdoor recording session that invites people to consider their relationship to the lands and waters around them and to offer messages for Ləléʔnəŋ Listening-With project audio installations June 1 and 2, 2024
  • The site was chosen by Yuxwelupton Bradley Dick for its cultural relevance: The camas field on the south edge of Meequn was cultivated for centuries and managed by the women of the lək̓ʷəŋən as a primary source of food.
  • Participants are invited to drop in any time from 8 am to noon to experience this place and to offer a word, a phrase, a thought, something in your birth language, or simply a sound, to the lands on which we stand.
  • Audio recorders will be provided.
  • Coordinated by Michael Benneyworth

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Listening and Arriving [tset íkw’elò, xwélalà:mtset]

DATE: Friday May 17, 2024
TIME: 6 – 9 pm
REGISTRATION: Not required
LOCATION: Wingate Studio, Baumann Centre, POV, 925 Balmoral Rd, Victoria

  • Open Conversation led by Dylan Robinson on the ways in which we might hear our various arrivals in place.
  • Participants will reflect on their experiences of Robinson’s audio work, xwe’í.
  • With special guests France Trépanier and Heather Igloliorte. 

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Listening and Speaking With the Land: An Invitation

DATE: Sunday May 19, 2024
TIME: 8 am – 12 pm
REGISTRATION: Not required
LOCATION: Xixaluk (Finlayson Point, south of Meeqan/Beacon Hill) MAP LINK

  • Listening and Speaking with the Land is an outdoor recording session that invites people to consider their relationship to the lands and waters around them and to offer messages for Ləléʔnəŋ Listening-With project audio installations June 1 and 2, 2024
  • The site was chosen by Yuxwelupton Bradley Dick for its cultural relevance: Xixaluk was chosen as a spot where the land meets the shore. It was a prominent lookout of the long standing lək̓ʷəŋən villages and is one of Yuxwelupton’s favourite locations to watch the ocean.
  • Participants are invited to drop in any time from 8 am to noon to experience this place and then to offer a word, a phrase, a thought, something in your birth language, or simply a sound, to the lands on which we stand. The invitation more information can be found here.
  • Audio recorders will be provided.
  • Coordinated by Michael Benneyworth

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Listening Remote Together

DATE: Saturday May 18 and Monday, May 20, 2024
TIME: Ongoing
REGISTRATION: Not required
LOCATION: Individual Listening 

An opportunity to ləléʔnəŋ / listen on your own or with friends, using your own practices or following suggestions from the Resources page, including working with the audio samples from First Voices: Lekwungen, the lək̓ʷəŋən language portal; listening to Tiwuxiwulh Tyrone Elliott and PEPAḴIYE Ashley Cooper speak about listening with Cedar; watching Cheryl Bryce share traditional stories about meeqan / camas; walking the land with Dylan Robinson’s audio work xwe’í; visiting Hayalthkin’geme / Carey Newman’s Earth Drum; or considering Tina Pearson’s Ləléʔnəŋ Listening On Land listening score. Experiences can be shared by joining the Ləléʔnəŋ Listening-With email list with an email to <listening-with<at>openspace.ca>.

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Considering Sound in Relation: The Witness Blanket VR experience 

DATE: Friday May 24, 2024
TIME: 6 – 9 pm
REGISTRATION: Not required
LOCATION: Wingate Studio, Baumann Centre, POV, 925 Balmoral Rd, Victoria

  • The Witness Blanket VR Experience is an immersive virtual reality experience of the Witness Blanket a major art installation by the multi-disciplinary Indigenous artist, Hayalthkin’geme Carey Newman. The original analog version of The Witness Blanket is made from over 880 objects, documents and photographs gathered from residential schools, cultural centres, churches and government buildings from across Canada.
  • In VR, sound is part of the experience, and audio provides an opportunity to explore the blanket in a new way: If each of these objects had a voice, what would they sound like? What language would they speak? What songs would they sing?
  • An immersive preview and discussion will explore the function that music plays in accessing memory, through a transformative interactive experience that will extend the visceral power of visiting the original Witness Blanket installation.
  • Led by Hayalthkin’geme Carey Newman and Kirk McNally, with special guest Olivia Shortt

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Soundwalk / Onland Listening Practice
Sensing Kinship Through Listening

DATE: Saturday May 25, 2024
TIME: 9 – 11 am
REGISTRATION: Not required
LOCATION: Meet at PKOLS Beach / Mount Douglas Beach Parking lot near the intersection of Ash Road and Cordova Bay Road

  • At the foot of what was called Mount Douglas, renamed PKOLS Mountain, a place the lekwungen have long named Sa’leetch, translated to “Spirit of the mountain”, participants are invited to a reflect on ways of listening and finding resonance with themselves, their ancestries, and the living and past ancestries of the flora, fauna, rocks, dirt, and air residing at this place.
  • Participants will also be invited to consider ways of creating art and sound pieces with the experience.
  • The score Ləléʔnəŋ Listening On Land will be one of the reference points.
  • Led by Tina Pearson

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Workshop #3
Great Flood Story

DATE: Sunday May 26, 2024
TIME: 2 – 5 pm
REGISTRATION FOR ALL WORKSHOPS: Eventbrite
LOCATION: Church of Truth, 111 Superior St, Victoria, BC

The third In a series of four workshops for Ləléʔnəŋ Listening-With, where Yuxwelupton Bradley Dick will offer key traditional lək̓ʷəŋən stories and guide participants to reflect on their soundscapes, asking how the process might influence their relationship to the lands and waters of this place, home to the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples since time immemorial.

  • Led by Yuxwelupton Bradley Dick

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The Ways We Voice: Language and Rituals in Indigenous Drum Songs

DATE: Wednesday May 29, 2024
TIME: 6:30 – 9:30 pm
REGISTRATION: Not required
LOCATION: Wingate Studio, Baumann Centre, POV, 925 Balmoral Rd, Victoria

  • An evening of stories, songs and drum rhythms with Yuxwelupton Bradley Dick, Rebecca Hass, and Michael Benneyworth. The event will demonstrate the roles and agencies of songs in traditional cultures, how songs are formed, and the ways that voices, and songs, are considered in different cultures. You are welcome to bring your drum. Song and rhythm sharing will be part of the evening.
  • Yuxwelupton Bradley Dick will talk about the ways that Lekwungen songs are formed; how songs are shared or gifted; protocols for belonging, ownership and sharing with family songs, and his practice of creating new songs.
  • Rebecca Hass will share the ways that her Western classical vocal training and performance practice as an opera singer intersects and contrasts with singing from her Indigenous perspective as a Georgian Bay Métis .
  • Michael Benneyworth will relay his experiences as a white settler listening with and learning traditional Indigenous songs, being part of the Unity Drummers and Singers the past twenty years, and how these experiences have shifted his understanding of place, and his actual voice.  

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Sonic Offerings for Here: A Resonant Installation

DATE: Saturday June 1, 2024
TIME: 12 noon – evening 
REGISTRATION: Not required
LOCATION: Gorge Park following signage from parking lot

  • Sounding of Indigenous voices in their traditional languages, contributed for the occasion, lightly resonated in a small forest along the Camossung (Gorge) waterway, near the site referenced in the traditional lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) Story of Camossung. The forest – its trees, plants, soil, waters and lifeforms is the intended audience.
  • The sounds, including forgotten sounds from the lands and waters, will be played through eight sitka spruce resonators, which will be spread out carefully from each other in the park. Visitors will be able to move close to each resonator to hear a sound, and then to another to hear another sound.
  • The resonators are made from wood sourced from salvaged slabs discarded at sawmills on the Sunshine Coast. The resonators were built by composer and sound artist Giorgio Magnanensi, who has also designed the sound spatialization and distribution for the installation.
  • The installation features an audio work made for Ləléʔnəŋ Listening-With by Yuxwelupton Bradley Dick and Michael Benneyworth.
  • The installation includes the voices of Judy Elk, Genevieve Mack, Mark Atleo, Jackie Ballantyne, Art Napoleon, Bradley Yuxwelupton Dick, Lise Mecure and others.

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Workshop with Yuxwelupton Bradley Dick: Peace Treaty with Sii’shalth Nation and Closing Gathering

DATE: Sunday June 2, 2024
TIME:
workshop 1 – 4 pm

The final of a series of four workshops for Ləléʔnəŋ Listening-With, where Yuxwelupton Bradley Dick will offer key traditional lək̓ʷəŋən stories and guide participants to reflect on their soundscapes, asking how the process might influence their relationship to the lands and waters of this place, home to the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples since time immemorial.

Potluck and Final Gathering 4 – 6 pm
REGISTRATION: Eventbrite
LOCATION: Wingate Studio, Baumann Centre, POV, 925 Balmoral Rd, Victoria