Gabriola Field School 2025

Megan Adam
Dec 31, 2024
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Welcome to the very first year of Gabriola Field School, a seasonal creative study group based on Gabriola Island BC (but accessible from anywhere)!

Honestly, I don’t know if this is the first time a project on Gabriola has been called “Field School” - it’s likely been used by some group of artists previously - so let’s just say it’s the first year of this incarnation of Gabriola Field School, which will begin just ahead of the 2025 Spring Equinox.

What is it?

Gabriola Field School is…..

  • a small study group comprised of people engaged in creative practice of any kind with a focus on process rather than product

  • a quarterly, in-person workshop designed to provide reflection points, prompts, discussion, and allyship in the creative process

  • an attempt to develop a sense of the creative collective - a way to work with others while pursuing one’s own work

  • a tiny bit of structure that encourages paying attention to the relationship between seasonality and specific location as it relates to our creative work

  • an incubator for folks who want to test ideas, materials, and even workshops out on a group of supportive creatives

  • a way to feed the world with light in these challenging times.

Workshops and materials

In-person workshops will take place at the Gabriola Arts and Heritage Hall from 1-4 pm on the following dates:

  • March 16

  • June 8

  • September 14

  • November 30

The timing of the workshops is intended to help ready yourself for the coming season, whether that be in intention or materials, and there will be prompts specific to the seasonal turnings that you can take with you.

For those participating in-person, there will be a fee of $30 per workshop to cover the cost of the hall rental and materials provided. I would prefer that as a single up-front payment of $120 for the year, though it’s negotiable so let me know if you would rather pay in installments.

For those who cannot participate in person, I will be making a resource-kit available online for those who wish to adapt the materials for your own location. There will be a small fee for access, which I still need to sort out.

Workshops will consist of three components: 1) Reflection : A place to talk about your process in the previous season and develop a vision for the next season, a place to consider how locality is influencing your work (or how you want it to). This will include group discussion and may include writing prompts. 2) Show and tell : bring your work for discussion and feedback (if you request it), this can include any media so come prepared to play your new song or read your writing out loud if the work is not visual. 3) An arts-based activity relevant to the process stage or season (for example, in the first workshop we will make a simple Field Notebook). The first workshop will be structured a bit differently, and will include a bit of light goal-setting and group-formation work for the year ahead instead of the reflection component.

Who am I?

My name is Megan Adam, and I am a writer, musician, and textile worker on Gabriola Island. These are not professional titles for me, but creative practices I use to navigate my life and relate to the world around me. I am also a community convenor, a believer in bringing people together in shared work as the best antidote to the isolation of current times. If I were to sum up my creative/community/activist interests in one line it would be: discovering how we create human-scale lives in a human-sized world.

My creative “CV” includes my newsletter Comfort for the Apocalypse, two successful, long-term musical projects (The Flying Folk Army and Lone Crow Jubilee) as well as fiddle support on many other recordings, and leadership of the nascent Gabriola Island Fibreshed Pod initiative. My fibre work focuses on functional textiles and I have some expertise in weaving, knitting, and sewing. My current interests include book-making and mixed media work.

My goal with these workshops is to co-create a loose structure to support a year of creative practice and examine how the wheel of the year and the place we live impacts our lives and our work.

Influences

This project is inspired from many quarters. Three in particular that have guided me to this offering are:

Interested?

In-person Gabriola Field School will consist of no more than 10 participants. This is an exploratory year! If you would like to participate, please send me an email at megan.e.adam@gmail.com by February 15th, 2025 and I will confirm your participation for payment.