Westben Kids - Happy National Pollinator Week!
Welcome to another week of Westben Kids! This week we are celebrating National Pollinator Week!
Over the month of June, we have talked about our favourite pollinators, Bumblebees! First, we started by learning how a bumblebee & a trumpet might be similar (read here), then we learned all about what it means to be a Bee City (read here), and now it’s time to celebrate …
National Pollinator Week! Hurray!
At Westben we often think about how music connects to nature. As you may know, The Westben Barn traditionally holds a vibrant concert series each summer. When a musician is on stage & the barn doors are open you can hear the wind, birds & other nature performing alongside the artists on stage. This year, though things are different, we want to find new ways for you to continue connecting music & nature from home! To do this Westben created the Music for Seeds project! This project asks that you plant seeds local to your garden, help them grow with music & share your hard work with the Westben community!
Planting the Seeds:
Westben partnered with the Nature Conservancy of Canada to provide seed kits to our youth & teen choirs. Even more seed kits were distributed around Trent Hills the following week. This means that over 80 families in Trent Hills have started to grow a Bee-friendly garden of flowers!
Helping them Grow:
This is where the Music for Seeds project comes in! After planting your flowers it is time to get creative by their side and use music to help them grow! How does sound help plants grow? Click here to find out!
Write a poem about the sounds of your growing plant,
Compose (write) a song improving with the sounds around your plant,
Record the sounds of your growing plant and layer them into a soundscape.
We hope that your growing seeds will inspire you to create new music. Have you heard of the Westben Performer Composer Residency? Maybe you have wondered what exactly a “performer-composer” is. We have exciting news for you. A performer/composer is a musician who both writes original music & performs new music. By writing a song/poem for your plants & recording yourself performing it, YOU have become a performer/composer! Congratulations!
Sharing with the Westben Community:
Cara Eddie & her mom Kat Kitch planted their seeds, shared with us a video of them growing and composed a wonderful poem. Take it away Cara & Kat!
Here is a little video of our seedlings.
We also wrote a poem (Cara and I worked on it together:
Big Questions
“How do they make grass?” she asks.
And “how do you make clouds?”
These are important things.
She needs to know, halfway through a cookie.
“How do you make the colour black,
and how do the different colours on clothes not run together?
And why is a cucumber green? And pistachios?”
And through some magic, our answers all circle back - to growing things.
“No, like this!” As she gestures low to the ground, like a green thatch of lawn.
And we try to convince her, yes, it’s the same, all the little plants together.
Earth and sun and rain and seeds.
That is how they make grass.
To chlorophyll, and squid ink,
and the water cycle.
To her little pots of earth
with slim shoots
of new big bluestem
which she does not quite accept as an answer.
Thank you so much to our first pair of Music for Seeds Performer-Composers, Cara Eddie & Kat Kinch!
To see other Performer-Composers work, tune in to westben.ca/pcr July 6-11th for the International Performer Composer Residency showcases! A digital venue will open soon on our website where you will be able to click around and explore new compositions, fun videos from local chefs/environmental partners & be inspired by new music like never before!
To celebrate National Pollinator Week, be sure to continue sending in photos & videos of your growing seeds as well as photos & videos of your poems, songs, or soundscapes to westben@westben.ca.
I’m sure the Bees are very grateful for all of the new flowers blooming in our community!
Happy National Pollinator Week, & remember to try and BEE positive,
Samantha Clark
For a bit of extra fun…
