January Member Offerings
Small Plot Agriculture Farm Rentals
Ignatius Farm
The Request for Proposals (RFP) is now open for Ignatius Farm Small Plot Agriculture farm rentals. The RFP seeks entrepreneurial individuals, groups, or organizations to rent available acreages for complementary ecological, regenerative agricultural projects at Ignatius Farm.
The proposal deadline is January 15.
March Break Arts Explosion & Call for Volunteer Camp Counsellors
Guelph Dance
Arts Explosion is back this March Break for campers in JK to Grade 5 to explore creativity through dance, music, visual art, storytelling and theatre! Space is still available – register via our website.
Guelph Dance is seeking volunteers to act as camp counsellors. A fun experience for those interested in the arts and a great opportunity to work with children.
Volunteers must be minimum 14 years of age. This is a high energy group, volunteers will have the opportunity to engage with campers, exercise leadership skills, be creative and encourage creativity, lead activities, support teaching artists and build relationships with campers, peers and instructors.
Kelewele African Dance Camp at Hillside Inside!
Guelph Dance
Guelph Dance is pleased to partner with Hillside to co-present TWO African dance workshops as part of Hillside Inside!
Join Kelewele African Dance Camp—a fun, energetic experience that will allow participants to learn various forms of West African dance fusing many traditional movements with urban street styles. An open-levels experience for ages 14-65.
Saturday February 1 @ 1PM at artBar, 37 QUEBEC ST UPPER LEVEL
Sunday February 2 @ 2PM at Guelph Youth Dance Studios, 42 QUEBEC ST
Stage 1 Photography Workshop ( 2 days – Beginner Level)
Kal Termanini Photography
Join me January 18 for this entry level workshop for photography enthusiasts who wish to unlock their creativity by learning the basics and fundamentals in photography and stop shooting in that dreaded AUTO mode. Take control of your creativity with this 2 day photography workshop!
Reiki Level 1 – Certification
My Reiki Connection
Saturday Jan 25th 10:00 am to 4:00 PM and Sunday Jan 26th 10:00 am to 1:00pm
Join us on a journey into the art of Reiki, where you’ll learn to channel universal energy for healing and balance. This training is designed to be inclusive, welcoming everyone, regardless of experience or spiritual background. Reiki is a gentle practice that is accessible to all who wish to cultivate healing for themselves and others.
Spaces are limited, so reserve your spot today!
Open Print Night with Otherwise Studios
Otherwise Studios
Join Otherwise Studios for our first public event of the new year: an open print to work on your own projects, experiment, or just to meet like-minded individuals! The studio will be open for printmakers to pull their own editions of linocut, monoprint, and drypoint prints in the print shop or to work away at planning or prepping your next prints at the workshop table. This event is self-guided; each maker can work on their own project while getting to know other makers in the community!
Jazz Jam 101 Workshop Registration Open Now
Guelph Jazz Society
Registration is open for the Guelph Jazz Society’s first educational program, Jam Session 101. Taking place each Tuesday evening in February from 7pm to 9pm, students will participate in a group lesson teaching them everything they need to know to participate in a jazz jam session.
Lotion-Making Workshop with All-Natural Ingredients
Planting Radiance
Learn how to make a nourishing body lotion and ways to improve your skin’s look and feel in this 2-hour workshop.
We’ll also discuss nutritional strategies and supplements for supporting skin health, herbal medicine for skincare, and review when and why to use different ingredients—how you can customize your lotion (e.g. adjusting how thick or thin the texture is, adding anti-inflammatory herbs, choosing oils that won’t block facial pores, etc.)
Includes take-home sample of the lotion made in class & extensive handouts with recipes.
Sleep Support with Herbal Medicine
Planting Radiance
Wishing you could fall asleep more easily, stop waking up in the middle of the night, and/or wake up feeling more rested?
Learn about ways you can alleviate insomnia and improve your sleep with herbal medicine in this online class taught by clinical herbalist Zhyfhs Millicent, RH (OHA).
We’ll review possible causative factors for your sleep difficulties (e.g. nutrient deficiencies, hormonal involvement, etc.), which herbal remedies could be helpful for you, and more.
Transition Guelph at a Crossroads
Happy spring everyone. It seems appropriate in this season of change, that the TG Board has decided to wind up the organization and celebrate the tremendous successes and impact it has had over the past 15 years. This decision was not an easy one and is the culmination of Board discussions and soul-searching over the past 2 years.
Why now? The main reason is that the Board is no longer viable. Over the 6 years of my tenure as Board Chair, recruiting talented people to the key Board positions, such as Chair and Treasurer, has become increasingly difficult despite constant effort. In the past 3 years the Board has also experienced a highly unusual string of members moving away from Guelph. The Board now has only 1 member who lives in Guelph and has more than a year remaining in their Board term. Our Chair and Treasurer are retiring from the Board after having both served the maximum term limit with no successors. We can speculate on the reasons for the recruiting challenge: increasing uncertainty about the future and our society, the bewildering pace of change, the polarization of our community, the devastating impact of lockdowns on the social fabric to name just a few. It’s also quite possible that TG’s mission has run its course: the world is very different now than when TG was founded 15 years ago.
Regardless of the reasons, the Board wanted TG to ‘go out’ strong by hosting the 13th annual Resilience Festival/Seedy Saturday and 14th annual TreeMobile. Both were smashing successes earlier this spring attracting hundreds of happy participants! These two marquee events are emblematic of the oversized impact that a small volunteer organization running on a shoe-string budget has had on the community over the years.
To honour the incredible impact that the TG volunteer community has made, let’s recount some of the major highlights.
TG Projects and Working Groups have included Earth Hour Potluck dinner, Backyard Sharing, Appleseed Collective, Community Garden, Inner Transition, Intentional Communities Guelph, Urban Orchard, Guelph Walking Friends, Family Food Action Plan and Resilience Awards along with many others!
TG as an incubator organization was the genesis of several highly successful organizations/projects that are now independent: Guelph Tool Library, Guelph Seed Library, Repair Café, Woodside Root Cellars, Urban Sugaring Project, Zero Waste Festival.
TG as a facilitator for sharing. From reskilling workshops to awareness campaigns on critical issues facing the community to providing practical solutions to emerging challenges, TG has been a hub of sharing.
TG in collaboration with others helped form and launch impactful organizations such as eMerge Guelph and Yorklands Green Hub. Also notable: TG and eMerge co-led a coalition of 10 organizations to host the 100 Debates on the Environment Guelph in 2019 and worked with Yorklands Green Hub to create raised bed gardens for students at Sacred Heart School.
TG as a respected voice in the community. This has taken many forms, including numerous articles in local media, letters to Council in support of other non-profits, invited to give input to many planning departments at the City of Guelph and direct engagements with local politicians at all levels of government on key issues affecting our community.
TG as a rallying point for community engagement and fun! Starting from the earliest days of TG, there were forums open to the public to create a positive vision for the future of the community and devise projects/events to progress towards the vision. The Resilience Festival is a great example of an eagerly anticipated annual celebration of spring, planting gardens and learning skills that will be needed in the years ahead.
Of course underlying all of this incredible activity have been the volunteers. So many talented, creative and dedicated people who breathed life into the vision and crafted a legacy of community and resilience. Thank you for your energy, enthusiasm and talent which demonstrated how a small group of people can make a huge difference.
And so it’s with a mixture of sadness but also gratitude the Board embarks on the journey to wind-up the organization.Our goal is to find a way to keep the Resilience Festival/Seedy Saturday and the TreeMobile program going into the future. Both of these programs need new blood and leadership to ensure their continuity.
In closing, we thank you, our community, for your active participation in our projects, your support and your encouragement. Keep the spirit and vision alive by being active in the community – it’s never been needed more.
