A peek at the mask-terpieces!

The AAA Afternoon Tea Mask-Making workshop with Maggie has been going off without a hitch, with our group of participants getting greater and greater with each week.

These last two weeks have been dedicated to paper-mache-ing and learning a bit of history behind the artistry of the traditional Chinese opera mask. It has been incredible to see each of our members work on their individual masks with such patience, efficiency, mastery, and pride!

Take a look at what our seniors and volunteers are working on:

Next week will be our fifth and last session with Maggie. We can’t wait to see the finished products!

Chinese Opera Mask Making! FREE WORKSHOP!

The Active Aging Artists Program has had a fantastic start this Fall, marking the second year of the program’s existence. We apologize for the radio silence…we’ve been having too much fun!

This Fall, we were sad to say goodbye to our beloved Intro to Hatha Yoga instructor, Rianne Svelnis, who has been with us from the beginning and charmed us all with her generosity, knowledge, and spirit. Thank you for all that you’ve contributed to making AAA what it is today.

In NEW NEWS:

We are thrilled to announce local non-profit Instruments’ of Change’s support of a new initiative through the Seniors’ Afternoon Tea. For fifteen weeks, we will be bringing in a handful of guest professional artists to facilitate progressive workshops free to the community!

This past weekend, we invited the very-talented theatre artist and puppeteer Maggie Winston to facilitate a four-week Chinese Mask Making workshop. We had an excellent turn out and look forward to making progress with our individual masks next week with Maggie. Photos are coming!

A big thank you to Laura Barron and Instruments of Change for making this possible. For more information, check out our flyer about mask making.

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AAA FEEDBACK FORUM, join in on the discussion!

Calling all community members! Please join us this weekend for another exciting AAA event. Cake and refreshments included, as always! Drop in any time  between 2 and 4pm. Call 771 881 4060 for more information.

Maintaining a Healthy Brain– a free workshop!

This Saturday was AAA’s Maintaining a Healthy Brain, a free bi-lingual community workshop to raise awareness about dementia and how we can prevent it! A big thank you to Karen Tyrell for such an engaging and educational hour filled with laughter. You can learn more about Karen and her wealth of services at dementiasolutions.ca

We were thrilled to have almost 40 participants, many of whom were new to the program and the Association.

What Karen brought to our attention was the importance of exercising the brain in order to prevent the loss and malfunctioning of the brain. The good news is, it doesn’t seem too hard to take steps to maintain a healthy brain. Seems like playing certain games can be useful, and so can eating certain foods, while staying physically fit and socially active.

Thanks so much for everyone who came out to learn with us. Please connect with our programmer at gannat.12@gmail.com if there are other workshop topics you’d like the AAA Program to tackle!

~AAA

 

A Tai Chi birthday!

Another Afternoon Tea this weekend so exciting that we wanted to share it with you! In the beautiful sun, we headed out to practice Tai Chi with our friend Fang Cai, who just returned with her husband from China. We missed them terribly and were happy to welcome their return by celebrating Fang Cai’s birthday. 

Thanks to the great group that came out today– it was great to see old friends as well as new faces. Please join us next week as we learn to do some drumming!

~AAA

a day at the Arts and Health Showcase!

In place of our Afternoon tea gathering, today we met up early to prepare for a special event. Half of us headed off to experience the annual Burnaby Hat’s Off Parade. A handful of us headed to the Roundhouse Community Centre to enjoy and experience the Arts and Health Showcase at the Roundhouse! Turns out lots of us are avid and comtepent skytrainers!

What an absolutely marvelous time AAA had at the Arts Showcase. We got to watch incredible performances by seniors dancing, singing, performing spoken word, and much more.

Not only that, we had lunch prepared for us— platters of sandwiches, fruit, and dessert! Check out a couple of the photos to see what the day looked like.

We hope to come back next year, and to bring more of our folks.

A reminder that we won’t be meeting next Saturday for the Afternoon Tea!

 

 

 

AAA Celebration, a resounding success!

The AAA Celebration has been perhaps our most ambitious and large-scale of projects.  A  team of about twenty committed volunteers, more than fifty performers (Tai Chi, Dance, Line Dance, Drumming, Hatha Yoga, erhu/piano, and more!), two dozen community VIPs, and more than a hundred family and friends came out to celebrate Active Aging Artists, and congratulate the program on its one-year anniversary. MC’s Katrina Chen and Shane Wu did a stellar job of leading us through the afternoon.

It was so great to see the crowd, eating, laughing, dancing from their seats, and winning tons of prizes! A huge thank you to our sponsors for the day: Denny’s, Piggy Bank Place, Café Villaggio, CM Trading, Balloonatics, Shirley Low, Charlie’s Chocolate Factory, 7-Eleven, Ethical Bean Coffee, Rosalind Chang, the Maple Overseas Cultural Foundation, and more.

Thank you to our instructors Rianne Svelnis, Nelson Qu, and Phillis Lim for their amazing work, and for sharing so much knowledge, passion, and dedication with their students. Lastly, as most of you know, the Active Aging Artists program is looked after by the AAA Panel, a core group of individuals who have made this last year possible. A big hand to this years’ AAA Panel members: Jeffrey Yu, Ben Tseng, Alice Lee, Clement Yu, William Tsai, and Diana Gan! If you want to get involved and help us continue to develop this program, please contact Natalie Gan at gannat.12@gmail.com.

Want to see what the AAA Celebration looked like? Check out some great photos from Jerry Lee:  http://www.tianjintemple.org/photo-album-aaa-celebration

See you NEXT YEAR!!!!

Sushi Party!

Yes yes, it’s true—- the AAA Program is about to turn one. We’ve been in the celebratory mood for a while. Most recently, we had a sushi-making workshop at our weekly Afternoon Tea gathering, facilitated by our wonderfully charming volunteer Tiffany.

What is needed? seaweed, cucumber, mayo, artificial crab, avocado, Japanese sushi rice, rice vinegar, bamboo rolling mat, bowl of water (for keeping your hands wet)

Check out how we did!

And don’t forget to join us for the AAA Celebration this Saturday!

Our trip to the aquarium!

Take a look at some shots of our latest AAA trip to the aquarium last month! While it was pouring wet snow, a fun and educational time was had by all, topped off by snacks and a communal bus ride. Some highlights included the beluga show, the massive jellyfish, and a 4-D movie experience! Thanks to the more than forty friends and family who joined us for this AAA endeavour.

It’s AAA’s Birthday– and you’re invited!

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

The Active Aging Artists Program is turning one, and we are celebrating with the highly-anticipated AAA Celebration! Please join us at Bonsor Community Centre on March 29th from 1pm to 3pm. We are thrilled to have this opportunity to share with the community what we’ve built together this year. You can expect a fun afternoon of awards, prizes, performances, food, family, and lots of friends. Call Natalie at 778-316-6284 with any questions, or for ways to support this exciting event. Stay tuned for a list of performers!

RSVP to aaacelebration@gmail.com by March 15th to reserve a spot for you and your friends!