Join rare and Musagetes for the second annual Long Dash Festival, a collaborative event bringing together the worlds of art and science. At the rare Slit Barn and ECO Centre, you will find a series of programs over two days that explore the interconnections and overlaps between arts and science while showcasing the talents of various artists, musicians, naturalists and scientists.

See below for program details and RSVP by activity.  All activities are free to attend.
Please note that registration is required for certain activities as supplies are limited.  Submitting an RSVP to other activities will help us determine numbers.

Program Schedule

Saturday, July 26th

Welcome Event: Percussion Karaoke with January Rogers - 10:00am - 12:00pm

Percussion Karaoke invites you, the average everyday person, to tap into your percussive and improvisational self and jam out to some original music introduced to you by the composer and performer, Mohawk/Tuscarora multi-faceted artist January Rogers. As a willing participant, you will have the opportunity to work as a team while using traditional Haudenosaunee percussion instruments such as horn rattles, pow wow drum, hand drums and water drum to compose new percussion parts to one of three original songs. No percussion experience necessary - just bring your best intentions.

Lunch - 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Event participants are invited to join us for a light buffet-style lunch.

Sound Walk: A rare Experience - 1:00 - 5:00pm

BIG EARS Craft Workshop with Cam Kochut and Athena Katinas
BIG EARS is a craft/workshop that will precede the sound walk. Participants will construct and decorate a set of acoustic hearing amplifiers to enhance their experience of the sounds found along the trails. Please consider registering for this activity to ensure we have enough supplies.

Sound Walk: A rare Experience
Position yourself in relationship with the nature and reflect on the the stratification of human and natural spaces as a false dichotomy. We are a part of nature. Everything is connected.

As you walk through the trails, listen to the songs the birds, winds, trees, and waters sing alongside the human musicians that are positioned along your route and discover their collective song.

You're invited to contribute to this song with Joni NehRita who will walk you through some musical activities among the trees, using the Brazillian methodology, "Musica De Circulo".

Underlay Installation
This large-scale outdoor modular quilt explores gender-queerness, domestic product (quilts), and architectural space through quilt-architectural forms. The work creates space through public installation for gender diversity and beyond binaries use of space through architecture and quilted forms.  Visit this installation by Brenda Mabel Reid throughout the sound walk, or join us for a mini-concert experience from 4:00 - 5:00 p.m.

Sunday, July 27th

Workshop: Experimental Eco-Printing with Barb Hobot - 10:00am - 12:00pm
Eco-printing is the process of transferring coloured patterns from plants onto fabric using steam or boiling water.

This workshop will begin with the removal of invasive plants on nearby trails. Participants will arrange their collected plant matter onto natural fabrics before placing them in pots of boiling vinegar and rust water. As the experiments bubble away, participants can break for lunch or explore rare’s trails and then return to the workshop to reveal the eco-printing results. 

All materials will be provided. Please dress for the outdoors. Arrangements can be made for those who can’t stay for the duration of the workshop.  Registration is required for this activity.

Lunch & Learn - 12:15pm - 1:00pm
Workshop participants are invited to join us for a light buffet-style lunch as they learn about the Haldimand Tract from a member of Six Nations of the Grand River, invited by afternoon workshop artist Rebecca Garrett.

Workshop: Participatory Mapping with Rebecca Garrett - 1:00 - 3:00pm

Many of us rely on mapping software to give us a sense of knowing where we are. Our orientation is based on abstract knowledge and algorithms that don’t always align with our lived experience.

Participants will be invited to consider their lived experience and other ways of knowing, learning, and asking; and explore different ways of orienting, observing and seeing. Using participatory mapping, we will try to locate ourselves in this particular place and its historical and material context .

Participants are asked to bring a photograph or a drawing of where they live, or of a favourite spot at rare.  Registration is required for this activity.

Art Installation by Smudge Studio

STOREHOUSE OF RESERVE
Created during the Question Mark Butterfly Fellowship, August 002024-January 002025

STOREHOUSE:
HOLDING JUST ENOUGH
+
A LITTLE MORE IN RESERVE

While artists-in-residence at rare we were held by a remarkable shelter of exposure, known as the pavilion. We paused there, observing and experiencing without distraction.

Visitors—human and more-than-human—passed through and around the pavilion. As they arose and fell away gently and fiercely, they created, stored, and exchanged reserves of: early autumn wind, sunlight and moonlight, scents and colours of local plants and flowers, temperature changes, auroras, sounds of birds and insects, the caretaking and stewarding of rare. Our experiences of these visitors resulted in a replenishment of reserve. In response, we created an artists’ book of postcards—image-sensations—entitled Storehouse of Reserve. The postcards were made to be shared across differing environments and circumstances, and to be stored in reserve for when just enough + a little more is needed.

For the Long Dash Festival, we offer several large-scale enlargements of image-sensations made from our time at rare, acknowledging both the pavilion and the slit barn as kindred agents of reserve.

Why the Long Dash?

The Long Dash Skipper, Polites mystic, is a brown and orange butterfly found in grassy habitats like meadows, marshes, stream banks and forest edges including on rare lands. Named after a butterfly like its sister programs - the Eastern Comma Artist in Residence and the Question Mark Fellowship - the Long Dash Festival also brings to mind punctuation, in this case em-dashes though also perhaps en-dashes and hyphens, all marks of connection that bring two parts into relationship with each other.

Similarly, the Long Dash Festival brings together the worlds of art and science—as well as those of Musagetes and rare—to explore what happens in the overlap.

Accessibility

• A portion of the Sound Walk will take place along the Grand Trunk Trail which features flat gravel trails. The side trails, which include the Woodland and River Trail, feature soil/rocky substrate, areas with narrow footpaths and moderately rugged terrain with roots and rocks.
• Artistic workshops will take place at the Slit Barn which has ground level entry and the Resource House which has an accessible ramp and automated door.
• Accessible washroom at ground level located at the Slit Barn.

Parking & Travel

• Limited space is available for parking at the event site.  Please consider carpooling if possible.

• On the afternoon of Saturday July 26th ONLY, overflow parking and a shuttle bus to the event will be available at The Waterloo School of Architecture at 7 Melville Street South, Cambridge N1S 2H4. The bus will leave on the hour every half hour on the half hour mark between 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. , with the last bus returning to the School of Architecture lot departing the event site at 5:00 p.m.

  
  

Community Partners

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