NEW!
Check out our music videos and share the songs
we created!
In the spring and early summer of 2018, seventeen Kingston community members joined singer-songwriter, Wendy Luella Perkins in PeaceSong: Building Bridges. Over eight weeks, through the power of sharing, singing and song-writing we created songs to cultivate peace in our hearts, homes, neighbourhoods, city, country and world.
Here are YouTube links to three collections of songs written by the PeaceSong collective. These songs are for sharing, so please sing them far and wide with friends and neighbours, family members and co-workers, for the purpose of peace-building, educational, and non-for-profit work. Let us know where you sing them. For more information, contact Wendy Luella.
The PeaceSong: Building Bridges collective consists of Andrea Malus, Bènèdicte Bourgin, Carrie Lynn Bedore, Sean Callaghan, Deb Flemer, Evelyn Sideen (Berta), Ian Russell Dennison (Teddy), Jayden Silverberg, Jolene Cheryl Simko, Judi Wyatt, Karen McNutt, Karina Gerhardt-Strachan, Nancy Jones, Rory Skelly, Sue Rae-Joyce, Terri Fleming, Wendy Earl, and Wendy Luella Perkins.
The songs are ©2018 and are the property of the PeaceSong: Building Bridges collective and Artistic Director Wendy Luella Perkins, who retain full copyright. The videos and artwork were created by PeaceSong: Building Bridges member, Andrea Malus, and are ©2019 by Andrea Malus.
Past information about PeaceSong
Like to sing? Want to bring more peace to your life and our world? Interested in working with folks from diverse communities? Then PeaceSong: Building Bridges is for you!
Join local singer-songwriter Wendy Luella Perkins in this eight-week community arts program in the North End.
Thursdays, 11:00-1:30pm
April 26-June 28, 2018*
Kingston Community Health Centres
263 Weller Ave., Kingston, Ontario
Register ASAP as space is limited
*We won’t be meeting on May 17 or May 24.
Find out more...
Email:
Phone: 613.549.3102
Pre-registration is required. Light lunch included. Childcare and transportation available upon request. PeaceSong is an arts collaboration between Kingston Community Health Centres, PeaceQuest and Wendy Luella Perkins.
PeaceSong: Building Bridges is Phase 2 of the PeaceSong project. Our very successful research and development phase took place in the Spring of 2016.
Great Reasons to be a part of PeaceSong...because it:
- Welcomes every voice with no previous musical experience required
- Offers an inviting, open and safe space to explore our longings for peace
- Cultivates joy and confidence in our singing voices
- Brings together diverse community members from KCHC, PeaceQuest and wider communities
- Invites us to take chances to sing, write and share songs
- Breaks down barriers and builds bridges among folks from different backgrounds
- Fosters greater calm and peace in our hearts, neighbourhoods and world
- Provides a fun, innovative and meaningful arts program for adults
- Inspires and uplifts us as we collaborate, create and connect with each other
- Offers childcare and transportation upon request
- Includes a yummy and nutritious lunch, and it’s all completely free!
About the Artistic Director, Wendy Luella Perkins
Wendy is a chant writer, singer-songwriter, recording artist, community facilitator, Unitarian Universalist minister, and peace advocate. For over fifteen years she has led inclusive community singing groups called Soulful Singing, which invite participants to sink into a song, harmonize, improvise and be present with themselves and one another. Soulful Singing celebrates everyone’s unique voice, welcomes
novice “shower” singers and experienced choristers alike, and fosters creativity, connection and joy. Her moving public arts project, What am I Rushing to?, has been shared around Kingston over the last couple of years. Wendy is also an active volunteer in the local peace movement. She is committed to building compassion, peace, justice and joy through singing, ritual and participation. Wendy brings a fun-loving spirit and a big heart to her work and life, and is thrilled to be collaborating with the Kingston Community
Health Centres and PeaceQuest as the artistic director of PeaceSong: Building Bridges.
Ideas that inspire and inform PeaceSong
If there is to be peace in the world, there must be peace in the nations.
If there is to be peace in the nations, there must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace in the cities, there must be peace between neighbours.
If there is to be peace between neighbours, there must be peace in the home.
If there is to be peace in the home, there must be peace in the heart.
— Lao Tzu (6th century BCE)
What can a song do?
Some songs mainly help people forget their troubles.
Other songs help people to understand their troubles.
A few songs inspire people to do things about their troubles.
Occasionally these different roles are present in one song.
— Pete Seeger (1919-2014)
The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the joy of being in that light filled space, love, god, whatever we want to call it, is lacking in integrity.
— Marianne Williamson
Participation, that is what is going to save the human race.
— Pete Seeger (1919-2014)
A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
— Maya Angelou
