The Purple Thistle is an awesome space designed for and by unschooled youth in Vancouver. Ranging from 11-25 kids from all over come to the Thistle to create art, hold workshops, learn from mentors and discover the social nature of being involved in a collective.
Matt Hern started the Purple Thistle back in 2001 with 7 teenage youth. Carla Bergman is an adult mentor who helps the youth run the collective today. Carla is also the founder of Rain zine which features art and writing from youth at the Purple Thistle as well as us at Static Photography .
Every Sunday afternoon Carla helps organize workshops that specifically highlight one art medium. We had the pleasure of running of two workshops in the past few months. Kris mentored a general photography session and then led a photo walk with Bev Davies . We were lucky for the photowalk because it was a sunny BC day and we got to explore the train tracks in the surround East Van neighborhoods.
It was awesome to work with Bev after Kris led a Rock and Roll Photography panel with her at Northern Voice 2009 . Bev Davies was one of the original punk rock photographers back in the seventies before anyone ever thought of bringing their camera to a live concert.
In addition to the two photography workshops, Danielle Sipple helped run a writing session with the youth while Jeremy Crowle spent two hours teaching the kids about painting and showing them some of his own art .
It is always fun when you can teach youth about art while getting the community involved. It was so amazing to be apart of the Thistle's sunday workshops and hopefully we spend more sundays there over the summer!
Here is a video of the Rock & Roll Photography Panel by Kris and Bev:
I've done film workshops
I've done film workshops with a friend of mine last year for kids in one secondary school. It was a very good experience. We had a lot of fun and after accomplishing the three day workshops we had great satisfaction. Kids also loved it.
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