Tom Froese

Vancouver photojournalist Wendell Phillips is the Vancouver speaker for the month of March.

Wendell has three decades of experience in editorial and human development photography and is the recipient of 30 Picture-of-the-Year awards from North American news organizations and of two National Magazine Awards for his work on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. He was voted Canada’s News Photographer of the Year in 1988 and nominated for Canadian Photojournalist of the Year in 2007 and 2009. The Photographic Society of America honoured Wendell with the International Understanding through Photography Award recognizing his socially engaged documentaries and public lectures with a humanitarian perspective. Phillips has documented the diversity of the human condition on 5 continents. A few of those stories include include Palestinian Territories, Afghanistan, Haiti, Greenland Narwhal hunters, refugee camps on the Syrian/Iraq border, World Cup Surfing to the Olympic Games.

His work has been exhibited at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, California and the United Nations in New York City. His images have been featured with the New York Times, Washington Post, National Geographic, BBC World News, South China Morning Post, and The Atlantic.

How do you define creativity and apply it in your career?
Photographing humanitarian narratives requires creativity but aestheticizing tragedy has raised questions of intention, subject’s dignity and the public value of social documentaries. As a self-described “conscientious” photojournalist, it’s my objective to make authentic images in ethical ways while paying close attention to visualization of space and articulation of light.

Where do you find your best creative inspiration?
Studying genres of art that express social narratives and influences

What’s the one creative advice or tip you wish you’d known as a young person?
Don’t surrender individuality by imitating.

Who would you like to hear speak at CreativeMornings?
Wade Davis: anthropologist, ethnobotanist , writer.
Rumana Monzur: former assistant professor of Dhaka University, Fulbright scholar now pursing Law degree at University of British Columbia

What are you reading these days?
The Race for What’s Left: The global scramble for the world’s last resources by Michael T. Klare
Half the Sky: Turing oppression into opportunity for women worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett

What has been one of your biggest Aha! moments in life?
Not sure this qualifies but facing the question of obligation and responsibility to vulnerable and marginalized people in the world while working my first overseas assignment in Peru (1982)

Check out our video teaser with this month’s CreativeMornings/Vancouver speaker, illustrator Carson Ting.

In this video, Elaine Carol discusses her creative avenue of helping youth at risk.

As the “benevolent drill sergeant” of Miscellaneous Productions, Elaine has directed, produced and co-wrote numerous ground breaking and innovative community-engaged productions in Vancouver and area with multi-barriered and mainstream youth, women, GLBTIQ youth, GLBTIQ migrants and Indigenous adults, refugees, immigrants and Indigenous adults, culturally and socially diverse inner-city youth and children.

The photos from last week’s event with Elaine Carol are now up on Flickr!

Carson Ting was originally born and raised in Toronto, but has called Vancouver home for the last 6 years. He loves it here more than any other person from Toronto ever has.

After graduating with a Bachelors in Design from OCAD, Carson entered the world of advertising as an art director and has since developed award-winning campaigns for everything from cars, to TV’s, to basketball shoes, to burgers (even though he doesn’t eat meat).

He currently holds the title of Creative Director and Illustrator at Chairman Ting Industries, an experimental creative studio he co-founded with his super fun wife, Denise. Since opening their studio, they have worked for the likes of adidas originals, The Cartoon Network, Microsoft, Kidrobot, IdN magazine, The Canadian Tourism Commission and more.

Carson has been named as one of the top 200 illustrators in the world by Luerzer’s Archive magazine, and voted as one of the top five most creative people in Canada by Marketing Magazine. He is also really, really nice.

In his off time (which he rarely has), he enjoys running, biking, playing with his pet bunny, and laughing loudly at things only he finds funny.

He is currently working in a tech startup based in both Vancouver and Hong Kong, running his creative studio and freelance art direction.

Video: December’s CreativeMornings/Vancouver talk featured artist Rachael Ashe, who spoke about making things by hand.

Photos from our last event with Rachael Ashe are up! Check them out on Flickr.

Want to see A Christmas Carol play out in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside? Don’t miss Bah! Humbug! — where Scrooge owns a pawn shop on Hastings — at SFU Woodward’s from December 12 to 14.

Our speaker for January is Elaine Carol, an artist, writer, solo performance artist, theatre and film director whose work has been seen and heard internationally.  Born, raised and educated in Montreal, she has made her home in Vancouver for the past 18 years.

In 2000, Elaine Carol co-founded Miscellaneous Productions with a group of activist queers and women of colour in East Vancouver.  She has been the Artistic Director since that time. 

Elaine is a senior professional interdisciplinary artist with more than forty years of experience in the arts.  Her community-engaged practice includes: solo performance art, video art, documentary film, experimental theatre, public art, sound art/music, hip hop music and dance, and lens-based art (photography, film and video). 

As the “benevolent drill sergeant” of Miscellaneous Productions, Elaine Carol has directed, produced and co-wrote numerous ground breaking and innovative community-engaged productions in Vancouver and area with multi-barriered and mainstream youth, women, GLBTIQ youth, GLBTIQ migrants and Indigenous adults, refugees, immigrants and Indigenous adults, culturally and socially diverse inner-city youth and children. 

Elaine’s approach to community-engaged practice is based on the principle of nurturing long-term relationships. Her long-standing and sustained commitment to create community-engaged art with multi-barriered youth has made Elaine a community art pioneer in Vancouver.

Using this long-term, community-engaged artistic model, Ms. Carol and her company focus on creation and production of large-scale, original interdisciplinary, hip hop and World musical performances and documentaries in collaboration with a team of professional artists and culturally and socially diverse youth in East Vancouver and throughout BC.

Emerging multidisciplinary artist Rachael Ashe talks a little about what the audience can expect to see, hear and learn about creativity and the global theme “make” at our Dec 6 event sponsored by Hemlock Printers.

Tickets registration begins at 11am on Mon, Dec 2. Due to popularity causing tickets to sell out too quickly, we use our waitlist as a registration system from which we distribute tickets using a lottery system. Lucky ticket winners will be informed by email by end of day Wed, Dec 4.

If you cannot use your ticket, please inform us ASAP so we can allocate the ticket to individuals on waitlist. Remaining applicants will remain on the waitlist and informed if a ticket becomes available. Anyone who hasn’t checked in by 8:45am on morning of the event forfeits their tickets.

REGISTER NOW!