Senior Advocates and Community Builders
Volunteer Description: Need for Testers

Our Need:

Responding to the Covid Health pandemic WP Puppet Theatre is pivoting our award-winning program VIEW from the Inside:

• To be presented online to provide increased financial, geographic and social/functional accessibility.
• To build community and empathy, between seniors and young adults through their joint participation in the program.

We are recruiting three engaged and creative seniors to help support testing our new VIEW ONLINE program.

Posting closes November 9^th 2020

Senior Advocates and Community Builders will be asked to do the following:

• Take the VIEW ONLINE program in a group, with other seniors and young adults 20 – 25 years old.
• Offer feedback and advice for improvement of the VIEW ONLINE program
• Help us to expand the reach of the program by providing introductions and connections to their own communities.
• Help coordinate and support the Spring 2021 online gallery art show and video screenings celebrating the work of VIEW participants.

Commitment:

• One Intro meeting in early November
• The 8 one – hour sessions course will start in mid- November,
• Exact dates and further meetings to be to be determined by group members.
• All meetings will take place on ZOOM and participants will need the technology and some familiarity to be able to participate in the meeting.
• Meetings will be facilitated by the VIEW Program Manager
• This is a volunteer opportunity, with a $50 honorarium.
  All materials are supplied.

 What:

VIEW from the Inside is a puppetry-based workshop that promotes awareness and discussion about mental wellness. Through the creation, exhibition and performance of a self-reflective mask-body puppet, participants develop community, foster resiliency and gain a voice for their stories. Past participants have included marginalized seniors, seniors with dementia, and seniors who are high-functioning and active. Youth and young adults have also enjoyed the program.

The VIEW project has four components providing a unique and innovative approach to puppet making:

• “Public Me,” where participants create the outside of the mask through exploring trust, team building, how they present themselves to others, and perceive how others see them;
• “Private Me” represents participants’ inner selves; they collect images, ephemera and other objects to fill the inside of their masks;
• “Connected to Me” represents relationships with their community and their own personal history. Here participants attach objects to their mask that symbolize these outside connections; and
• “Presenting Me” focuses on mask-puppet manipulation and sharing the above stories or artistic statements.

After this testing phase the program will be offered at a minimal cost for the general public, in early 2021. Sign up to receive our newsletter and stay tuned.

For more information or to sign up for this unique opportunity please,

Email Allan Rosales VIEW Program Manager at allan.rosales@wppuppet.com

Phone Wendy Passmore Godfrey, Artistic Director at 403 228 3373