Afro Van Connect presents the Black Market and Gallery, featuring artists, musicians, designers and Black-owned businesses who will sell their work and connect with their community.

Afro Van Connect presents the Black Market and Gallery

Where: 44 Water Street, Gastown, Vancouver
Admission: $5 or by donation (RSVP on Facebook here)
When: Thursday August 20 and Thursday August 27, 1:00pm to 6:00pm; Sunday, August 23 and Sunday, August 30 from 12:00pm to 5:00pm

This is a new space provides people of African Descent the opportunity to build tools that support ownership of their creations.

Afro Van Connect would like to emerge from COVID-19 isolation by offering intimate gatherings, events, and conversations that empower the community to mobilize during this activating time. The Black Market and Gallery will feature:

The mission of Afro Van Connect is to power the voices of African Descent Youth. They establish gatherings of young vibrant creative minds dedicated to innovating authentic solutions, to increase the visibility of the underrepresented diaspora communities. They offer people of African Descent creative platforms where shared opportunities and resources are designed to support liberating education and community sustainability.

Afro Van Connect recently hosted the Black Spaces Symposium Virtual in July. Follow on Facebook and Instagram for more info and upcoming events.

From the views at Nk’Mip Cellars and Moon Curser, to the Lakehouse at La Stella, Osoyoos is known for its amazing wineries — with 48 of them within about 30km. However, during my recent trip to the area known for Canada’s Warmest Welcome I took a look at Osoyoos beyond the vines. Of course you’re going to visit the fantastic tasting rooms anyway, which are open and ready to welcome you, so here are a few more things to add to your itinerary:

Miss604 is the proud Blog Sponsor of VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation in 2020. The following has been contributed by a member of their team, Dr. Silke Cresswell.

Health Check:
5 Tips to Improve Your Mental and Physical Wellbeing

Exercise, gardening, conversation, improv classes, creating art, doing yoga, and performing music. On the surface, each of these activities seem independent from one another, but all of them play an integral role in the overall health and wellbeing of our brains.

At the BC Brain Wellness Program — a donor-funded program made possible by my partnership with VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation — my colleagues and I are combining clinical care with interventions that support healthier lifestyles. Expertise is drawn from many fields including the School of Music, Physiotherapy, Kinesiology, Neurology, Psychiatry, Neurosciences, Nutrition as well as several community partners. 

But you don’t need to be a patient to benefit from our research. 

Take a look below at the five tips anyone can do to proactively improve their mental and physical wellbeing today. 

1. Get Moving

Exercise does wonders. It leads to new brain cells with better connectivity, improved mood, healthier weight management, better sleep, and a reduction in inflammation. You don’t need to take up cross-fit or train for a marathon to see the benefits — daily walks or yoga sessions are a perfect way to get started.

2. Eat For Your Brain

Wholesome nutrition such as following the principles of the Mediterranean diet is another key component for wellbeing and can prevent or delay cognitive decline and possibly also Parkinson’s disease.

This means more greens and other vegetables, nuts, berries, beans, whole grains, fish and poultry and less butter, cheese, pastries, sweets, red meat and fried or fast foods.

3. Connect with Your Community

Connections with your friends, family and neighbours are key aspects to your mental health. The Harvard Study of Adult Development concluded that loneliness can kill as easily as smoking or alcoholism. 

Social integration and community are crucial for happiness and longevity. So foster relationships with friends and family and reach out if you need help. Talking with a friend when you’re feeling down can have a profound impact. Likewise, helping others also has health benefits for the helper.

4. Keep Learning

An active brain is a healthy brain. Learning or practicing new skills helps keep your mind sharp and can be a lot of fun. Whether it’s working on a craft project, becoming a puzzle master, or reading a new book, stretching your mental muscle every day is not only satisfying, it’s good for you! 

5. Take a Mindful Moment

Mindfulness is the practice of purposefully focusing your attention on the present moment and accepting it without judgement. By immersing yourself in the sights, sounds and feelings of a particular moment you can improve your ability to focus, reduce stress and better manage anxiety and other mental health challenges. 

The Brain Wellness Program has moved online in light of COVID-19, which has allowed us to welcome an even wider variety of participants to improve their mental and physical well-being.  

Join our Summer Brain Wellness Challenge today. Pledge to devote yourself to daily activities proven to support brain health while raising important funds for the program with VGH & UBC Hospital Foundation.

Dr. Silke Cresswell is the co-founder and Director of the BC Brain Wellness Program, which provides free mental health workshops to support people living with chronic brain disorders, their care partners, and healthy agers. 

There will be mini donuts. There will be SuperDogs. There will even be screams from the Coaster. While we won’t be navigating our way through the throng to lineup for deep-fried Oreos we can enjoy the PNE as a drive through fair in 2020.

PNE 2020, a Drive Through Fair

When: August 22 – 30, 2020 (closed Monday the 24^th) 11:00am to 7:00pm
Tickets: Must be booked online in advance. $25 per car load (regardless of number of passengers). Price includes 2 tickets to the Fair 2021, per vehicle and a PNE face mask. Food purchases and Prize Home ticket purchases are extra.

Your PNE 2020 ticket will get you access to the following, via a drive through:

• The President’s Choice® SuperDogs™ Tail-Gate Party
  • Join The President’s Choice® SuperDogs™ for a Tail-Gate Party like no other as they run, jump and fly in this interactive, socially distanced spectacle! Three 10-minute shows every hour filled with fun and surprises.
• Agriculture displays including all your favourite barnyard animals
• A Summer Celebration PNE Reverse Parade.
  • Feel the Rhythm of a Summer Celebration as you become part of the show.  Honk your horn, wave, and make some noise as you drive through a Reverse Parade route line with dancers, puppets, and blast of colour and fun.
• Win A House, Win a Car! PNE Prize Home ticket sales
• Larger than life dinosaurs and your favourite cartoon characters
  • Stomp through time as you roar by your favourite larger-than-life dinosaurs, including a 50’ Brachiousauras, a Triceratops, and watch for the mighty T-Rex.
• Iconic Fair food including Hunky Bills, mini donuts, corn dogs and poutine

PNE Fair programming will adhere to full social distancing protocols developed in consultation with Vancouver Coastal Health.

Playland will also be open Saturdays, Sundays and holidays until September 7, 2020 (11:00am to 5:00pm). Purchase separate tickets for that experience online.

Feeling nostalgic? Check out The Best Old PNE Photos 1914-1980

Three new art exhibitions will open on August 29th at Burrard Arts Foundation, a local visual arts nonprofit and gallery, featuring Russna Kaur, Cara Guri and Olivia di Liberto.

Burrard Arts Foundation: Russna Kaur, Cara Guri and Olivia di Liberto

Where: BAF Gallery (258 East 1st Ave, Vancouver)
When: Tuesdays to Saturdays, 12:00pm to 5:00pm. Free admission with pre-booked tickets. On view August 29 until October 10, 2020.

Two of the shows were produced by the latest participants in BAF’s Residency Program, abstract painter Russna Kaur and realist portraitist Cara Guri. During the program, the two artists worked side-by-side in the two studios at BAF’s purpose-designed facility in the False Creek Flats. Also opening is new work from Olivia di Liberto in BAF’s Garage; this street facing exhibition window displays art to the public 24 hours a day and showcases early-career artists.

In ‘Suddenly her lips sharpened – it was splendid’, Russna Kaur uses bold colour and large-scale abstraction to speak to her identity as a Canadian of Punjabi diaspora. But despite this overt confrontation of history and identity, the works have as much in common with the heroic gestures of modernist abstraction as they do South Asian material culture, as Kaur effortlessly situates herself within the contemporary painting landscape.

The meticulously realistic, historically-influenced portraits in Cara Guri’s ‘Interstice’ exist in a strange slippage of in-between spaces, tracing shifting notions of time, identity formation, intimacy, and symbol. We are invited into a pact with history in constant negotiation—an invocation of the deeply intimate embedded beside the complex transactions between the artist, the sitter, and the viewer.

Olivia di Liberto creates an explosion of charmingly naive psychedelia with her new public installation in BAF’s Garage, An Extraterrestrial Picnic. Using cut paper, found objects, lighting and painting, the work constructs a kaleidoscopic scene: a picnic attended by aliens. Di Liberto harnesses her background in illustration, street art, and visual merchandising, reimagining commonplace objects through a hallucinatory lens and mashing them up with familiar signifiers of rave and bohemian culture into an alternate dimension of escapism, hedonism, and excessive visual stimulation.

Burrard Arts Foundation is guided by an exciting vision – for Vancouver to be recognized, locally and globally, as a thriving centre for visual art.