A few months ago, my family and I headed to lovely Montebello Park for an afternoon picnic in support of Our Community Food Store, a wonderful initiative started by my multi-talented neighbour, Karrie Porter. The goal of Our Community Food Store is to open a downtown food coop in St Catharines. After spending seven years passing under the ghastly QEW when we need to buy food, I almost swoon when I think that soon we might be able to walk a few downtown blocks to a well-stocked grocery store run by friendly people.
When we reached the park, I was surprised and delighted to discover three ant masks I’d made for Theatre Beyond Words‘ production of “Tales from the Garden” in action.
In addition to her work on Our Community Food Store and several other project, it turns out that Karrie was the coordinator for neXt Company Theatre’s Travelling Roadshow, a government-funded initiative for which neXt staged a series of “spontaneous moments of culture” across the Niagara Region and Toronto. “Ants in the Park” was part of the series.