STORY BY DANA BOYINGTON
Sheridan College is opening its doors to the public March 25 to The 905 Road Show: A Creativity Cabaret featuring the artistic performances by Sheridan students, faculty, community writers and artists.
The Sheridan faculty is running the event at Davis Campus with the Diaspora Dialogues Charitable Society, an organization who supports new, creative and original artists.
This free event will include performances by several writers, musicians, photographs from Sheridan students, musical theatre presentations, comics and a live art installation by Oakville’s own, Tazeen Qayyum, a visual artists who had her work displayed at the 2010 Olympics.
According to Ian Williams, Professor of English at Sheridan, the goal of this event is to “get multiple groups in the same room at the same time: the local community, students, the whole Sheridan community.” It is to celebrate the creative success of Sheridan students and the community’s own artists.
“It’s an ‘everything’ show,” says Williams, who, is performing several of his own pieces of writing at the Road Show event.
Williams has taught at Sheridan for two years, giving the students a real life inspiration to pursue writing, with three of his own published pieces of work.
“I’m excited to see how it will all come together,” Williams says. “It’s for the enjoyment of the entire campus and community.”
Williams hopes for the event to be a success and believes “there’s potential for recurrence. We [Sheridan faculty} could replicate it at other campuses in the future.”
Another performer at this event is, Tazeen Qayyum, a visual artist who specializes in contemporary miniature painting and has had her work shown internationally, including at the “CodeLive Metro’ during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.
The 905 Show plans to show Qayyum’s art, in a unique presentation, bringing the audience into the performance.
“Throughout the event, I will be creating an art piece,” says Qayyum. “They [audience] will be around me while I do my own performance.”
Qayyum plans to create a drawing using text inspired by Italian poet, Nanni Balestrini.
“Balestrini once wrote, ‘we do not know who we are or where we go’,” says Qayyum. “I plan to write that in Urdu, in one line repeatedly on a canvas. To me this means [as a civilization] we are an endless circle, with history continuously repeating itself.”
Sheridan Art Fundamentals student Fran Purnell from Trafalgar Campus thinks The 905 Road Show is a great idea.
“It would be great too see work from other Sheridan students,” Purnell says.
Visitors should enter through the front of the school and go towards the Pub of the Davis Campus, where the event will take place. Doors open at 6 p.m. and are open for anyone to visit.