Interested in a local workshop with SelfDesign High?

Stay tuned! We’ll be announcing our line up of Fall/Winter workshops next week.

A minimum of 6 learners must register for a workshop course to run. Join a scheduled workshop, or if you have a group of friends interested in doing a course together, contact us about creating a new workshop.

info@selfdesignhigh.org | 250 354- 1310

Creation and Collaboration:

The Actor as Creator

This workshop will focus on the performer as a creator, with students creating a devised work at the end of each term. The first term will focus on a collaborative performance based on a specific social issue. The second term will conclude with a roving, site specific performance in which the audience will move through downtown Nelson and encounter performers as they travel. Throughout the year, each class will include exercises to promote physical awareness and cultivate connectivity between performers onstage, leading to a more present and available performance style. Focus will be placed on working as an ensemble, both in devising material and in performance. This will empower students to have a clarified presence on stage and to feel confident about discovering their artistic voice. There will also be a yearlong Shakespeare Monologue study and audition training, as well as solo projects and character studies.

Creative Collaboration Drama 10

 Introduction to techniques used in a collaborative process including generating material and focussing ideas. Students will also start to work on intuitive performance, with exercises that promote being in the moment on stage and following impulses.

Creative Collaboration Drama 11

Focus will be placed on working collectively to create a production, choosing a theme and creating material based on the theme. Play building, monologues and implementing various methods of expression including song, puppetry, and video will be explored.

Creative Collaboration Drama 12

The students will create a production based on a theme and implementing a variety of dramatic tools. Exercises will focus on stage awareness and self expression as well as building character and finding a unique “voice”. All aspects of the production will be created by the students.

Space is limited! Register by Sept 27th - info@selfdesignhigh.org | 250 354 1310

Check out the video here and learn more on the Y-U-M Initiative Blog:

What is YOUR Passion?

“I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I’m scared.”

She goes on to talk about how there are some teachers that help students break out of the grade based system and actually encourage learning. I agree. That’s what we try and do at SelfDesign High. We negotiate, we listen, we learn. We encourage students to follow their passion, be it math or mountain biking. Online courses have traditionally been boring and just an extension of your local High School; we try to do it differently. We give you the chance to design your own education, wherever it leads you.

The following speech was delivered by top of the class student Erica Goldson during the graduation ceremony at Coxsackie-Athens High School on June 25, 2010

The Capitol Theatre presents:

An Evening with Alex Neve
Amnesty International & Selkirk College
Friday September 10th, 2010 -  7:30pm

Selkirk College and Amnesty International will be launching the fall Mir Centre for Peace Lecture     Series with a passionate and important talk by Alex Neve, Secretary-General of Amnesty International Canada.His lecture, Protecting Human Rights: What’s Happening to Canada’sVoice, will focus on the concerns surrounding Canada’s fading human rights leadership and will put a powerful call out for renewal and revitalization to Canada’s policies and reputation  as a human rights leader…

more info & tickets

When:
August 4th, 2010 7pm

Where:
SelfDesign High,
402 Victoria Street, upstairs,
Nelson, BC

Free Presentation – Bring your kids!

Come join us for a conversation about the life of the bees in and  outside the hive, honeybees in our communities, and ideas about what we can do at home to support these little creatures that are so important to our food system. This presentation includes lots of photos and is a family-friendly event.

Claire Anderson has a passion for natural backyard beekeeping and is excited to share this way of working with honeybees. She is a bee guardian in Boulder CO, catching swarms and helping fellow backyard beekeepers set up and maintain their hives. She also has three top bar hives that she works with using an organic, input free and chemical-free management style.

Fresh from a sold-out off-Broadway run that was heralded by the New York Times as “astonishing and brilliant”, Baba has spent the past year touring the world with his groundbreaking science/comedy creation “The Rap Guide to Evolution” (recently featured on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show).

In “Rapconteur” Baba offers hip-hop retellings of classic oral literature, including Beowulf and the Canterbury Tales, and in “The Rap Guide to Human Nature” he explores the modern sciences of human behaviour, revolutionary psychology and behavioral economics, all through the lens of comedy rap songs. The Nelson show at Self Design High is an exclusive preview, the only chance for any audience, anywhere, to see this brand new material before it gets premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August. Don’t miss it!

Praise for the Rap Guide to Evolution:

“Brilliantly conceived and effervescently performed…not only is it factually
correct, it’s also dazzlingly intelligent”
★ ★ ★ ★
The Scotsman

“Brinkman is an excellent performer, combining the boyish energy of a
rapper with the clever wit of a comedian and the intelligence of a lecturer
to create an excellent production, which could be a new and exciting art
form.”
★ ★ ★ ★
FringeReview.com

“An entertaining and scientifically accurate display of lyrical dexterity.
Perfect for your inner science geek.”
★ ★ ★ ★
The List

“As lyrically ingenious as it is scientifically accurate, the show caters
for rap fans and biology enthusiasts alike.”
★ ★ ★ ★
Three Weeks

“One of the world?s great intelligent rappers…a flash of verbal fireworks.”
★ ★ ★ ★
Broadway Baby

If you’d like to get involved in creating next year’s yearbook as part of a course for 4 credits, send an email to the yum address above!