Deblekha founded AMES in 1997 and has been the driving force behind this registered charity and its development and implementation of a ground-breaking series of fully-subsidized intensive video programs. In the 15 years she’s spent doing community and arts-based project development, Ms. Guin has designed, coordinated and overseen 24 distinct digital-arts community-based initiatives that encourage people from various marginalized communities to self-represent, self-advocate and demystify often harmful cultural stereotypes. Deblekha has her Masters in Communication from Simon Fraser University (1998) and her Honours BA in Contemporary Cultural and Women’s Studies from Carleton University (1991).

Coming Soon

Angela has been teaching at the Vancouver Board of Education since 1999 and worked as the Anti-racism & Diversity Consultant from 2007 until 2010. As the Anti-racism & Diversity Consultant, Angela worked in collaboration with Vancouver school communities to help bring awareness and understanding to the dense and complex issues of racism and discrimination and its local and global impact to schools and their wider communities. Angela currently works as a private Education Consultant in the areas of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Anti-discrimination in Metro Vancouver school communities and non-profit community organizations. Professional learning workshops and in-service are  provided to various members of Vancouver school communities across the district: Administrators; Elementary & Secondary Teachers; Counsellors; Youth & Family Workers; Aboriginal School Support Workers; Multicultural Liaison Workers; Settlement Workers; Anti-racism School Contacts; Parents; and Students. The sessions involve experiential learning and empathy-building activities that enable participants to self-reflect on their own racial prejudices and biases and to help prevent them from manifesting into various forms of discrimination. Sessions also include analyzing existing practices and curricula and developing anti-racist curricula that address issues of power, privilege and equity.   School staffs and students are also trained in how to respond to discriminatory incidents appropriately and effectively as empowered ‘active witnesses’. Angela holds an undergraduate degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of British Columbia and a Master of Education degree from Simon Fraser University in Diversity in Curriculum & Instruction.

Sara has been a creator and facilitator of arts-based and empowerment-focused processes for 10 years. Most of her work is dedicated to youth initiatives and all of her work comes from her passion for joining creative expression with personal growth and social change. Sara has extensive experience doing arts-based anti-oppression facilitation in such diverse venues as classrooms, Professional Development workshops, night clubs and most recently mega-gatherings like the recent “Be the Change” forum in Vancouver. Sara is currently the Director of Programming at Leave Out Violence (LOVE) BC, one of Canada’s leading arts-based youth violence awareness organizations, she is a performer/facilitator with the Hiphop empowerment crew METAPHOR, a lead facilitator with the arts empowerment organization Power of Hope, and a director of a community choir called the Cultural Medicine Cabinet. She began working with AMES as a youth facilitating Peer Perspectives arts-based anti-oppression workshops. Peer Perspectives received an award of excellence and best practices in anti-racism education from the Canadian Race Relations Foundation in 2004/05.
http://www.beatboard.org/members/sara_kendall/

Rup is an artist and facilitator who has been engaging communities around issues of race and identity for the past 13 years. He is the founder of “Metaphor” which has been delivering hip hop literacy and life skills programs at the Burnaby Youth Detention Centre for the past 9 years. As a multi-instrumentalist, producer, dancer, choreographer and poet, his vision is ignited by an interdisciplinary passion for the arts. Among the organizations he has done facilitation work for are: SAFETEEN, Peer Perspectives, the Momentum Project, the Power of Hope and Sarah McLachlan Music Outreach, a free inner city music school.
http://byanydreamsnecessary.com/Rup.html

coming soon

Jenny Breukelman has been working as a freelance multimedia artist for over 12 years. She trained in audio recording at Columbia Academy of Radio, Television and Recording Arts in 2000. Summer 2003, she moved to Galiano Island where she worked as a composer and animation/visual fx mentor at the Gulf Islands Film and Television School(GIFTS) for 5 years. She has since worked on projects such as: animator/graphic designer for Urban Ink’s “Women In Fish”production and the Fathom Labs Highway project. She was hired as an animation mentor for Sierra Club/Gumboot Productions “One Tonne Challenge”, and created soundtracks for the National Film Board’s short clips on anti-racism. She was part of the “Smoke Screen” project two years in a row(anti-smoking ads created by youth, produced by the Access to Media Education Society). She is part of the creative community on Galiano, hosting open mic nights in her spare time as a singer/songwriter.  Jenny has two children, two cats, a dog, two fish and is happy to work in multimedia and live on a beautiful island in the forest at the same time.

coming soon

Surya is a story facilitator, writer, and community-based researcher/evaluator.

After undergraduate work in Cultural and Religious Studies and Film Production, she received her Master’s Degree in urban social Geography from the London School of Economics. In 2007, she trained as a digital storytelling facilitator at the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley, CA. Since then, she has worked with youth, Aboriginal groups, seniors, ESL students, and others to integrate storytelling into community building and personal exploration.

As a writer, she has had poetry, short fiction and non-fiction published in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada.

In all her work, she holds a deep appreciation and respect for the power of the story and the act of storytelling. You can learn more about me at www.foundoutink.com.