Melissa Nygren - Music Facilitator
Melissa Nygren has been playing the guitar since 1996 and has been teaching since 2005. As a singer/songwriter she has had the pleasure of touring across Canada and overseas. She has released 4 albums with her two bands and continues to write, record and perform. Melissa now runs her own company, Prairie Songstress Music, which delivers her own brand of guitar, voice, and songwriting training. This intelligent and experienced prairie songstress has never hesitated to spread her music in a journey that’s taken her from the back porch to big stages in more than a decade of writing, performing, and collaborating.
Kelly-Anne Riess - Writer Facilitator
Kelly-Anne Riess is a poet based in Regina. She is the author of the poetry collection To End a Conversation, which has been featured on CBC Radio and on The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor. Her work has been published in literary journals across Canada, and, recently, she was shortlisted for a Saskatchewan Lieutenant Governor’s Arts Award, a YWCA Young Woman of Distinction Award, and a Regina Mayor’s Art Award. Riess also works as a freelance journalist, having written for many newspapers and magazines, including the Globe and Mail and Canadian Geographic. She has traveled across North America, working on documentaries that have aired worldwide on networks such as the A&E Biography Channel, History Television, and CBC. Riess was the lead writer on the bestselling Saskatchewan Book of Everything.
Leon Willey was born in Vancouver, BC, and is now living in Mortlach, Saskatchewan. Leon has performed throughout Canada. Credits include Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan, Persephone Theatre, Arts Club Theatre, Gateway Theatre, Chemainus Theatre, and many more. Leon’s favourites are: The Full Monty in Vancouver and Saskatoon, Ain’t We Got Fun in Moose Jaw, Billy Crocker in Anything Goes and William Smith in Murder on the Nile on Vancouver Island, Bobby Strong in Urinetown, Jessie Award winner for Best Production in Vancouver, Johnny in Johnny Zed: The Musical (Saskatchewan Playwrights Festival). Most recently Leon performed alongside his wife Krista in a school show for children in Saskatchewan, Who is Mrs. Wilson?, as Mickey. Leon has toured twice with the Cultural Exchange Workshop Tours.
Evans Bamwesigye - Dance Facilitator
Evans brings with him a rich heritage of East African traditional dances fused with a glaze of hip-hop. Born in the undulating hills of western Uganda, Evans has enamoured both small and large audiences. With a charisma that never dims, he teaches not only the melange of dances but combines it with drumming lessons and cascading clapping native to the East African region. He has taught students from Japan, Europe, North America, and Southern Africa. His workshop sessions are rife with enthusiasm and the effect lives on long long after the sessions. He currently lives in Saskatoon where he takes part in a multiplicity of cultural events.
Carol Morin - Visual Arts Facilitator
Carol is currently employed at the CBC as a broadcaster but is looking forward to touring the province sharing her creative excitement with Saskatchewan youth. Her workshop will incorporate both the visual arts and the art of storytelling, depending on the age of the students involved. She plans to use the mediums of paint, paper, and found objects to show how texture can be incorporated into visual arts. Carol comes to the troupe with a broad experience in the arts, most recently she was selected to receive a Saskatchewan Arts Board grant to develop illustrations for one of her children’s books.
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