Adult Pickleball Nights
2024-04-02 19:00 - 21:00, 2024-04-09 19:00 - 21:00, 2024-04-16 19:00 - 21:00, 2024-04-23 19:00 - 21:00, 2024-04-30 19:00 - 21:00, 2024-05-07 19:00 - 21:00, 2024-05-14 19:00 - 21:00, 2024-05-21 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Vancouver) and 2 more dates | Wells Community Hall, 4269 Sanders Ave, Wells, BC, V0K2R0, Canada
Wells Pickleball is back! Tuesdays @ 7pm, starting tomorrow, at the Community Hall. All you need is a pair of running shoes. Drop in fee is $3. No experience required. We will also be running youth Pickleball on Thursdays from 4-5:30 pm.
Hope to see you there!

DAYGLO ABORTIONS WITH SPECIAL GUESTS no big d
2024-04-07 19:00 - 22:00 | The Wells Hotel, 2341 Pooley St., Wells, BC, V0k2R0, Canada
The Dayglo’s are finally making a triumphant return to Northern BC and are stopping for a good time at The Wells Hotel. Don’t miss your chance to sing and swing along to these legends!
Joined by locals no big d, this is sure to be an unforgettable night!
Tickets are $30 and available at Barkerville Brewing and the Wells Hotel.

Island Mountain Arts AGM
2024-04-24 18:00 - 19:00 | BC
Island Mountain Art’s Annual General Meeting is upon us!
We will have option to attend in person and online this year. Please register in advance so we can make sure we have enough space for everyone!
If you have any questions, please send them along to info@imarts.com
https://forms.gle/vQ5uqGREu6y9pSMP9

Toil & Trouble II: a Women's Mini Sips Fest
2024-05-04 18:00 - 23:00 | The Wells Hotel, 2341 Pooley St., Wells, BC, V0k2R0, Canada
Toil & Trouble is back for its 2nd installment! Join us for a small but mighty gathering of northern craft breweries, cideries, and wineries that empower women at the ownership, management, and brewmaster level. Toil and Trouble aims to provide a safe and supportive atmosphere for craft beer enthusiasts in BC’s rural north. It is a women-centred event but open to all participants 19+ years of age.
What’s included in your ticket:

12 x 4-oz samples from participating vendors
A taco buffet dinner
A souvenir Wells Hotel glencairn crystal tasting glass
An exciting historic venue, with 6,000 sq ft of space, three crackling fireplaces, and plenty of cozy seating
If the sun is shining, a big south-facing patio to enjoy!

Participating drink makers:

Barkerville Brewing
Deadfall Brewing
Three Ranges Brewing
Slaughterhouse Cider
Northern Lights Estate Winery

What you need to participate:

A ticket (only 55 available)
A place to stay in Wells or a designated driver (proof must be provided to enter the event)
A commitment to our Code of Conduct, requiring a harassment-free environment for all

Accommodation options:

The Wells Hotel: https://wellshotel.com/
The White Caps Motel: https://whitecapmotel.godaddysites.com/
Historic Stays in Wells: https://www.stayinwells.ca/

Bry Webb + Cots
2024-05-15 19:00 - 21:00 | SARRAS, 2338 Bowman Cres, Wells, BC, V0K2R0, Canada
Bry Webb + Cots
Live at the SARRAS in Wells, BC
Wednesday, May 15th, 2024
7:00PM Doors
7:30PM Music
$15 to $20 suggested donation
About the Artists:
Bry Webb
” Bry Webb is best known as the singer and principal songwriter in the well-loved and celebrated Canadian underground rock and roll band, The Constantines. During the band’s four-year hiatus from 2010-2014, Webb returned to his one time home of Guelph, Ontario, became a father, and wrote his first album, Provider, released in 2011 by Idée Fixe.
Now in an unexpected turnaround 10 years on from the recording of his last studio album “Free Will”, there is not only a return to the stage for Bry but also a new record. Primarily composed in a season of upheaval, “Run With Me” contains some of Bry’s rawest sentiments. Fresh and painfully present there is an immediacy one can hear as emotional walls collapse in real time. ”
https://brywebb.bandcamp.com/album/run-with-me
Cots
“Cots is the solo project of Montreal composer, singer, and guitarist Steph Yates. Blending elements of bossa nova, folk, jazz, and classical against a modern art backdrop, Cots’s subtly unconventional compositions and poetics permeate her debut record – the hushed, lush Disturbing Body. Produced by renowned Toronto musician Sandro Perri and engineered by Canadian recording artist Scott Merritt, the record demonstrates Yates’s understated, detailed songcraft and attention to lyrical play. Her pure, crystalline voice carries the gravitas of songs that evoke lost love and its consequences.”
https://cotsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/moonlit-building

Learn to Weave with Ana Diab
2024-05-17 18:00 - 20:00 | Island Mountain Arts Studios, Mildred Ave, Wells, V0K 2R0
About the Workshop
In this workshop you will learn basic techniques to create a wall hanging on a frame loom. Ana will walk you through what you need to know to set up a warp, talk about weaving terminology, and describe which yarns work best for weaving. You will learn plain weave techniques to allow you to make simple shapes that can be applied to more complex compositions. You will be able to experiment with different yarns, design a colour palette and learn how to finish a weaving to hang on the wall. Materials will be provided. Ages 10+
About the Artist
Ana Diab is a multidisciplinary artist and art librarian living on unceded Coast Salish territories. Before receiving a MLIS from the University of Western Ontario, Ana studied art at Capilano College from 2004-2006. She has worked as a librarian at Emily Carr University of Art + Design since 2016. She maintains a creative practice that involves tapestry weaving, printmaking, and contemporary dance. Her work explores themes of feminism and craft, and climate change. Her weavings have been featured on album covers and in private collections in Vancouver. She is currently working on a series of weavings depicting mine sites in Canada.

Bioplastics with Lisa Christinzo
2024-05-18 14:00 - 17:00 | Island Mountain Arts Studios, Mildred Ave, Wells, V0K 2R0
About the Workshop
Join artist Lisa Cristinzo for a hands-on workshop on creating bioplastics from renewable biomass sources. Learn about the methodologies and technical aspects of material creation while exploring the environmental benefits of using bioplastics and distancing ourselves further away from the fossil fuel industry. From material introduction to cooking up bioplastics, this workshop offers a unique experience in sustainable art-making. Lisa Cristinzo will also give a brief presentation on her own search for sustainable art-making practices, especially as an acrylic painter making work through a climate crisis.
About the Artist
Lisa Cristinzo is a queer painter and installation artist, and a first-generation Canadian settler living in T’karonto on Turtle Island. Cristinzo’s large-scale painting installations traverse natural history, climate hazards, materialism, and magic. She holds a BFA from OCAD U and an MFA from York University, where she received a graduate scholarship and SSHRC federal funding for her research into fire and climate change. Cristinzo’s writing and artwork about fire was recently published in Fire Season II by Liz Tooney-Wiese and Amory Abbott. Lisa was accepted into the Doris McCarthy Artist-in-Residence Program for 2023. Along with being an artist, she has spent over a decade managing arts programs and community cultural hubs, including Artscape Gibraltar Point, an artist residency and event space on Mnisiing/Toronto Island.

Stitching Geography and Memory with Shawn Grey
2024-05-18 18:30 - 20:30 | Island Mountain Arts Studios, Mildred Ave, Wells, V0K 2R0
About the workshop
This workshop explores creating cloth bags as collective storytelling. The workshop delves into
the movement of story through the application of stitching techniques. Participants will stitch
cotton bags with decorative motifs interpreting experiences of geography and memory.
Inspired by Ursula Le Guin’s essay on the “Carrier Bag”, the workshop replicates the invention and necessity of care offering a way for individuals to metaphorically hold one another together through story. Shawn will demonstrate and teach stitching techniques through the making of a small zippered cotton bag. Participants will receive a sewing kit with materials to stitch their own carrying bag. The stitching techniques can then be used by participants to appliqué or embroider basic motifs or images of one’s own expression onto the bag. The collective making of the bags opens space to consider how we carry information, family history, assumptions, visions, and how simple tools impact our lives in the moment and more broadly, into the future as the skills are shared with one another and intergenerationally.
About the Artist
Shawn Grey is a visual artist whose practice is rooted in connection and transformation. Combining elements of cloth, video, and narrative, her work documents the everyday as a method to locate overlooked stories that carry and share collective knowledge. Her 2022 MFA thesis project, “When Nobody Was Here,” at York University, documented the collaborative making of a 45-foot cloth banner that served to articulate the meaning of personal presence and relationship in relationship to self, others, and local histories. Shawn’s video montage, “Occupied Acknowledgements,” was screened at Toronto’s 2019 Nuit Blanche and her work is recognized by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council. Shawn is 3rd generation British/Hungarian descent, born in Nanaimo, British Columbia, living and working in Toronto, Ontario on territories covered by Treaty 13.

Wild Colour, Ink Making with Annie Robinson
2024-05-18 21:00 | Island Mountain Arts Studios, Mildred Ave, Wells, V0K 2R0
About the Workshop
In a workshop full of play and connection to place, participants will work with wild colour sources to make ink. No art experience is required, only curious minds. We will explore colour sources from food waste, foraged botanicals, and metals. Together, we will discover the palette of Wells, contemplate the storylines of specific colour sources, and inspire a land-based approach to artmaking.
This workshop is all ages and will require an adult to be with younger participants as we will be working over a stove.
“Color is a playground where science and magic meet.” -Jason Logan, Toronto Ink Company
About the Artist
Annie Robinson is a land-based painter and art therapist who makes her own materials out of foraged and natural color sources. Annie’s painting expresses landscape, a sense of place, and embodiment; she paints out on the land using ingredients from the surrounding place and her garden. This includes indigo dyeing and making inks and paints from wild pigments found in the earth, botanicals, and metals left from decaying industry. Annie’s personal art practice and practice in art therapy intertwine through the use of material, connection to the land, and her fellow artmakers in qathet, BC, the territory of the Tla’amin People.

Plein Air Meditative Drawing
2024-05-19 10:00 - 12:00 | Island Mountain Arts, 2323 Pooley St., Wells, BC, V0k2R0, Canada
MEET AT ISLAND MOUNTAIN ARTS AT 10:00 AM
$10.00 Materials fee, or PWYC
About the Workshop
This workshop is an opportunity to experience meditative drawing, engaging with Donna Haraway’s concept of becoming-with. The plein air artist typically uses direct observation to draw or paint what they see. In this workshop, we will observe but also explore all our senses of cognition to connect in kinship with our surroundings. Through a series of meditative drawing exercises, participants will experience a deeper and fuller relationality of becoming-with the environment. Participants will also be introduced to the practice of nature journaling as a way to record their experiences. Ages 8+ with parent supervision.
About the Artist
Taline creating art plein air by the riverside
Taline Kavoukian is a T’Karonto/Toronto-based multimedia artist who uses an ecofeminist lens in her portraiture, figurative work and landscape painting. Her formal education includes an MA in Creativity and Intrinsic Motivation from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, and she recently graduated with a BFA from York University. Taline is an enthusiastic reader, walker, traveller, and curious learner who believes that life is an adventure to be lived with love, joy and in community.

artist talk | tea and talk with Rachel Rozanski (ARCHIVAL EARTH)
2024-05-19 14:00 - 15:00 | Island Mountain Arts, 2323 Pooley St., Wells, BC, V0k2R0, Canada
About 50 percent of Canada is permafrost, and it’s thawing almost a century earlier than predicted. It is the foundation for Arctic ecosystems and in the last ten years, thawing and “permafrost slumps” have started to dramatically change the landscape.
This multimedia exhibit explores the concept of time on a geological scale through land change in Northern Canada, with a specific focus on the ways permafrost and water are being altered in the Anthropocene. Investigating permafrost thaw from the direct effects of small-scale mining to the results of large-scale global climate change, this project developed through creative practice and collaboration with scientists and Indigenous land-based researchers in the Yukon and Northwest Territories on Inuvialuit, Gwich’in, Dene, and Trondek Hwetch’in traditional territories, partially through summer and winter residencies at the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture.
About the Artist: Rachel Rozanski is an interdisciplinary artist and PhD student whose creative research explores concepts of restoration and repair in environmental studies and disability studies. Through residency projects in the Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Iceland, she has collaborated with researchers and been inspired by scientific and land-based studies of permafrost degradation, pollution and adaptations for the Anthropocene. Using drawing, photography and video, Rachel portrays the creative survival of people, plants and animals in sick bodies and sick Lands, creating documentary art that is accessible and experiential. Her work has been exhibited in galleries internationally and across Canada including PAVED arts, Prefix Circuit Gallery, Two Rivers Gallery, the Canada Council for the Arts Ajagemo gallery, and Artspace Gallery for CONTACT Photography Festival.
Registration is not necessary, but we hope you will join us!

Paper Making Workshop
2024-05-31 16:00 - 19:00 | BC
Paper Making with MULCH Collective!
Friday – May 31, 2024 || 4:00 PM – 7:00 PM || fair weather = outside at the Nest, foul weather in the Second Floor Studios (Wells-Barkerville School second floor).
Are you swimming in a sea of documents? Is your wastepaper basket overflowing with balled up notes from your screenplay that just isn’t working? Do those junk mail flyers keep piling up before you get to use them? Join members of MULCH Collective down the rabbit hole of creating homemade paper from all that recycling, scraps and plant materials laying around. Participants will learn the basics of paper making, from building deckles to pulling sheets from the pulp. The workshop will also include an exploration into how local and invasive plant species can be used in the process of paper making.

Contour Drawing with Zuzana Vasko
2024-06-12 16:00 - 18:00 | The Nest, 4234 Sanders Ave, Wells, BC, V0K2R0, Canada
June 12th | 4 – 6pm | Outside of the Nest
About the workshop:
Contour drawing involves very careful, sincere looking and creates a space for intimate connection with the subject you’re drawing. As such, the experience of drawing in contours can be a way to better come to know the forms of life around us, and to see and give attention to what might otherwise not be noticed. This workshop will take place outside, where we will draw certain spots, niches, or specific plants that might draw you in. Because the focus is on process and careful looking rather than on the result, it is accessible to all levels of drawing or experience. We will begin with blind contours – drawing without looking at the paper – and move onto sighted contours while continuing to look with detailed care and what you’ve decided to draw.
About the artist:
Zuzana Vasko’s artwork inquires into how we might create meaningful, intimate bonds with our local ecologies; it also explores commonalities we share with other species and the lore around how we relate to them. Her work often incorporates drawing, stitching, and natural materials. She teaches with the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, where she endeavours to bring ecological perspectives into all her courses.

Meadows of Stone
2024-06-13 20:00 - 21:30, 2024-06-14 20:00 - 21:30, 2024-06-15 20:00 - 21:30, 2024-06-16 14:00 - 15:30 | Sunset Theatre, 2357 Pooley St., Wells, BC, v0k2r0, Canada
It’s time to get ready for the first show of our 2024 Season, Meadows of Stone!
(Poster Design by Dirk Van Stralen)
SAVE THE DATES! June 13, 14, 15, 16 2024
The cast & crew are arriving in Wells this weekend. Rehearsal starts at The Sunset Theatre on May 28th, and the show will open June 13th @ 8PM and run until June 16th @ 2PM.
Meadows of Stone, created by Amy Lee Newman and Jim Hodgkinson, was developed through the Sunset Theatre’s Exploration Series. We are thrilled to get this Workshop Production up on its feet.
Set in the summer of 1918 this brand new musical explores themes of resilience, love and friendship for two people who experience the most exciting chapter in their lives when they least expect it. Inspired by true events.
Cast & Crew:
Vallance Maguire – Amy Lee Newman
Captain Gabriel Arnott – Jim Hodgkinson
Director – Dirk Van Stralen
Stage Manager – Lou Marshall

2nd Annual Tree Planting Fundraiser
2024-06-15 - 2024-06-16 | BC
It’s happening! The Wells Destination School Society, in cooperation with West Fraser and the Wells Barkerville Community Forest is holding the 2nd annual Tree Planting Fundraiser. Join us on the block June 15th.
Volunteers are needed (no experience necessary) to join us on the block Saturday June 15 to achieve our goal of planting 15,000 seedlings. All planters will be provided with lunch and refreshments and a free ticket to attend the Treeplanter’s Ball. Raised funds will goal towards starting the WILDWays Highschool September 2024.
For more info and to sign up email wellsdestinationschool@gmail.com

The Treeplanter's Ball
2024-06-15 20:00 - 23:00 | Wells Community Hall, 4269 Sanders Ave, Wells, BC, V0K2R0, Canada
The Treeplanter’s Ball is an opportunity to dance away the hard work of the day with the brilliant tunes of Saltwater Hank and The Dead Wrongs. As we are toasting to an initiative that will have benefits for folks of all ages living in Wells and the surrounding area, this event will be for folks of all ages.
The Treeplanter’s Ball | The Wells Community Hall | June 15, 2024 | 8PM | All Ages!
TICKET PRICE: 1. Adult – $20.00 in advance
2. Under 18 – $10.00
3. Ages 10 and under are by donation
4. Solid Roots Volunteer – Free
5. $30.00 at the door
Get tickets at https://islandmountainarts.tickit.ca/events/24722-the-treeplanter-s-ball

FOR SCIENCE!
2024-06-22 20:00 - 21:30, 2024-06-23 20:00 - 21:30 | Sunset Theatre, 2357 Pooley St., Wells, BC, v0k2r0, Canada
This is such a delightful show. Come experience a rare wordless performance (with non-coercive audience participation) of real science, delivered by real scientists (who also happen to be actors).
