Carmen Rosen is a visual artist, singer, and interdisciplinary performer. She has a long history of initiating art projects and creative community integrated projects. In 2010 Carmen received the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award, and in 2012 the Queen’s Jubilee Award for her art with the community. She has an Art History degree from UBC and a diploma from Emily Carr Institute. Carmen is the founder and artistic director of Still Moon Arts Society: inspiring vibrant and connected communities by creating art and nurturing a passion for nature. Through Still Moon and in collaboration with many community partners, she creates the Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival, and other projects and special events shedding light on Renfrew Ravine, Still Creek, salmon in the city, and the community’s creative capacity. She leads art workshops including Colour Me Local natural dye workshops, lantern making workshops, giant puppet and costume workshops, art workshops with schools and community groups such as Sarah Ross House Temporary Modular Housing, and a six year residency with Arts, Health and Seniors. 

Previous to Still Moon Arts, Carmen was also the founder and co-artistic director of Mortal Coil Performance Society for 10 years – creating shows, designing costumes and giant puppets, performing, and booking stilt-dance shows all over North America. 

As a singer, Carmen performed, recorded and toured with Elektra Women’s Choir, the Slavic Soul ensemble Zeellia for 20+ years, and currently performs with Zlatna Mountain. 

In 2016 Carmen created a major public art installation “Still Here” at Skyway Towers Plaza on Kingsway. In 2017 she was an artist in residence at CACIS Centre for Art and Sustainability in Spain. In 2018 she collaborated with artists Paula Jardine, Cathy Stubington (Runaway Moon), and Robi Smith as Birds in Residence and Birds on Parade spending over a year to create a giant bird parade with hundreds of community members in costume performing as birds on stilts for the opening of the International Ornithological Congress and the Vancouver Bird Festival.

Carmen’s visual art can be seen in the stone mosaic pathways around Renfrew Ravine, giant puppets and stilt walking characters at festivals and community parades, giant lantern installations at several lantern festivals, and living mushroom sculptures, Fruiting Bodies, in Renfrew Community Park. 

You can see her TEDx talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDwviAVQ6gc

Lindy Johnston is a passionate advocate for innovative industries dealing with environmental and social progress. With a Bachelor in Biology from Queen’s University, Lindy has since focused on communicating scientific and technical ideas to stakeholders and gaining buy-in within a sales, fundraising or advocacy setting. Most recently this entailed engaging with diverse demographics to lobby and advocate against the destruction of Australia’s natural environment. In all roles, Lindy consistently met or exceeded targets progressing her to leadership roles including coaching teams, delegating and organizing days and strategic planning. Living in diverse settings and recently re-igniting her creative endeavor for hooping, hip hop and expressive movement, Lindy has seen first hand how the arts, vibrant community and civic engagement enriches lives, provides meaning and paves the way for more conscious and holistic ways of living.

Clea Moray has extensive experience in nonprofit management, environmental stewardship, and community engagement. Her past work has included surveying remote old-growth forests in northern Ontario and managing collaborations between scientists, government and First Nations representatives, and others to improve the management of salmon and their habitat in the Skeena watershed.
As a community advocate, Clea has brought new services and infrastructure to her neighbourhood and has worked to build social capacity and connections.
In her spare time, she is an avid gardener and enjoys organizing community events and travelling near and far with her kids.

Varsha Gill is a feminist filmmaker, social-change oriented film educator, and textile artist based out of Vancouver, Canada [unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Peoples]. She is a third generation Indo-Canadian born and raised on unceded Coast Salish territories, with family roots in northwestern India. Varsha is deeply passionate about community building, exploring the local mountains, and reimagining a world where people and land are good medicine for one another. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Gender Studies and Media Arts from Quest University Canada, which has led her to many youth leadership and art activism positions. Varsha volunteers for Reel Youth, a media empowerment project where she facilitates film production programs for youth facing systemic and structural barriers. Her personal work seeks to challenge menstrual stigma by calling for increased conversation about menstruation. She currently screens her short film Bleed With Me, in events locally and internationally to proliferate this message. Varsha believes art is a place that holds many possibilities for social and environmental justice through its ability to connect people to each other, and the land. She is honoured to support Still Moon Arts in facilitating this through eco-arts programs for the Renfrew-Collingwood community.

Marie is a community engaged and interdisciplinary artist, clown and performer. She has been contributing to festivals and various art events as an organizer, performer, instructor and volunteer for a decade. Marie is thrilled to be part of the amazing community supporting Still Moon Arts Society. She deeply values activities that link arts, community and environment. In 2014 she relocated to Vancouver’s vibrant culture to work in instructing youth, mentoring and development and to continue her studies in expressive arts therapy and clown. Her studies include six years with master clown teacher David MacMurray Smith and nature-based expressive arts using the LifeArt Process of Tamalpa Institute among other modalities. She continues to be a theatre and tech assistant to a touring elementary school theatre company, “Candy Bones Theatre.” She is a member of “The Assembly,” all women’s clown troupe, performing for audiences on Granville Island. Prior to working with SMAS Marie had the pleasure to be an assistant producer for multi-cultural arts events including the Festival of Hallows and Mid Summer Solstice. She worked as a youth counsellor for both Teen Journey, a 10 day rites of passage camp; Wildlife Federation Youth Camp for land conservation; furthermore, she was a youth instructor for Little Mountain Neighbourhood House teaching physical literacy and nature exploration. She values art as a service of facilitating healing and nurturance through deep personal growth and transformation. She believes providing opportunities for rekindling creativity, imagination, and play are important parts of the path home.

Adrian Avendaño is an environmental technician, percussionist, sound artist, recordist, and interdisciplinary artist based in Surrey-Vancouver, Canada [stolen lands of the q̓ic̓əy̓ (Katzie), q̓ʷɑ:n̓ƛ̓ən̓ (Kwantlen), Semiahma (Semiahmoo), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱ wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Peoples].  He holds a Diploma of Technology from BCIT’s Forest and Natural Areas Management program which has enabled him to work in many public institutions around the Lower Mainland.  He has volunteered for the Government of Chile’s – Ministry of Agriculture: National Forest Corporation in Torres del Paine National Park, creating their invasive plant management plan.  In addition he has studied music at Vancouver Community College and has been mentored in many sound initiatives in Vancouver, Peru and Chile (VIVO Media Arts Salmon Sounds, Memorias Sonoras del Cusco II, and Tsonami’s International Sound Art Festival).  He is an emerging performer in Vancouver’s creative music scene and is constantly engaging in collaborations across the experimental sound communities locally and abroad. He is interested in the intersection of ecology, sound thinking, open-source technology, community engaged art, and ecological restoration.

Karen Thao La is a multi-disciplinary artist, designer, and cultural worker, who has lived/worked in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and Vancouver, Canada on the traditional, ancestral and unceded lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. In 2016 she began a personal journey to make familiar with her ancestors’ environment. Retracing footsteps, she became attuned to how one’s landscape informs attitudes and behaviours and is a site for lineal connection. Her work seeks to reconcile intergenerational and cross-cultural understanding through embodied research, art-making, and storytelling. In 2019, she was an artist-in-residence at A.Farm (HCMC); here, she developed a meditative process of embroidering grains of golden rice to pay homage to her family’s migration journey, which led her to become a first-generation Canadian settler. She recently directed her first short documentary, Xem Đêm, which followed a group of women in their Open Style Choreography class. This project led to a newfound love for the boundless nature of dance and movement. She has collaborated with artists, designers, and musicians from around the globe to actualize unified visions. She holds a BFA in Visual Art & Art History from the University of British Columbia and a diploma in Jewelry Art & Design. With gratitude to land—nature, earth, she is thrilled to support Still Moon and facilitate the Moon Festival in the formative neighbourhood she grew up in and around.

Saige Patti is a musician, writer, multi-disciplinary artist and settler on unceded Musqueam, Squamish & Tsleil-Waututh Territory (Vancouver). She is passionate about building community around social justice, sustainability, and the human desire to engage in artistic expression. She holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of British Columbia where she studied plant and soil science and environmental justice. In particular, she investigated various ways people relate to land, including the effects of colonial resource extraction projects and the impact of grassroots movements which resist these projects. Her love of storytelling as part of education and community building has helped her weave between her organizing work and artistic practice. As an artist releasing under the name Saliska, they explore themes of time, tangledness, and growth — reflecting on how queered understandings can help us move beyond the status quo to critically engage with social constructs and create space for personal and interpersonal connection. Their work also explores connecting to and learning from natural phenomena. They’ve created works on their own relationship with water. Saige is excited about the work Still Moon is doing around local waterways to weave together ecological restoration and local arts. She is honoured to be supporting the Moon Festival.

Masa Kateb (She/Her) Masa is a Traditional Syrian Storyteller, Leadership & Growth Coach, and an Equitable Justice Activist from Damascus, Syria, who’s commitment to social justice & shifting the narrative of the Syrian context from war & distraction, to also include her culture’s rich art & heritage. She has been involved in supporting and advancing diverse causes for the past 15+ years, regardless of where she’s residing in the world, including refugee rights, education for youth, women rights, economic empowerment & mental health of refugees, and the rights of equity-deserving human beings, like herself.

Kateb’s background is in Economics, Business Administration, Journalism, Marketing & Promotion, Communication, Leadership, Basketball Coaching & Professional Playing, Career Mentorship, Neuroscience of Coaching, Activism, and holds a Purpose Mastery of Business Actions [Purpose MBA]. She’s a Community Developer, Events Planner & Host, Writer, Public Speaker, Traditional Syrian Storyteller, Syrian Culinary Artist, and a Refugee Advisor.

When she’s not working for Still Moon, she’s either observing a sunset, or investing her time and energy in growing Quantum Care, an Educational Coaching & Consultancy business she co-founded during the COVID-19 pandemic to support the overall wellbeing of individuals and communities.

Katherine Yacht is a trained professional opera singer who has worked in the Vancouver arts community for the last 20 years as a soloist, ensemble singer, and teacher. During that time, she has worked as a bookkeeper for various groups and individuals, and understands the multifaceted needs of non-profit organizations. Katherine is passionate about facilitating efficiency, ease, and transparency in her clients’ financial operations, so that organizations are freed up inspire people and change lives. Katherine is excited to contribute to the good work that the Still Moon team is doing in our community.