Join us for a guided meditation that invites you to experience art slowly, openly, and with fresh attention. Led by mindfulness facilitator Jay Vidyarthi, this session offers a gentle way to connect with the artworks at Cultivate Art Commons through presence, curiosity, and reflection.

After a brief introduction, participants will be guided into the present moment before mindfully wandering the gallery. As you observe the artworks, you’ll be invited to notice what arises—sensations, thoughts, and feelings—without the need to analyze or interpret. Using the art as an anchor for awareness, the meditation creates space for deeper engagement with the exhibition and with your own inner experience. 

No prior meditation experience is required—just bring your curiosity and openness.

This is a monthly program held on the last Friday of each month from 10–11am. The meditation is 30 minutes long followed by an optional 30 minutes of discussion and reflection. 

Please Note: This session is not a therapy program. Jay Vidyarthi is a trained mindfulness facilitator, not a licensed therapist, and offers meditation using a trauma-sensitive approach that emphasizes care, consent, and personal agency.

ABOUT JAY VIDYARTHI

Jay Vidyarthi is the award-winning author of RECLAIM YOUR MIND and founder of Still Ape. With over 15 years of meditation practice—including extended retreats, monastic training, and facilitator training—his work and ideas have helped improve the wellbeing of millions. He's taught major organizations, community groups, and one-on-one. His ideas have been featured by places like Harvard, MIT, TED, Psychology Today, CNN, Mashable, Vice, and Fast Company. Learn more at jayvidyarthi.com

Explore the intersections of art and science through slow, hands-on, collaborative artmaking. This workshop invites participants to consider how we are intricately connected to one another, the land, the air, and the countless life forms that move alongside us.

Inspired by the quiet beauty of pollen grains and seeds, we will turn our attention to their extraordinary microscopic world through a meditative creative practice that encourages curiosity, reflection, and collective making. Together, we will learn, play, and grow while exploring the hidden structures that sustain life.

Participants will learn simple wire-bending and weaving techniques to collaboratively create abstracted forms inspired by pollen grains and seeds. Each individual gesture will become part of a larger collective artwork, embodying the interconnectedness at the heart of the workshop. Alongside the collaborative installation, each participant will create a small sculptural piece to take home as a personal reminder of the experience.

ABOUT CHARMAINE LURCH
Charmaine Lurch is a Caribbean Canadian conceptual artist whose multi-modal practice spans sculpture, installation, drawing, performance and public art. Grounded in Black geographies and ecological justice, her work explores relationships between human and more-than-human life, through materials such as charcoal, wire, steel, as well as the use of light, and shadow. Lurch’s work has been presented at major institutions including the Royal Ontario Museum, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Gallery of Jamaica, and the Art Gallery of Ontario, and appears internationally through institutions such as Global Affairs Canada. She is a professor at Humber College in the Faculty of Digital Creative Arts and is an educator committed to community-engaged, interdisciplinary learning.

Looking to cultivate a creative community of learners? Well, look no further! In collaboration with the Kingston Frontenac Public Library, Cultivate Art Commons is co-hosting the Learning for Liberation Book Club.

Inspired by the hit song by clipping. (comprised of Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes), The Deep by Rivers Solomon is a powerful Afrofuturist novella about a society of merfolk called the wajinru. They are the descendants of pregnant African women who were thrown overboard from slave ships during the Middle Passage. To survive their traumatic origins, the society lives in blissful forgetfulness, relying on a single "Historian" to hold the entirety of their shared memories.

For this Learning For Liberation session, we’re inviting folks to join us for an evening of discussion surrounding living in “the wake” of the history of the Middle Passage (theory from Christina Sharpe) whilst creating collages in reflection of themes from The Deep! 

This program exists to create a welcoming space for collective learning and art-making, critical conversation, and community connection through books that explore liberation, history, justice, creativity, and social change. Together, participants will engage with diverse voices and ideas, reflect on lived experiences, and imagine more caring, equitable futures.

On the first Tuesday of each month, folks will come together to discuss the book at hand, whilst participating in a hands-on art activity.

10 copies of each book will be available through the Kingston Frontenac Public Library. All art activity materials are provided. 

This program is generously funded by the Community Foundation for Kingston & Area.

ABOUT ALYSSA VERNON

Alyssa Vernon is a Jamaican-Guyanese collage artist, educator, and arts worker living in Kingston, Ontario. Alyssa is currently a full-time student pursuing her Master’s in Gender Studies at Queen’s University, but she holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Gender Studies and a Bachelor of Education with a Social Justice concentration from Queen’s University. Her schooling has led to her continual integration of anti-oppressive pedagogy within arts-based activism, as well as within her collage art practice, which explores Black girlhood, (un)belonging, queer liberation, and community care, drawing from Black histories to imagine liberatory futures. Alyssa is also the Founder and Lead Programmer of the Queer Collage Collective, where she facilitates anti-oppressive, healing-centred collage programs across community organizations, schools, and galleries, centring the histories and experiences of Black, racialized, and queer communities.