VideoWinnipeg's Columpa Bobb on building bridges through the arts

At the inaugural edition of SCENE & HEARD, in March 2012, a dozen filmmakers, activists, artists and educators delivered short, highly-charged presentations about building bridges across communities - a real range of perspectives and ideas.

Columpa Bobb is an artist, an educator and an activist.  She is of Tsleil Waututh and Nlaka'pamux heritage.

Columpa brings all her passions and life experience to her work as leader of The Aboriginal Arts Training and Mentorship Program at Manitoba Theatre for Young People.

In her passionate SCENE & HEARD presentation she talks about the power of the arts to transform and to build, as she puts it, internal bridges.  "I think the arts are a very gentle, very kind way to move from an occupied source of thinking to a free thinking human being", states Columpa.

"If you provide time, space, safety, and consistency, whoever your participants are, be they young or old, they will move into expressing authentic self", Columpa explains. "Once you can do that you can express stories about yourselves and about others."

Watch Columpa Bobb's entire presentation in our video. 

See the results of her work with The Aboriginal Arts Training and Mentorship Program as MTYP presents Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet with an all Aboriginal cast.