Bee Cen­tral (June – Sep­tem­ber 2015) was a com­mu­ni­ty art project meant to stim­u­late a ‘buzz’ about bees as well as the Brent’s Grist Mill Her­itage Park in Kelow­na. The projects gath­ered peo­ple on the rarely used site and helped to attract peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate in the plant­i­ng, build­ing and main­tain­ing of a Pub­lic Art Pol­li­na­tor Pas­ture in Kelow­na. Bee Cen­tral was part­ly made pos­si­ble by a Com­mu­ni­ty Pub­lic Art Grant from The City of Kelow­na and fund­ing from UBCO’s Eco Art Incubator.

On June 14th, Bee Cen­tral fea­tured “The Swarm in June” by Rhon­da Neufeld where com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers cre­at­ed mag­i­cal mechan­i­cal bees out of scrap paper and sim­ply mate­ri­als. On Sat­ur­day July 4th Samuel Roy-Bois led peo­ple in the build­ing of a com­mu­ni­ty sculp­ture, “Small World”. On August 23rd, “Mur­mu­ra­tions,” a live, inter­ac­tive com­mu­ni­ty per­for­mance piece by cre­ative writ­ing stu­dent S. Megan Hunter will be pre­sent­ed. On Sep­tem­ber 26th, artist Lori Mairs facil­i­tat­ed “Mason Bee Homes”, guid­ing the com­mu­ni­ty in build­ing on-site mini-homes for native bees along­side a large scale mod­el of a mason bee tube. This last event was accom­pa­nied by on-site talks with the Cen­tral Okana­gan Her­itage Soci­ety about pio­neer cul­ture and agri­cul­tur­al history.

Each event was free of charge, fam­i­ly-friend­ly, and open to the public.

View the offi­cial report sub­mit­ted to the City of Kelowna.


A Swarm In June

Small World

Murmurations

Mason Bee Homes