Young Friends Ottawa Canadian Report: August 2024

It was a Franco-Canadian meeting that had been imagined 3 months earlier, as part of the WFFM Congress in Luxembourg: our Young Friends coordinator travelled to Ottawa on her own initiative to meet the CFFM Young Friends delegates in real life once again on Tuesday August 6th, 2024 :

Robin Treleaven (27 y.o) is a professional contemporary dancer, performer, teacher and choreographer. As coordinator of Ottawa Young Friends, she affirms her ambition to "put on events that showcase everyday people".

Nikita Koziel Ly (24 y.o) has been co-coordinator of Ottawa Young Friends alongside Robin since November 2023. A PHD student in neuroscience, she would like to organize events that bring people into the museum and participate with the space in an active way (for example she was inspired by a scavenger hunt at the National Art center and would like to organize something similar).

Megan Batty, choir director of 25 singers, with whom she will be organizing a concert at the Chapelle Bon Secours in Montreal on December 7, joined the team of a foundation specializing in philanthropy in February 2024, and is the coordinator of Montreal's Young Friends. In this capacity, she joined WFFM's international committee of Young Friends delegates to represent Canada from October 2023, and expresses her desire to connect Canadian Young Friends with the WFFM community.

The meeting was an opportunity to welcome Mathilde Mouchon (24 y.o), a French Young Friend from Le Puy-en-Velay, who by chance was on holiday in Canada at the time. A newcomer to the Young Friends network, Mathilde's ambition is to create a Young Friends section at the Crozatier museum in the Auvergne Rhone Alpes region of France, with the support of the president of her association and the FFSAM. Before resuming her studies in September (Sciences Po), she is fulfilling a dream with a cultural trip to Canada lasting several weeks, which will enable her to visit the main museums in Montreal and Ottawa.

During a tour of the temporary exhibitions at the Ottawa Art Gallery, where Robin will be taking to the stage for a dance and theater show titled subdivision from October 2nd to 4th, 2024, Megan gave a brief introduction to the landscapes paintings of the Group of Seven, Canada's leading artists of the modern era, some of whose paintings depict European landscapes.

The delegates then followed Robin's guided tour of Ottawa's city center: Kwakiutl Totem in Confederation Park, War Memorial, Lord Stanley's Gift Monument, National Arts Centre, Parliament of Canada, Château Laurier, the Ottawa locks and the National Gallery building. Enriched by a wealth of anecdotes and a bird's eye view of downtown Ottawa, Naïma, Nikita, Megan, Robin and Mathilde then sat down at an Italian restaurant in the ByWard Market to talk about their projects in their respective cities and their upcoming initiatives as part of the WFFM network.

Encouraged by Nikita, Megan, Robin and Mathilde’s enthusiastic recommendations to visit the National Gallery of Canada, Naïma went back to visit this amazing art gallery just a few hours before her return to France: impressed by Louise Bourgeois's immense spider sculpture "Mother", in front of the building, she was able to marvel and reflect in turn as she discovered the "Radical Stitch" exhibition, which highlights the ancestral knowledge and political-cultural perspectives of Canadian first nations people as expressed through customary beading techniques.

Instagram Young Friends CFFM : https://www.instagram.com/canadian_yfc_cja/
Friends of musée Crozatier : https://amismuséecrozatier.fr/