The postcard of our December 2025 speakers the WKNDRS (Rachel Rivera & Claire Ouchi) was illustrated by 4th year student from Wilson School of Design at KPU, Rica Reyes.

The text is from our interview with the WKNDRS, and reads: “You don't have to have it all figured out--just start. The path reveals itself as you walk."

All audience members will receive their own copy of this limited edition postcard, printed by Mitchell Press Ltd, at our December 5th event. Get your ticket.

Our theme for December is INNOVATION. It was chosen by our Isfahan chapter in Iran and illustrated by Nazanin Emamieh.

CM chapters all around the world are sharing talks on this theme. Here's some resources to inspire your own reflections:

• DJ Jim Q's Playlist: Innovation
  These 30-plus songs of change, evolution, and renewal have been chosen to inspire ingenuity and inventiveness. Listen to the playlist.
  
  
• Connect + Reflect: A CM Mixer
  This free, online mixer is designed to bring the global CM community together around our monthly themes. RSVP for the event on Dec 17th.

For our last gathering of the year we are excited to welcome the incomparable creative duo, The WKNDRS who will share their extraordinary story through the lens of the global theme 'innovation'.

WKNDRS is the creative partnership of artists Rachel Rivera and Claire Ouchi — two friends who met in art school at AUArts in Calgary and have spent nearly two decades creating together. Based between Vancouver and the Rockies, they blur the lines between art, design, and public space — transforming walls, environments, and experiences into moments of joy and connection. Their work combines bold color, natural forms, and human warmth — always guided by curiosity, collaboration, and play.

Speaker Interview

Each month we ask our presenters some probing questions to give us a deeper glimpse into their life and relationship with creativity:

1. How do you define creativity and apply it in your life and career? Creativity, for us, is curiosity in motion—it’s paying attention, making meaning, and turning imagination into something you can touch, feel, or share. It’s not a job title, it’s a way of moving through the world. We apply it everywhere—in how we paint, design, collaborate, and even how we handle challenges or reinvent what’s next.
   
   
2. Where do you find your best creative inspiration or energy? We find it in movement—traveling, exploring new cities, painting outside, or seeing color in unexpected places. It also comes from each other—our conversations, our differences, and the trust we’ve built over years of working side by side. Nature and community both fuel us—the wild and the human.
   
   
3. What’s one piece of creative advice or a tip you wish you’d known as a young person? You don’t have to have it all figured out—just start. The path reveals itself as you walk it. And sometimes, the “wrong turns” are the most interesting parts of the map.
   
   
4. Who (living or dead) would you most enjoy hearing speak at CreativeMornings? David Hockney—his lifelong love of color, technology, and reinvention feels endlessly inspiring. We’d love to hear his perspective on joy, seeing, and staying curious.
   
   
5. What did you learn from your most memorable creative failure? That failure is usually feedback in disguise. Every project that didn’t go as planned taught us how to communicate better, manage expectations, and trust our instincts. The work is never wasted—it always finds its way into something else later.
   
   
6. What practices, rituals, or habits contribute to your creative work? Morning caffeine and movement. Long drives with good music. Saying yes to small experiments. Taking time to step away from screens and reconnect with the real world—the light, the people, the mess.
   
   
7. Where is your favourite place to escape? For Rachel, it’s the ocean—anywhere near open water, nature and vast skies. For Claire, it’s the city—wandering through galleries, walking aimlessly, and soaking in the rhythm of urban life. Between the two, we’ve found the perfect balance of flow and structure.
   
   
8. What myths about creativity would you like to set straight? That creativity only belongs to artists. Everyone has it—it’s a human trait, not a professional skill. The myth of the “tortured genius” also needs to go; creativity thrives in joy, community, and rest just as much as in struggle.
   
   
9. What has been one of your biggest Aha! moments in life? Realizing that we could build our own lane—that we didn’t have to wait for permission, funding, or validation to create. Once we started trusting our vision and showing up consistently, the work and opportunities followed naturally.

Musical Guest

🎵 We are excited to kick off our event with a special live performance by Sam Chimes.🎶

Chimes is a Nigerian-Canadian live looping artist and founder of Chimes Academy. With 1,000+ international performances, he transforms ordinary moments into extraordinary musical experiences using only his voice, loop station, and spontaneous creativity. Sam teaches musicians worldwide how to master live looping and perform with confidence.

This Month's Presenting Partner:

The Wilson School of Design at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) offers a diverse range of creative programs, including Graphic Design for Marketing, Fashion and Technology, Fashion Marketing, Interior Design, Product Design, Technical Apparel Design, Front-End Development, and Foundations in Design.

How to Register for this Event

Join us on December 5th from 8:15-10am at the Vancouver Art Gallery by registering here.

BC is full of innovators, and we’re very proud to be The Tyee’s first community partner for a new series called Creative Forces seeks to honour those who are using their creativity to make a positive, tangible impact on those around them.

Do you know someone in B.C. who is using their creativity as a force for good? The Tyee is seeking reader input as they consider who to spotlight next for a Creative Forces feature. 

Please submit your ideas here. Let’s get creative together.

At each CMVan event, the 30-second pitch segment gives audience members a chance to step on stage and spotlight upcoming local creative events happening around the city.

Check out what’s coming up this November:

1. Creative Forces: A CMVan and The Tyee Collaboration (new series)
2. Thriving Through Change: A CM Series (watch now)
3. Downtown Van: Metro Vancouver Croissant Crawl 2025 (Nov 1-16)
4. Songwriter Night: Featuring Matt Kennedy (Nov 9)
5. Eastside Atelier: Pre-Crawl Exhibition (Nov 14)
6. Pricing Confidence: Bootcamp for Creative Freelancers (Nov 17-21)
7. Descan: Jim Rimmer Scholarship Ceremony (Nov 20)
8. Likemind Vancouver: Coffee and Conversation (Nov 21)
9. Under the Piano: An Intimate Collective Experience (Nov 22)
10. Art on the Wall: Food Memories in Watercolour (Nov 25)
11. Abstract Art Experience: Paint-Pour & Print (Nov 26)
12. Connect+Reflect: A CM Mixer on November’s Theme, Growth (Nov 26)
13. First Saturday: Visit artist's where they work (Dec 6)

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The next CMVan event is happening on December 5th and will be featuring The WKNDRS (Rachel Rivera and Claire Ouchi). Get your ticket here.

Our theme for November is GROWTH. It was chosen by our Sacramento chapter in California, illustrated by Amber Rankin, and presented by Adobe. 

CM chapters all around the world are sharing talks on this theme. Here's some resources to inspire your own reflections:

• Thriving Through Change
  CreativeMornings has put together a special event series featuring notable talks on growth and the challenges creative professionals are facing. One of the featured videos comes from CMVan and features our participatory talk with Carson Ting. Check out the series.
  
  
• DJ Jim Q's Playlist: Growth
  These 40-plus tracks will nurture your development with high nutrient audio fulfillment. Listen to the playlist.
  
  
• Connect + Reflect: A CM Mixer
  This free, online mixer is designed to bring the global CM community together around our monthly themes. RSVP for the event on Nov 26th.

Our November 2025 postcard of speaker Brandon Wint was illustrated by 4th year student from the IDEA Program at Capilano University, Amilia Mcgill.

The text is from our interview with Brandon, and reads: “The most important aspect of a creative career is the willingness to trust the process, stay the course, and finish what you start.”

All audience members will receive their own copy of this limited edition postcard, printed by Mitchell Press Ltd, at our November 7th event. Get your ticket.

For November, we are privileged to host the nationally-celebrated filmmaker, poet, spoken word artist and arts educator Brandon Wint who will share their story through the lens of our global theme 'growth'.

For more than a decade, Brandon has been a sought-after touring performance poet, having shared his work all over Canada, and internationally at festivals and showcases in the United States, Australia, Jamaica, Latvia and Lithuania. Brandon Wint's poems and essays have been published in The Ex Puritan, Event Magazine, Arc Poetry Magazine, and Black Writers Matter, among other places. Divine Animal (Write Bloody North, 2020) is his debut collection of poetry. In recent years, his films have screened at DOXA documentary film festival and Reelworld Film Festival and Vancouver International Film Festival Centre.

Speaker Interview

Each month we ask our speaker some probing questions to give us a deeper glimpse into their life and relationship with creativity:

1. How do you define and apply creativity in your life and career?
   
   I think, fundamentally, creativity is a physical energy -- something we can readily harness in the body and use to make art. I think creativity is, maybe, the language through which our emotional intelligence is made physical. For me, being an artist means that I'm committed to using that creative energy in order to reveal my emotional (and spiritual) intelligence, so that I can nurture greater self-understanding, and ultimately, love. Primarily, I express my creativity through writing poetry and conceiving films. Poetry is the way that I pray. Poetry is the way that I chart my intellectual and spiritual progress, and the evolution of my desires. Filmmaking is a way for me to tell stories and reflect upon truths that, for me, are not easily contained by poetic distillation. In both cases, acts of creativity help me explore the ideas that are most important to me. Creativity helps me find and understand my purpose as a human being and community member.
   
   
2. Where do you find your best creative inspiration or energy?
   
   As a poet, I'm always trying to understand and make meaning from the inherent interconnectedness of living things. In that sense, I suppose I find my inspiration from being in nature, even in simple ways. I spend a lot of time observing the movement of non-human life around me -- birds, squirrels, insects, the growth and death of plants --- because doing so helps me focus on life's magic, and the sublime realities of existence that inspire my awe and confound my understanding.
   
   
3. What’s one piece of creative advice or a tip you wish you’d known as a young person?
   
   I'm not sure, really. I'm quite grateful for everything I learned in and from my years of youthful ignorance. As I age and grow, it has become increasingly clear to me that the most important aspect of a creative career is the willingness to trust the process, stay the course, and finish what you start.
   
   
4. Who (living or dead) would you most enjoy hearing speak at CreativeMornings?
   
   Mostly the poets I admire: Aracelis Girmay, Brigit Pageen Kelly, Mahmoud Darwish
   
   
5. What books have had an influence on me and why?
   
   I often say that Trinidadian-Canadian poet and novelist Dionne Brand is the poet who convinced me that I could create a space for myself within so-called Canadian literature. All of my favourite works of hers --- A Map To the Door of No Return; In Another Place, Not Here; Land To Light On --- all of these books have been immensely important to my thinking, and therefore, to my development as a writer.
   Dionne Brand has an incredible ability to diagnose power dynamics, whether in the social or political realms, and articulate these dynamics through precise, vivid and utterly surprising distillations of poetic language. Her clarity, precision and political integrity are all things I have learned from, and aspire toward.
   
   
6. What music are you listening to these days?
   
   Most days, I listen to jazz or jazz-adjacent music. For months, I've been coming back to Love Is Everywhere by Pharoah Sanders, because the sentiment of the song's title is felt in the music. I find the song spiritually uplifting. I return to it often when I want to remind myself what art can do at its best.
   
   The other day, I had the pleasure of hearing Vancouver vocalist Dawn Pemberton do a rendition of Stevie Wonder's Love's in Need of Love Today, which is a beautiful, beautiful song. Stevie Wonder is my favourite musician. I think his song As is one of the greatest songs ever written in the English language. That's another song I turn to when I want to feel alive.
   
   
7. What book are you reading these days?
   
   Lately I've been really enjoying a book called Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. The book is precisely what the title describes. As someone whose ancestors are not from Vancouver, and as someone who has only been in this city for ~ 5 years, I'm intrigued by the challenge and responsibility of writing about place, and writing about nature. This particular anthology, expertly edited by Camille T. Dungy, does a beautiful job of showcasing the varied approaches to writing about place from a particular ethic and historical positionality. In addition to being compelling for purely poetic reasons, the book is important to me right now because it is helping me reflect upon the politics of writing about nature, even if one is a newcomer to a particular land.

Musical Guest

🎵 We are thrilled to kick off this event with a live musical performance by singer-songwriter Matt Kennedy.🎶

Matt has been singing and playing guitar and mandolin for decades in western Canada. He can’t remember not having a song in his head. Matt writes songs about family, friends, observations on life, and the majestic western landscape where he lives. Matt loves old guitars, and singing and playing live music for people who enjoy that kind of thing. Matt appears in the folk pop band Headlong Hearts (on guitar and mandolin) and in the veteran trad bluegrass band Five on a String (on mando). He also performs solo, in duos and trios, and in varied studio recording sessions (vocals, instruments). He tries to be versatile.

This Month's Presenting Partner:

Downtown Van is a non-profit organization representing 7,000 businesses and property owners in the central 90-block area of Vancouver’s downtown core. Supporting them and making downtown Vancouver a place where everyone feels welcome drives us. Our team members are experts in economic development, community safety, placemaking, and events. They’re passionate about making downtown Vancouver a destination like no other.

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How to Register for this Event

Join us on November 7th from 8:15-10am at the Vancouver Art Gallery by registering here.

On August 8th 2025, we hosted musician and civil engineer Sadé Awele who spoke on the theme: Nomad.

The Photos

Here are a couple highlights from the talk. 
Photo credit: Steve Pinter

View the photo album from this event on Flickr 

The Videos

Missed the talk? No worries! Our editing team crafts a beautifully polished version of each month’s event so you can catch up anytime.

August 2025 Talk

Watch Sadé Awele’s inspiring talk on deciding to travel very different paths.

Musical Guest Performance

Sadé — a captivating force in R&B, Afropop, and Afrosoul — also accepted the musical spotlight as our musical guest in August

Experience (or revisit) Sadé's unforgettable performance.

Presenting Partner

Our presenting partner this month was Side Door: a platform co-founded by CreativeMornings alumni and Juno Award-winning musician Dan Mangan, that connects artists and hosts to book and promote live shows in unexpected spaces, making it easier for independent creators to bring performances to life, anywhere. We are grateful for their support and the great work they do.

At each CMVan event, the 30-second pitch segment gives audience members a chance to step on stage and spotlight upcoming local creative events happening around the city.

Check out what’s coming up this October:

1. Grow to Pro Series by Adobe (out now)

2. Weekender: The Tyees Weekend Culture Magazine  (Every Friday-Sunday)

3. Enemy Alien: Tamio Wakayama Exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery (Oct 3rd - Feb 22nd)

4. Riot: Live Sketch Show Exploiting Local Issues and Events (Oct 5)

5. Abstract Painting Workshop: Fundraiser (Oct 10)

6. Likemind Vancouver: Coffee and Conversation (Oct 17)

7. Launch: Descan Student Conference (Oct 17-18)

8. LEGO® Serious Play® methods: Free Intro + Training (Oct 21 and Nov 17-18)

9. Rube & Rake Live Show @ Artech Gallery (Oct 23)

10. Vancouver+AI Community Meetup #21 : Enter their raffle to win 1 of 3 tickets (Oct 29)

11. Connect+Reflect: A CM Mixer on October’s Theme, Soft (Oct 29)

12. First Saturday: Visit artists where they work  (Nov 1)

13. Foundations of Conflict Engagement: Level 1 (Nov 6-7)

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The next CMVan event is happening on November 7th and will be featuring Brandon Wint. Get your ticket here.