Living Opera Classroom Workshops

Tuesday
Feb 11, 2025

Sunday
Feb 25, 2024

Venue CRD Classrooms

Cost Free

Free music-based learning and story-telling in regional classrooms

Join Pacific Opera Victoria teaching Artists Geoff and Clayton for an imaginative adventure into the art of character creation and development! Using live opera excerpts, students will use their musical imagination to develop and make choices about their very own fictional character. In this hands-on workshop, created by Educational Consultant Gwenna Fairchild-Taylor, students will be combining elements of music, visual art, and drama, students will explore their unique artistic expression using critical thinking, creativity, and storytelling to bring their character to life!

This workshop is appropriate for students in grades 3/4/5, and children are encouraged to bring their adults along for this special presentation.

Curriculum Connections

Arts Education K-7

Explore relationships between identity, place, culture, society, and belonging through the arts
Create artistic works collaboratively and as an individual using ideas inspired by imagination, inquiry, experimentation, and purposeful play
Express feelings, ideas, and experiences through the arts
Examine relationships between the arts and the wider world
Reflect on works of art and creative processes to understand artists’ intentions
Demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of personal, social, cultural, historical, and environmental contexts in relation to the arts
Observe, listen, describe, inquire, and predict how artists (dancers, actors, musicians, and visual artists) use processes, materials, movements, technologies, tools, and techniques

Language Arts K-7

Make connections between ideas from a variety of sources and prior knowledge to build understanding
Recognize how different texts reflect different purposes
Engage actively as listeners, viewers, and readers, as appropriate, to develop understanding of self, identity, and community

Teaching Artists

Geoff Malcolm

Teaching Artist

Geoff is a dancer, choreographer and teaching artist. Geoff has worked locally with Ballet Victoria (company member 2007-2013), Pacific Opera Victoria (supernumerary since 2007), Kaleidoscope Theatre for Young People and on numerous independent projects. Currently a Teaching Artist for Pacific Opera Victoria, he creates and facilitates interactive programs which visit classrooms across the CRD, sharing the magic of the performing arts with students, educators, and newcomers of all ages.

Clayton Butler

Teaching Artist

Clayton Butler is a twenty two old tenor based in Victoria B.C. Currently, he is in his fourth year of Vocal Performance at The University of Victoria with Benjamin Butterfield, planning to finish his undergraduate degree in the spring of 2025. He is also an active performer in the Pacific Opera Victoria Chorus (POV), participating in five productions from 2021-2023. Outside of the practice room, Clayton’s hobbies include bouldering, snowboarding, and yoga.

Gwenna Fairchild-Taylor (Full Bio)

Education Consultant

Canadian soprano and teaching artist Gwenna Fairchild-Taylor believes in the power of music as a catalyst for community building and social change. She brings unique experience as both an active performer and accomplished teaching artist, having written education programming for over 30 organizations across North America. Gwenna is a graduate of the Opera Omaha Holland Community Opera Fellowship, the University of Toronto Opera School, and Western University. Learn more about Gwenna at gwennafairchildtaylor.com

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Reservations

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Booking Request Form