About

We are a group of artists born outside of Canada, and want to start a society among foreign-born artists who reside in British Columbia, Canada.

Narges Sonya Govahi is a playwright and movie critique, graduated from two universities in Iran, Faculty of Fine Arts, Tehran University with bachelors in Theatre and Faculty of Cinema and Theatre, Tehran Art University with masters in Dramatic Literature. She has been trained in BC by the famous professional storyteller, Naomi Steinberg, as a storyteller and is a board member of Vancouver Society of Storytelling. Right now, she produce the part of : "Naghd az Negahi Digar/ Critique from a Different Angle" for "Barnameh AvayeCinema" for Elam TV located in UK, in Persian and for Persian speaking audiences. She also tells and writes stories accompanied with crafts, cooking and discussion or other aspects of art with seniors and all other ages. She is taking some Digital Storytelling classes with Flick Harrison right now.


I hope other members also will add their profile here, and you know them better. Meanwhile, I will tell more about our vision since you can see that I am not a dull person to say some nonsense.

Our vision is to gather some artists that are not been recognized as an artist in Canada, but they have education and background in art from their country. When you are a new person in a new country, you mean no one to any person or organization except those their works had been appreciated internationally, but this doesn't apply to every one and that doesn't mean you are not an artist and creative person. We are who we are and where we are doesn't make any changes to our personality and our human being as an artist. The geography and language and new country make no changes to our personality. We are artists and without art we cannot find our way. The art is our Compass! We find ourselves and the meaning of the life with art and through art.

But, when we come to Canada, the pressure of the new society, new language, new laws, new information, finding jobs way below our qualifications and masteries, living in homes way smaller from the one that we grew in, and living in a limited budget, apply to lots of us, especially those are artists, and willy-nilly we lose our meaningful part of our character, our artist corner.

This means lots of unnecessary pressure added to our cultural shocks and other stuff coming with immigration. That is for immigrants. The trauma for refugees are far beyond our imagination even! This can lead to unhealthy relationship among immigrant families: separation, divorce, abuse, poverty that is the result of not finding ourselves defined in the new society and new language. We want to help. We have been through all those problems, maybe some of us still are or will be until the end of our life, who knows! But, we are here to let others know about us. Know that we need a voice even we are not doctors, nurses, accountant, IT professionals, and engineers! We also need jobs in our profession. We need to be together in order to find a way to improve and educate and support.

I hope if any one is not satisfied with what I am saying for a long time, could add something meaningful to it or guide us to a better place.

Narges Sonya Govahi