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Singing about Salmon

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From the summer of 2009 to spring 2010, the Artist Response Team (ART) has been busy sharing their concern for our local watersheds through creative and uplifting songs. Professional musicians Holly Arntzen and Kevin Wright have already produced three fantastic concerts with children from Williams Lake, Vancouver and Surrey, and have plans to produce a fourth at the Cultch in East Vancouver on April 15th. The ‘Up Your Watershed’ concerts are the culmination of four days of musical fun and learning about local salmon and watershed issues.


“Music is the ‘spoon full of sugar’ that helps us face challenges,” writes Holly, the founder of ART and an experienced musician, song writer and environmentalist, “Songs are a vehicle for communicating complex scientific concepts in ways that people can understand.” Many children and adults are more apt to learning through being engaged in a topic, and singing provides a unique way for engagement and learning to take place. 

Surrey children sing the Up Your Watershed song Credit: Artist Response Team.

One of ART’s successes is building connections within a community. In Williams Lake, the concerts prompted the generosity of the business community, where a video production company agreed to create a DVD of the concert for free. Connections also take place between the students from different schools and their teachers; a main component of ART’s ‘Up Your Watershed’ program brings together students from multiple schools and puts them on equal ground with their teachers and the ART performers.

The funding from the Fraser Salmon and Watershed Program (FSWP) allowed the ART team to produce the 3 fantastic concerts, train two upcoming artists, and to visit a more remote Fraser Valley city as a part of the ‘Up your Watershed’ tour. 

The ART songs are an inspirational opportunity for both children and their parents to become aware of issues they may never have considered before, and to learn about ways they can act on this new information. These songs can act as a first opportunity to learn about environmental issues and how to become involved. This marriage of music and social activism will become a lasting memory for the children and their families, and just might create a whole new generation of salmon-aware environmentalists. 

To learn more about ART and Holly, please visit her website at: http://www.cycleoflife.ca/