Tag Archives: Filipe Figueira

Food

Cortes Island Food Bank Drive To Meet Rising Local Need

The Cortes Island Food Bank recently launched a food drive to meet unprecedented need. Cortes Currents met with two of the charity’s key personal in the garage where most of the food is stored. Executive Director Filipe Figueira explained :

 “The situation is getting worse on Cortes. It is the same as across the country.  Two years ago, we had 100 client visits  a year. This year we had 600, that’s about 50 clients a month. People are really suffering economically. The good news is that we’re in a better situation to help those people. We’ve really built up the capacity of the food bank to deal with this emergency. We’ve got some really good staff and good food, but it’s not a good situation.” 

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Food Security, Housing

Rising Food and Housing Insecurity on Cortes Island

Cortes Island’s most economically challenged residents appear to be facing another bleak winter this year. 

Filipe Figueira, Coordinator of the Cortes Island Food Bank, explained, “We’ve definitely seen a huge rise in general economic distress over the last couple of years. I think that covers two key areas. One is food insecurity,  the other one is housing insecurity, which feeds into economic insecurity as well.”  

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Arts

Painting With Eyes Closed: The Artwork of Filipe Figueira

‘Painting With Eyes Closed,’ an exhibition by Filipe Figueira opens at the Old Schoolhouse Art Gallery on Friday June 21st, 6-9pm. 

“You always have to come up with the title for shows. Usually they’re sort of pretentious and arty, but there’s a reason for this one. It alludes to the process. I’m inspired by scenes on Cortes. I’ll go somewhere, sketch and I’ll get inspired, but a lot of my ideas come just when I’m at the point of falling asleep. The painting will come into my head. Sometimes really detailed thoughts, like the paints to use, the techniques, the layout and even very specific paints and paint mixes pop into my head. Often I have to get up and sketch. Sometimes it wakes me up in the middle of the night. I’ll be thinking about the painting and that becomes the basis of the paintings. They are scenes from Cortes, but they’re mediated through this process,” he explained.

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Arts, Gardening

The 2024 Creative Spaces Garden and Studio Tour On Cortes Island

The Creative Spaces Garden and Studio Tour is Saturday June 22, from 10 am to 4 pm. This is an annual fundraiser for the Cortes Island Museum, as well as a showcase of some of the island’s hidden gems.  

“It’s a great opportunity to feature creative talents of people on the island, and it’s a self guided  tour of studios and gardens that takes you all the way around from Whaletown, down to Smelt Bay, and Cortes Bay. We’ve got painters, textile artists, weavers, spinners,  ceramicists .  We’ve got a number of potters and pottery studios that are participating. And then some beautiful spaces with gardens that range from low bluff to high bluff. You pick up a map, which includes a button, and you just go around the island visiting people with talents you may not have known about, or see spaces that you were curious about but never had an opportunity to actually walk into. Walk through the gates and see what people are growing there,” explained Melanie Boyle, Managing Director of the Cortes Island Museum.

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Food Security

Folk U: Food Security from the Perspective of Farmers, Food Thinkers, and the Cortes Food Bank Coordinator

On April 5th, Max Thaysen, Sara Stewart, and Filipe Figueira joined host Manda Aufochs Gillespie for a FolkU Friday group discussion on food security and food systems. They chat about successes and challenges in food systems, both locally and globally, from the perspective of farmers, food thinkers, and one of the main coordinators of the Cortes Food Bank.

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