Between the Vines Drawing a bead on visitors
A fun and affordable way to get a beautiful piece ofmeaningful jewellery, while discovering the Okanagan and helping to promote its wineries and other businesses.
By Judie Steeves V
isitors are lining up to ‘follow the Bead Trail Quail’ and collect unique signature ‘beads’ from the more than 127 participating wineries and other businesses around the Okanagan.
It’s the brainchild of owner and artist Karen Griggs of Summerland, who uses the slogan “where there’s a bead, there’s a story,” to encourage the concept of using unusual beads as lures encouraging visitors to go to businesses so they can collect a variety—along with their stories—to create a memorable bracelet.
Each participant has a distinctive bead, such as the quail used by Beadtrails; the distinctive O that forms the logo for Okanagan Crush Pad; the rooster for Red Rooster; an owl for Burrowing Owl; a goose in flight for Wild Goose Winery; a sheaf of wheat for Little Straw Vineyards; and a new bead this year for Dirty Laundry, a clothes peg.
Each bead is only available at the shop, so collectors must visit to collect that part of their bracelet or other piece of jewellery. They can be used to adorn a necklace just as well as a bracelet. It all came about after Griggs, who has a diploma in Art and Design and a certificate in Person- Centred Art Therapy from her native United Kingdom, moved to Canada and settled in Summerland in 2008.
JUDIE STEEVES
Artist Karen Griggs with some of the beads available from Beadtrails.
“It’s difficult for artists to make money,” explains Griggs, who has used a wide variety of media in pursuing her art over the years. “But, this is a way to link business with art.” “I got the idea from the concept of wine trails. Bead trails just made sense. Both link people and link those people with businesses,” she adds.
“It draws people to places they might normally not go,” she says, “and their reward is a keepsake.”
It’s a fun and affordable way for visitors to get a beautiful piece of meaningful jewellery, while discovering the Okanagan and all its sights, sounds, smells and flavours; its history and its people and their stories.
In the process, the bead trails help promote Okanagan businesses and brand them with a bead design, while providing visitors with a simple souvenir to take home; one that will likely last long after the bottles of wine have been enjoyed.
Griggs said they’ve had all kinds of feedback, both from visitors and from the businesses they’ve worked with.
24
Each bead collector is encouraged to use facebook and tweet all about their awesome keepsake of the Okanagan and to share their stories on the bead trails facebook site. “Some people say they would not have gone there without the bead as a carrot. Some people even plan their whole trip around particular beads. Each has a story that is not available elsewhere,” she explains.
Even non-profit organizations are now using the bead collectibles as fund-raisers, including the Desert Cultural Centre, Critter Aid, the South Okanagan Women in Need, the Shatford Centre, Meadowlark Festival and Sncewips, the new Westbank First Nation Heritage Museum. Griggs tells of one woman who did a tour with her two daughters in the Okanagan, spending four days focussing on the bead trails. “Families can do it together,” she notes. It all began while Griggs was artist in residence at the Summerland Art Gallery.
She also worked with Dirty Laundry Winery for three years, and first talked to the three wineries in that area about the idea.
But, the first bead trail included 15 businesses throughout the community, with a Summerland Bead Trail in 2010.
British Columbia FRUIT GROWER • Summer 2014
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36