Next concert March 29 - 10:30 at Clemens Mills - Cambridge Public Library and 2:00 at Central Branch - Kitchener Public Library

Building Brains and Bodies; Growing Hearts and Minds

Our Mission

Arts Integration of Waterloo Region exists to provide multisensory arts experiences that engage the whole brain and provide numinous encounters through collaborative concerts, events, workshops, and educational programming.

Who We Are & What We Do

Arts Integration exists to provide multisensory arts experiences that engage the whole brain across the lifespan and produces interactive arts encounters that provide a numinous response through concerts, events, workshops, and formative experiences.

Our primary values are collaboration, decolonization, and formation. We approach the arts as a collaborative experience, both inside our organization as we plan events, but also within our community; partnering with local service organizations, museums, restaurants, performance venues, etc. Arts Integration seeks partners to bring these experiences to our audiences.

As the Region of Waterloo continues to grow, it is increasingly diverse, as such, it is imperative that arts experiences are decolonized. We must engage in the arts beyond a Eurocentric aesthetic. This includes content, writers, composers, creators, but also scheduling, etiquette, and venue. We seek to present arts experiences beyond the aristocratic format.

Formation is often considered only for children and youth, but humans learn and grow across the lifespan. We embrace formation for all ages and stages, providing arts encounters and experiences that help to nurture cultural engagement and personal growth for all who engage with our work.

Our Team

Jung Tsai

Jung Tsai is a professional musician who worked as the 2nd Associate Concertmaster at the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony and as the Concertmaster of the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Orchestra. She has also appeared as a guest soloist and a guest concertmaster at several orchestras in Ontario.

In addition to her solo and orchestral performances, Jung has participated in string ensembles and trios for performances across North America. Most recently, she was part of the Coriolis chamber ensemble that presents concerts in Quebec and Ontario. She currently runs a private studio.

Jung holds a Bachelor’s degree from Mannes College – The New School for Music, a Masters degree from the DePaul School of Music, and an Artist Diploma from the Schulich School of Music at McGill University. She has won several prizes including winning the Mannes Community Concerto Competition, as a finalist in the Plowman Chamber Music Competition, and winning the strings category of the Luminaries Fellowship.

Throughout her musical career, Jung has also done extensive work in musical education and outreach. She worked at the Civic Orchestra of Chicago where she developed programming in education and community outreach. These programs included lectures and performances to introduce children to classical music. During her tenure with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, she led the development and delivery of seven Kinderconcerts, both in live and online formats. Jung is passionate about music education. She is deeply concerned about ensuring that people in Kitchener have access to high quality music experiences. Her passion for this informs her work with Arts Integration.

Marjorie Hopkins

Marjorie Hopkins is an old-style Irish dancer, researcher, and arts educator. She is also the founder and artistic director of Kaleidoscope Irish Dance & Movement Studio. She has more than twenty years of experience as an educator, a lifetime of dance experience, and an unmatched level of training, including an MA in Irish Dance Studies, a Ph.D. in History, and numerous movement and dance certifications.

While she has danced for as long as she has walked, it was Irish dance where Marjorie first encountered formal dance classes. She soon moved on to learn Highland dancing and later jazz. As an adult, she danced tap, jazz, and ballet, but soon rediscovered her love for Irish dance under Niamh Webster. It was under the supervision of Órfhlaith Ní Bhriain at the Irish World Academy that she first encountered old style Irish dance, which has changed the trajectory of her dancing, teaching, and research. She specializes in historical steps and styles.

Marjorie has worked in a variety of higher education settings, teaching and mentoring young adults. She worked at the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony where she helped to develop children’s programming. She has also led a variety of children’s theatre and day camp programs in various settings. Her favourite moments were the instances when people have realized their own capacities to create and lead. The current climate around arts engagement and participation is a concern for Marjorie. Her vision for Arts Integration is to see the arts become more prominent in people’s daily lives.

Xueao Yang

Xueao Yang is a professional musician who has played in many major Canadian orchestras, including Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Regina Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, where she sat as the Associate Principal second violin.

Beyond her work as an orchestral musician, Xueao has played at the National Academy Orchestra of Canada Festival, the Pacific Music Festival in Japan, the Zodiac Music Academy and Festival in France, the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival and the Madeline Island Chamber Music Festival in the United States.

Xueao began to play the violin at the age of 4 and was accepted into the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing at the age of 12. She earned a Bachelor and a Master of Music at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University. She also obtained a Performance Artist Certificate from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

Equally passionate about teaching, Xueao currently teaches violin at Laurier Academy of Music and Arts and runs a private studio. Her students have frequently participated in and won top prizes at the Kiwanis Music Festival.

The current state of music is of interest to Xueao. She wants to transform the landscape of concerts in our community, expanding them beyond the traditional concert hall into less conventional formats. The desire is more than simply playing classical music in new places, but rather, to recast ideas about classical music, performance, and the audience’s experiences of them. It is this passion that informs Xueao’s contributions to Arts Integration.

Where We Began

When the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony folded in September 2023, we knew that there would be a gap in arts programming in Waterloo Region. We have chosen to pick up that mantle to create programming specifically for children. We are not, however, reproducing the work of an orchestra, rather we are building an arts organization that incorporates current research on brain development into the creation of participative arts experiences. Anthropologist Thomas Turino discusses the role of music in community life. His research demonstrates that the arts are central to people’s personal and social experiences. Our vision embodies this research by creating performances where audiences participate, rather than sit as passive observers. Stories, music and dance are fundamental resources for connecting with ourselves, our communities, and the wider world in which we live. As we shift away from arts consumption to arts participation, we will increase the depth of awareness in our community, which will lead to greater compassion, connection, and creativity.

The Canadian context, broadly speaking, and the Region of Waterloo, more specifically, are made up of an array of cultural backgrounds and practices. We lack a common cultural heritage; we must therefore create unity through our diversity and shared homeland. One of our goals, therefore, is to create programming that connects these wide ranges of backgrounds through accessible arts programming. We also seek to improve people’s understanding of art as an expression of culture by creating these experiences.

We seek to help the public to gain greater insight into what art is, encouraging them to also become practitioners. We seek to do this through collaboration with community organisations and businesses in this community. Our goal is to increase arts engagement within the Region of Waterloo. We are artists and arts educators who desire to see young audiences grow in their knowledge of the world, to reveal old stories in a new way, challenging them to consider different ways of seeing themselves and the world in which they live.

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