Staff Biographies

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Cathy Kielar

CathyBlonde_SmSince 1988, Cathy Kielar has been facilitating children and family fun in private and community settings throughout the Triangle and is a trained Village Music Circle Drum Circle Facilitator. Cathy has twenty-five years of experience as an educator and family entertainer. As a ventriloquist, Cathy has shared her puppets through schools, festivals, private and corporate gatherings, hospitals and children’s grief groups. As a Hospice volunteer, she and Bobbie Marshall co-created a Children’s Grief Education program called Cool Tools for Coping. She is a past public school teacher and Creative Arts in the Public Schools (CAPS) artist. Since 2002 she has received numerous trainings in drum circle facilitation with Arthur Hull, and she now enthusiastically takes her facilitation skills out to her community and creates fun and connecting rhythm events. Cathy is trained in High/Scope Learning techniques, which combine drumming, movement, songs and rhymes to assist a child’s whole body and mind development.

Cathy is currently playing bass drum and hand percussion in Durham’s own New Orleans-style street band, Bulltown Strutters. Her drumming teachers include: Arthur Hull; Layne Redmond; Ubaka Hill; Jim Donovan; Matt Savage; Jim Roberts; Ronnie Pulley.

Cathy is also a found sound percussion artist displaying her art installation,
Sounds From Around Town: Unleashing the Sounds of Everyday Objects at The Scrap Exchange Art Gallery on August 15 – September 14, 2008. She is presently contracting and volunteering to lead Junk Jams at a local National Model Creative Reuse Center – The Scrap Exchange.  Cathy has been on the board of The Scrap Exchange for many years, including taking the job as Interim ED – not once, but twice. Her life demonstrates her passion for creative reuse.