Morrow wins Valley Arts Award

BY WENDY ELLIOTT

welliott@kentvilleadvertiser.ca

NovaNewsNow.com

Port Williams resident Jim Morrow is the winner of the fifth annual Valley Arts Award, which will be presented during a Saturday evening concert Sept. 27 at the Deep Roots Music Festival.

As artistic director for Mermaid Theatre of Nova Scotia, he creates puppets for stage, television and film. Following theatre studies at Acadia University, he joined Mermaid in 1978 as a young performer. For the last 30 years, he has directed and designed numerous acclaimed shows that have delighted two million spectators at home and abroad.

A gifted performer, Morrow has toured extensively in North America, the United Kingdom and Japan. He has served as director of puppetry for Symphony Nova Scotia’s The Nutcracker since its inception and regularly conducts workshops in the U.S. and Canada, as well as in the Asia Pacific.

His innovative creations have merited Export Excellence awards for Mermaid from both Nova Scotia and the federal government in 2001 and 2005, while his contributions to the community as artist, arts volunteer, mentor and policy advisor earned him the Portia White Award in 2005 and an honorary degree from Acadia University last fall.

Morrow is currently chair of the Artist in Residence Program at the Centre for Health Care for the Elderly, QEII Health Science Centre, Halifax, and he is a committed executive member of Nova Scotia Arts in Culture Partnership Council.

A regular guest at elementary and secondary schools in the region, he shares practical skills and encourages young people to pursue their artistic visions. At the professional level, Morrow offers many weeks of volunteer time as a director and designer. He provided mentoring over the past season with OneLight Theatre in Halifax as well as in the community of Cheticamp.