LITTLE CURRENT—Performance artist Mariana Lafrance has a lot of irons in the fire, not only is she an active working artist with creative performance collaborations with organizations like Le Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario and painting exhibits at galleries across the province, she has now created a site to market Manitoulin experiences to visiting tourists with the intriguing name YEMMI.
“The site is kind of like a matchmaker between Islanders who are doing interesting things and people coming to the Island,” she explained.
The concept was born when Ms. Lafrance, who often travels to urban areas as part of her artistic endeavours, noticed that whenever her downtown friends (or is it uptown? Well, urbanites in any event.) heard what her life on Manitoulin Island is like they become fascinated. “I hang around the Tilson homestead (home base for the Northern Ontario Permaculture Research Institute) quite a bit and there are always a lot of very different things going on. We have it very good here on the Island and people are often envious of the lifestyle,” she noted. “There are so many activities we do here that city folks don’t have access to.” Simple things like feeding the chickens or watching a porcupine climb precariously out on a tree limb in the back yard. When I am in Toronto I see people’s eyes light up when I tell them about the things I am doing and the things my friends are doing.”
It was while she was creating a small website for her own offerings that Ms. Lafrance realized that providing a service that would connect people with Island experiences to people who want to have the opportunity to experience them would “be wonderful.” So she decided to open it up to the larger Island community.
“It will be good for people who already have a business and also good for people who are just thinking about it,” she said. “It can work for one-time events, ongoing experiences or custom ones that are designed for the individual customer.”
There is no membership fee to register for the website, but if a booking is made through the site, Ms. Lafrance would take a small commission. Those commissions would start as low as 10 percent depending on the frequency and other factors customized to the provider. “It helps to pay for the upkeep and creation of the site,” she said.
In the meantime, Ms. Lafrance is working on another completely different bit of industry—she is creating backpacks and custom bags of her own design online.
Ms. Lafrance hands out her business card for YEMMI and one of the first things one notices is that there is no phone number on the card, just an email address. “It’s strictly an online business,” she said. “It’s like this studio, it isn’t a retail location. Everything happens online.”
As for the name of the website, YEMMI, the source is quite simple and sensible when explained. “YEM are the call letters for the Manitoulin East Municipal Airport and the MI stands for Manitoulin Island,” she explained. The website can be found at yemmi.ca.
