Why Don't We Together (WDWT) is Dear Bear's flagship project!
Coming Up: Niagara Children's Festival May 15th - 17th 2026

Why Don't We Together (WDWT) is an electric and intimate audio-visual installation featuring original audio short stories, rich soundscapes, and immersive lighting. The whole experience takes place inside “The Hut” - a cozy 10ft x10ft custom-built octagonal structure. Audiences are invited to enter The Hut with up to 7 others, (plus room for one wheelchair), where they can collectively choose from a selection of audio stories just by pushing a button. Once they do: the walls, seats, ceilings, and airwaves come alive to transport everyone into the world of each story.

Each story has been commissioned from Ontario artists specifically for this project, with each of them voicing their own story. Stories last from 3-8 minutes each. Audiences are encouraged to open the door in between stories, so as to invite others inside, or to make room for those waiting outside. The structure of The Hut was intentionally designed so that audiences would be facing each other while experiencing it. Indeed, as the inner panels light up to a rainbow of intricately designed colours, each audience member is framed by the lights behind them, bringing audiences into the foreground of each others’ experience. The Hut. Why Don’t We Together is an intimate, innovative, and mindful way of experiencing stories together.

Our First Crack at our immersive Audio Visual Storytelling Experience. It wasn't perfect, but it was awesome.

In 2022, Alex was living in Montréal when Josh contacted him about an idea he had to participate in one of Suitcase In Points Scratch Nights. The idea was to tell stories with a few multi-coloured lights above his head.  From there, Josh kept pondering the project, how could it be built on further? What were the next steps? 

Over the next few months Josh and Alex got themselves a spot in the 2022 In The Soil Festival with the intention of developing this idea. While alot of their past projects went from idea into the creation process quite quickly, WDWT was the first exception. There were hours and hours of distilling to do. Figuring our our intentions, goals, and what we were excited about tooks more time than we ever could have expected, but we think it paid off. 

After landing on the idea of an octogon that has walls, seats, and a ceiling that lights up we dove into action and spent several weeks pulling together the story artists, set, lighitng, and sound elements into what became Why Don't We Together version 1. This iteration of WDWT was inpermanent, difficult to setup, and nowhere near as light and sound resistant from the outdoors as we wanted. In hindsight, it was a sketch of the idea and it taught us alot. 

Through this version of WDWT we connected with  our friend Taylor, who was a story writer and ended up helping us through a lot of tight scheduling situations. This was the beginning of Dear Bear.  Taylor Joined together with Josh & Alex in the fall of 2022, and from there Dear Bear Multi-Arts, was born!

A short film about Walt, who made a short film about his whole life, from the beginning of time, to his own funeral, despite only being 17 years old. 

It's a story about finding the beauty of the present through the magesty of the past and the wonder of the future.

In 2021, hot off the tails of not being able to do a whole lot Josh and Alex set out on their second solo project, Sunny Days Ahead. It had been two years since Be My Buddy and they were looking for something more ambitous, so without any film equipment, or expertise in making films, Josh and Alex set out to create a 32 minute short film. This time, there was about 6 months until showtime, needless to say creating short films takes a lot of time, and between writing, filming, editing, re-filiming, and editing again Sunny Days Ahead took a look of time. It's a short film about the beginning of time through to death through the eyes of a 17 year old (through the eyes of two guys in their 20's). Not only was Sunny Days Ahead the first stride into film-making, the piece also includes segments of stop-motion and all sorts of different styles of film making, there's a western, a game show, some vlogs. While it all sounds like a cluster of crazines, Sunny Days Ahead recieved some lovely reviews during it's time at the Hamilton Fringe Festival and by the end of the film the organized chaos melds together to create a hearfelt ending bound to have you smiling.

An Audio Thriller, The Moonlight Frequency is an episodic radio play set at a drive in movie theatre. New Episodes every 2 years!

This was a web based story telling idea, where people could film a lil video of their own, and on our website you'd get a random set of 5 stories each time you took a walk through the forest.

Developed in 2019 Be My Buddy was a sketch comedy show about unlikely friends, Alex Sykes and Josh Loewen. True to our life expereinces, it was a little messy, and a lot of fun. oh, and of course WE WAXED OUR LEGS! 

Aside from Improv groups, of which they had already been apart of together for many years, Be My Buddy was the first time that Josh and Alex worked on a project alone (until they needed some extra help from Samatha Rideout, pictured). Its was a frenzied 1.5 month long creating process from inital idea to a workshop presentation in September 2019. 

At the end of 2019 we recieved an OAC Recommenders Grant for this project, however, due to the pandemic, a more polished project never came to fruition. 

Be My Buddy was an intense ride, but it was also the catalsyt for Josh & Alex creating together, and forming a deep, life long connection!