GO Blog 10 Community arts project.

-What´s the big idea? As one child in one of the classes I work with says all time, at statement which I smile at every time.

-I´ll tell you. Raise awareness and provide resources for aboriginal women in an urban environment that the big idea!

So we, me Reilly and Rose, chose this topic because it is one that is often overlooked and me personally hadn´t thought about it that much, because in some ways the people involved are a bit invisible in Toronto.

Who do we want to involve, well have a look at this wonderful popplet(btw popplet is a word I can say over and over again).



Reilly had a friend, Moira, and she is an artist. Reilly talked to her about the project and she really liked the idea. We needed a symbol for the project so we discussed the details on what we wanted to communicate. It was important that it was not cliche but still projected our vision. The end result was so much better than I could have ever imagined.

By Moira



After a discussion about how to spread our message we decided to start with street art and a wiki. The point with the street art would be that even people that are not intrested in the issue would view it and think about it. We did not put our webiste to the wikia on it because we thought that would cheapen the picture. The downside of that is that our oage does not get spread as much. A wikia is a site with pages for different intrests, the point with a wikia is that everyone can contribute to it and we thought that we needed a page where lots of information were gathered on the issue. We thought that it was important that other people could contribute since we are no experts on the subject and that if people contribute they might also start spreading the word about the issue and wiki.

So art street art section is captured in this video:


Canadian Aboriginal Women and Families in Toronto from Rose Lugue on Vimeo.

And our wikia is found here Reguro project.


When we done all this we presented our idea to the class on Tuesday the 12th of April. We went out last which is a bit unfortunate, since a lot of people probably were tired. But someone has to do it. I like to do presentations and I don´t really have a problem speaking in front of people. I my own head I don´t make much sense but people always say that I am good at explaining, so I´ll guess I´ll have to take their word for it. Usually when I speak in public or present I am a bit more houmorus but this is a serious issue so I adjusted. I think that we had a nice mix of presentation materials, the popplet a bit different than your average power point, a webpage filled with information, a really cool video and of course us the presenter. I really felt that we knew the material well. I try not the even have cheat notes because it is so tiring to hear people read a presentation. A good advice I got somewhere on my journey was "to never worry about what you forgot to say because the audience doesn´t know what you were going to say". That is something I follow and has helped me. Sometimes I prepare by looking at a stand-up or listening to a speech just to get into the right vibe. I try to carry that vibe into the presentation and pretend that I´m a bit of that person. So I don´t really see what we could have done differently.

Our group only got one comment and that was from our teacher, Patricia, and she wondered if we did all the art ourselves and yes, that we did. So I guess the lack of comments confirms both that it was a solid presentation and that people was a bit tired.

Art word of the post is: Space

The size of the paper, canvas, stone or whatever is the space that the artist is confined to in that particular creation. In this space there is either positive or negative space. Positive space is basically all that is put there by the artist and what is left is called the negative space the artist uses both in different ways to portray hers or his message (Schirrmacher & Englebright, 2009).

With this project we tried to take back some space to the people that it was stolen from. We in our goup is also tired of the fact that it is money that decides on how much influence one will have over the public space. Why should companies be able to control what images we see on the streets and not artists? Companies wants you tu buy stuff and artists wants you to think. Shame if everyone got their thinking on instead of listing shopping as their favourite activity. Maybe people would vote differently?

References

Schirrmacher, R. & Englebright Fox, J. (2009). Art & creative development for young children. Belmont, CA, USA: Delmar, Cengage Learning.