This workshop guided participants through the process of creating a collaborative inquiry-based zine based on the introduction to Donna J. Haraway’s book Staying in the Trouble — A feminist approach to Climate Change in the Age of the Anthropocene.

Participants learned how to solve any problem with zines! A zine (aka an art magazine) is a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced using a basic photocopy machine. Participants will be introduced to the history of zines, and various methods of creating a zine including, black-out-poetry, collage, and combining text with images.

The final result of the workshop included a collaborative accordion zine with multiple solutions to “staying in the trouble” as educators.

This unit explored memory/place and its significance to the learners. The learners took photos of places that had significant meaning to them. They then created cyanotypes of the photos they took and embroidered on the photos. This unit explored place through a decolonial lens. Students were taught about colonialism and the specific colonial history of Winnipeg, Manitoba. In summary, the students learnt that every place has a history and we should honour and respect the history of the lands we love and cherish.

In this unit, the grade ten visual arts class was introduced to abstraction. They used abstraction to symbolize and reflect on various events and prominent emotions they had felt in their lives.

Teachers and participants at the Exchange MET School created an abstract map based on significant landmarks in their lives.

They created a contour drawing using a Sharpie marker on tracing paper. This blind contour drawing depicted where the learner went on an average day when they were between the ages of sixteen and seventeen. They will then imagine the most prominent landmark on their map. During the work period, the learners will make a three-dimensional sculpture “pop-up” of their landmark and place it on their blind contour map. Each learner then placed their map on a large piece of tracing paper with the rest of their classmates. The final product resulted in an overlapping collective map.

Co-curated by Blair Fornwald, and myself Kaffeklatsch was a free artist talk and workshop series centering older voices. It invited older artists and those who work with intergenerational cohorts to talk about their work and experiences in a friendly atmosphere, akin to visiting over coffee or a crafting bee. The main presenters invited a guest of their choice to engage in conversation with. The result was a five-part talk and workshop series that offered intersectional and interdisciplinary perspectives on art, community, identity, and aging, as well as hands-on insight into the main presenter’s practices through adjacent workshops.

You can find all of the past talks online on the School of art gallery youtube page.

In conjunction with the Wane One exhibition, youth were invited to immerse themselves in an underground, urban subway station, a place where graffiti art culture was conceptualized, and explore their own individuality by creating a unique tag, or stylized symbol. These symbols were created by the use of colourful paint markers on translucent vellum paper, and were then installed and backlit using giant light boxes, imitating subway station advertisements. These graffiti-decorated light boxes were shown in the Kids Gallery alongside, and for the duration of, Wane’s exhibition.

In conjunction with a group show titled Deep Dive, curated by Gwen Trutnau, participants were invited to repurpose found objects into works of art, and to create collaborative drawings using prompts and games. This combined drawing and sculptural workshop, took place entirely inside a simulated “living room” within the gallery. The workshop explored the potential to up-cycle materials, work collaboratively, and reimagined a new potential for discarded items. The youth’s sculptural pieces and drawings were shown in the William Feldman Gallery, an exhibition space located in Graffiti Gallery, dedicated entirely to featuring work produced by youth participants.

Jean Borbridge and Patrick Skene (Pip Skid) were invited to create a collaborative mural with youth from Art City. The mural depicted a giant street party! Drawings from the youth of Art City were incorporated into the mural.

In conjunction with the Frontier School Divisions Anual Juried Student Show; participants were invited to create a unique and personal pop up Desire Path. Desire Paths are paths that have made themselves, they are walkways forged out of the necessity to create a more natural way of movement from place to place outside of the gridlock of urban planning. Each participant were asked to create a map that explores their movement throughout their communities, past or present. Places, or landmarks that the participants frequently visit or that hold significance in their travels. These paths were placed on the map as a pop up landmarks. The gallery walls were painted with the map of Point Douglas to compliment the participants artwork.