 Good morning everyone. We're gonna get started and there'll be a few few people still trickling in Just to give you context we started a conversation for this day four weeks ago and we thought of putting this conversation together and I'll give you some context later and It's sold out in a day with a hundred person waiting list So as so we've had a few no shows so if you are okay as people as people are arriving We're gonna let them welcome them into the room Hopefully in a non-disruptive way My name is Sidira Rodriguez and I'm the Dean of Continuing Studies here at Emily Carr University On behalf of the University and the steering committee for this event. It gives me great pleasure to welcome you here for this day of dialogues I'd like to begin by acknowledging that we are on unceded Coast Salish territory This recognition of the first peoples of this country is also a remembrance of the colonization involved in the founding of this province It acknowledges that there are a plethora of injustices still being perpetrated on the people whose lands we occupy and Injustices that must be corrected Before I give you a context for the day I'd like to just invite David Bogan our vice president academic at Emily Carr University just to say a few brief words to you Good morning and Welcome, it's my great privilege to welcome all of you to Emily Carr University of Art and Design In talking to Susan and Sidira about the day-to-day I had asked them to just if they could Give me a brief idea of the people that would be in the room and Some of their affiliations and interests and I've got the sheet that I think is part of what you all filled out when you came to the web to register for this conference and and have to commend all of you and and the organizers for the diversity of work interests Perspectives that are in the room. We have a I think an amazing sort of pool of Talent and opportunities for sharing today. And so I'm gonna keep anything. I have to say Mercifully brief the the one thing that I realized is I was looking through this list I actually got down to my own name and there were there were two questions one was What would you like to get out of this event and the second was what does social practice mean to you and My answer to the first question was left blank and my second one said I'll fill this in later And so, you know when wants to ask when that's gonna happen. I guess it's now a little bit I want to say that as an individual here in the room Someone who's relatively new to Emily Carr and relatively new to Vancouver and my goals for the day are really to Be able to get a chance to meet the many of you. I haven't met before and to learn from some of your experiences and really to Participate with you in some of the imagination of what we might do in this area going forward as for the second question on social Practice and I'm not even gonna go there because I think part of what we're doing today is is talking about the meaning of that term Though I would in closing Offer one response, which I won't attribute because I don't have permission, but To that question which says social practice. What does it mean to you going forward a lot? So that would be my aspiration for the day. Thank you very much Thanks, David. So so why are we here? We've all gathered here to acknowledge I'm sorry to want to build an understanding of the current state of community engaged arts practice in Vancouver and to identify strategic directions for continued success into the future Before giving you a couple of kind of framing Remarks, I think it's really important to know who was involved in the putting of this day together As we've all come with varied although deeply intersecting commitments So I hope that the steering committee is in the room and would be willing to stand as I call their names Just so that you can put a name to a face Mary Bennett from the Community Arts Council of Vancouver Cindy ma Cindy Cheryl Masters from the Cultural Services Department Cindy Shwellos Marie Lopez and Jill P weaving from the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation Susan Stewart Laura Kozak and myself from Emily Carr The idea for this day emerged from a series of conversations about how we could work together as Institutions whose mandates represent the diversity of perspectives in this room We were interested in examining shared opportunities to support the work that you do We quickly realized that in order to get even close to approaching this There were a number of questions that needed to be considered and that we needed to engage you the community of practitioners towards this The presentations and questions that frame today are by no means comprehensive or defining They are a reflection of an assembly of ideas made in a particular time and context and are meant to act as a catalyst for discussion on the potentials for opportunities for collaboration as a steering committee Our hope was that this conversation would not end here But that this gathering becomes an opportunity to explore more sustained ways of working towards building support for the work that you do In reflecting the specific focus of each of our organizations We are also here to listen and take back learnings that can inform some concrete next steps For cultural services their mandate is to help build capacity in the community for groups who are requesting public sector subsidy For community and neighborhood development arts development projects Towards this they are looking to provide tools and resources for artists and non artists to connect and engage around common goals and Interests and foster future partnerships in community cultural development They would also like to see an increase in meaningful engagement between Organizations and artists and to inspire non arts groups who are trying to affect positive change in their communities To see the possibilities of working meaningfully with artists to meet their goals This includes strengthening their knowledge and understanding of good practices and how the community understands and measures success It also includes building partnerships and collaborations with other agencies to better resource individuals and organizations working in this practice and Finally to explore different ways of investing city resources and community cultural development For the community arts council of Vancouver since their founding in 1946 as the first community arts council in North America Their volunteer driven organization has focused on creating community through the arts for the past decade There has been a focus on arts-based community development for the community arts council two current priorities Are the community engaged environmental art and supporting community arts in the downtown east side Among their core values is supporting the role of the professional artist in working with community groups Expressing their vision through an artistic form Their intent from this day is to support the building of connections between artists organizations and interested citizens For the Vancouver Park Board, they're interested in connecting practicing artists and project facilitators over common concerns and exploring the field through dialogue with Practitioners for they for them this day presents an opportunity to explore different creative models and intentions which engage test promote and develop community their hope is to spark innovation around audience engagement creative use of space and community collaboration all with the intent to be expensive rather than to circumscribe For as we know the best conversations unfold when you stir the pot moving the margins to the center in the center to the margins For Emily Carr University as an educational institution with a public engagement mandate We are interested in all the ways that learning intersect with the work that you do our new undergraduate program in social practice And community engagement has seen us move significantly into this field our interest in today and in the conversations that will unfold is To listen and to explore the needs and opportunities for learning and education in this area We are committed to some pretty immediate outcomes. We're going to be recording all of the sessions today the presentations In the breakout conversations that though one of the four that you get to choose to go to There will be both note-takers and witnesses that will then be feeding back our idea at the very least is to assemble all of that content As well to to share with all of the participants The comments that were made as people registered around those two areas We will eliminate you were signing a sheet as you came in to share that information if you said no Then we'll eliminate that but we'll eliminate you from that content But otherwise everything that occurs today will be shared back with you And then the next step for us is to gather and decide how do we proceed with what we've learned from this day? So I'm just going to take a quick moment to walk you through what the day looks like We're going to start with the morning with what we are calling 10 by 10 presentations These are presentations by a range of practitioners in the area Just as a way to remind us that we're gathered because of the work that we do and not to talk around the work But to begin with the work then we're going to take a coffee break There'll be some refreshments out in the room just outside here And then after the coffee break you're going to go right into the breakout sessions and Emily Carr is a Confusing circuitous building, so there'll be a number of us You can ask us if you don't know where that room is But you need to sign up by the break by the end of the break for those sessions There are caps on some of them just because of the size of the room And then you're going to go right into lunch and you are responsible for lunch For your own lunch you can go over to the ground ground island market And you can eat pretty reasonably there and then we're going to gather back in this room here at 130 for more presentations and then the witnesses who were Involved in the breakout sessions will come and and talk back with us And then we have about an hour for some open discussion in this room as to how we proceed So that's the day Do I have any other kind of housekeeping notes? I know some of you might know where the bathroom is But if you don't just go out these doors out the next set of doors in the hallway Go to the right and then go to the right again. You'll see a sign for it or ask anybody here and Without further ado, I'm going to invite Susan Stewart our Dean of culture and community up to introduce the first 10 by 10 Presentation, so thank you Susan Okay, well welcome everybody. I'm absolutely thrilled to be with you all today that we can have this converse conversation together So as Sadira said we're starting off with 10 by 10 presentations The steering committee invited guest presenters to showcase the diversity of community engagement initiatives from our differing institutional perspectives inclusive of artists both senior and emerging practitioners art educators and Cultural workers the BIAs are represented and community groups to inspire us and to give some indication of the range of activities that are occurring locally When we began as a steering committee to compile our invitations We quickly realized it how incomplete this list is how it would be necessarily incomplete by our time constraints Of a one-day symposium One of our steering committee members commented that we could do this every day of the year in Vancouver And I suspect everybody in this room could do one of these actually But that said we are extremely excited to present today's Invitees to the 10 by 10s So I'm not going to give very big bios for our guests We will provide you with that information So at this time we will start by inviting Sarah van Borak Sarah is a filmmaker a musician a visual artist and an educator who's dedicated to global citizenship through the arts So join me in welcoming Sarah Thank you very much for that introduction season and thank you so much to the organizers for making this day possible And thank you to all of you for being here. I'm really excited and honored to speak with you today about natural capital This is a project that was made possible through a partnership of the Emily Carr University of Art and Design and the David Suzuki foundation It was offered this fall as a community projects studio based course in the faculty of culture and community here at Emily Carr And I'm very honored to have been the instructor of this course This course involved 15 post-secondary art students from different disciplines and different levels Working together getting outside of the classroom into the community applying their art skills to make a difference What is nature worth? to each of you personally To us as a community to our neighborhoods to our city Well, there's a lot of different ways that we can value nature I think of the value of nature in terms of those priceless memories of those chance encounters with creatures in the wild I grew up spending my summers on the west coast of Vancouver Island And would be only too thrilled to have a day of fishing totally ruined by a parade of orcas going by The Davis Suzuki Foundation says that there is no right way to value nature But there is in fact a wrong way and that's to give it a zero value Traditional systems for valuing nature have looked at it often as a commodity So how much is this area of land worth if we want to transform it for urban infrastructure? Or how much are these logs worth if we want to turn them into building materials now? This system is really problematic and contributes to a lot of our economic and environmental problems See what happens is that decision-makers sit down at the table They have to make these really tough choices about whether or not to preserve this natural area or turn it into urban Infrastructure and when they do that they're doing a cost-benefit analysis trying to make responsible economic as well as social decisions The problem is there's like this blind spot because there's enormous value of nature that's being left out of the equation And these are nature's services The science community has come up with a new system for valuing nature And this is in terms of looking at its ecosystem services in economic or monetary terms So what do I mean when I say ecosystem services? Well, these are the services that nature provides for us things like cleaning our water Filtering our air or as you can see from this poster the way that bird droppings provide essential seat dispersal services These services are free often not accounted for and yet absolutely critical to human well-being The David Suzuki Foundation has done a whole lot of research on natural capital, especially in Ontario as well as here in the BC Lower Mainland This web-based map application was created by their Ontario office as one tool for making this research and data more accessible so the way that this works just step away from the mic for one sec and Then the application will do a calculation and pull up this report That doesn't break down of the different ecosystem services in the area and applies a monetary value to each of those So a similar map is being created for the BC Lower Mainland Want to do one quick game with you all Little bit of the price is right the question is what do you think is the annual value for? Aquatic ecosystem services in the BC Lower Mainland I'm going to create a bit of an imaginary scale along the floor here So when I start here at this one side, this is going to be a zero value Well, you're all very close I did give you a trick question because the answer is actually off the scale So in a very recently released report on aquatic ecosystems in the BC Lower Mainland The tally is between 30 and 60 billion dollars a year So now you understand maybe a little bit more about natural capital ecosystem services. Where do the art students come in? Well, this application was one step in making this data more accessible But of course the David Suzuki Foundation wanted to ramp up their public education strategy so Building on the power of storytelling and also recognizing that there are some services nature provides that are extremely difficult to put a dollar sign on Things that we categorize as the cultural services things like those Priceless memories I was talking about cultural spiritual cognitive and health type benefits So these 15 only car students got out into the community doing outreach to find people who had stories to share about Relationships they have with specific natural spaces in Vancouver Speaking about the cultural benefits that they have with those areas So the students did the outreach to meet these people filmed interviews with them and then apply their existing art skills to create these dynamic visuals in those videos The areas in Vancouver that we focused on are five specific wetlands Now why did we choose to focus on wetlands and what are wetlands to begin with? Well, as you can see from the metaphor in this poster with the giant sponge Wetlands provide a lot of really important services things like storing water Filtering and transforming nutrients. They also provide habitat for different creatures Now the problem is that historically these are the bogs the swamps the marshes those types of areas Historically extremely undervalued and as a result a lot of them have already disappeared But because of all these services that they provide they also rank extremely high in natural capital and have huge value So for those reasons we decided to support the David Suzuki's research around wetlands and focused our stories around five specific wetlands That were identified as sensitive ecosystems Now the idea with those digital videos is that eventually they will be integrated into the web-based map application that you saw earlier That's a bit of a more longer term process And we wanted to have some way of making the videos available to the public by the end of the semester and also to give the Students that level of satisfaction that they've really completed some level of the project So we collaborated here at Emily Carr with second-year web essential students who created this web-based platform That actually allows you to access the digital narratives if you hover with your mouse over a certain wetland Like I did here in this screenshot for commotion bog these icons pop up and they link you to a page where you can access the digital narratives So that's our interim platform Now to ramp up also the public outreach aspect of our work We are preparing to launch an exhibit of this work at the Gulf of Georgia Canary Museum in Steveston opening this Monday December the 3rd running right through till April 24th 2013 and just to give the students another chance to really do some outreach with their own artistic work The last class of the semester will involve them providing a workshop to primary school students from Richmond to share their work And also get those students to creatively interpret their relationship with nature as well as their understanding of the importance of wetlands As this semester comes to a close and I reflect back on this pilot course and project I see that I've come to better understand the value of not only wetlands and ecosystem services But also the value of having these post-secondary art students at Emily Carr Collaborate with this science-based nonprofit organization the David Suzuki Foundation You see well those stats like 30 to 60 billion dollars annually for aquatic ecosystems in the bc lower mainland May grab your attention Perhaps what might move you to get involved in the protection and preservation of our precious wetlands are hearing true stories from real people in the community People like Stephen Campbell on the left who is the manager of the Jericho Beach youth hostel And who has such a strong affinity for the Jericho wetland. He decided to have his wedding there Or perhaps the story of Paula Jardine Who is the co-founder of the public dream society and the legendary Illuminaries lantern festival that began at trout lake and has now become an annual multicultural institution in our city Or perhaps the story of larry grant an elder from the muscarim community Who tells us how the creation story of the muscarim people Is based on commotion bog And how he sees the gradual degradation of commotion bog as a sign of a gradual erasing of the history of muscarim culture and identity So whether it's the data their stories or a combination of both I hope that somehow this work will inspire you to all Think about that one question. What is nature worth to you? Thank you Thank you, sarah. I would now like to invite holly schmitt to come forward Holly is a vancouver artist with a research based practice that engages processes of a collaborative research and informal pedagogy Hi everyone I'm actually just darting out of my class right now to give this presentation. I'll have to dart back pretty soon So apologies if it takes me a moment to just kind of get my thoughts together Um, first of all, I just want to say I'm really grateful to be here and I'm really grateful that this event is happening today Um, and what I want to do is actually share a little bit about a course that I've developed as part of community projects Um, sorry, just one thing. Am I advancing this slide? Okay. Thank you It's a course that I developed called art and pedagogy and it's part of the space minor here at emily car university Before I get into the details about the course though. I wanted to talk just a little bit about my own background I was actually trained as a visual artist and also as an educator And once I graduated from university, I ended up actually working in the kind of museum and gallery context for quite a while So I you know worked in different capacities. I was a gallery educator and then eventually a curator of education So for many years my life was really caught up in Really how other people experience art And so that was something that was always really intriguing for me And during this time I also had my own art practice So I kind of felt like I was living these kind of parallel lives One was sort of focused on how people were engaging with art in one context And then I was in my studio producing art in another context um When I decided to pursue my masters and to focus on my own art practice I really felt that I was leaving education behind And then as I started to produce um and shape my sort of research based practice I started to realize how art and pedagogy could actually come together So through this kind of research based, uh kind of practice. I really felt that um people could come together through Uh in a collaborative and interdisciplinary way to ask questions and produce knowledge Um, so I've been working on a number of projects such as movable feast, uh, which was featured at the bernabé art gallery that You know basically brought people together around issues of food production and also food consumption And the idea was to um create kind of a platform for dialogue in a kind of open garden space Where people could uh, you know come together to eat together to make food together Actually in this image here you see andrea potter Who's a really amazing vancouver chef? And she's helping participants gather Lavender for a blackberry beat Lavender Ginger soda that she was producing with this group of people So it was part of our fermented beverages workshop that we were doing in the garden space The results were pretty amazing, although somewhat explosive for some of us. I I think I heard a loud bang in my fridge and and it turned out that the the cap had blown off the top of my soda But anyway All of this to say is that it's kind of interesting. I think how things kind of come full circle, so Uh, I was here at Emily Carr and I was actually invited to develop a course called art and pedagogy So marisol peterson who's the coordinator of The west one community schools team with the vancouver school board Uh, it basically approached us here at Emily Carr With a program that they have happening and this program is Really quite interesting. It's kind of based on a tri mentorship So they offer after school programming for students that It was offered universally to students but also particularly to students that are are identified as being sort of vulnerable and needing additional support and It within this she Also has high school students that are providing leadership for those students And then university interns that are volunteering to provide the curriculum and the content for these courses And then of course to lead them as well So she approached Emily Carr and we decided to develop a course where we'd work specifically with Emily Carr students To offer our programming after school within this context So this course is quite fascinating I think because it involves two different Sort of aspects part of it It happens here on campus and then part of it is actually has students working out in the field So while we're here on campus I work with students to understand Basically how to design a program an art program and also how to To actually deliver and to lead a program And at the same time they're learning a little bit about the vancouver school board About the context of schools and the protocols of working within a professional context They're also learning a bit about child development and Classroom management as well They then sort of sculpt a program that's really largely based on their own passions as an artist So I really encourage them to take what it is about art making that's Compelling for them and to try and translate that into an experience for these students that are anywhere from Kingdom Garden to grade seven So I think You know some of the programs that have been created have been exceptionally creative and Really extraordinary experiences for these young people One student actually brought together her background in dance And had students discovering imaginary friends through movement exercises mask making and performance Another student Miriam I wanted to work with primary students and to work with a whole range of kind of unconventional processes and materials So you can actually see this this project was done outside So you can see we have these two young boys who are actually working with A sort of bubble paint Initially it was intended to be kind of a 2d exercise where they were creating these 2d images using Blowing bubbles that would sort of snap and pop onto the paper But for these two young men They became really really fascinated with how sculptural the bubbles were so it quickly became this kind of massive mound of bubbles And I think it actually turned into almost more of a science project than an art project Another exciting course that was developed for intermediate students. So that's grades three to five It was developed by Kate Neal and in her own practice here at Emily Carr. She's been exploring a lot of Concepts around the idea of place And mapping place so This one project that she created was working with found objects and having students construct assemblages So kind of like 3d maps of their own memories and experiences so The range of programming has been really interesting and I think really compelling Um, I think one of the interesting aspects of this program is that uh, Emily Carr students have the opportunity to work with Youth leaders from the high school. So the high school students actually receive credit for basically for you know offering their services as youth leaders and mentors to these To these younger elementary school students It's interesting that um, you know elementary school students after grade seven They immediately make that leap into high school and it's it's a really difficult transition for many of them So the opportunity to meet students in high school helps to build Relationships connections in a stronger community um, and of course Emily Carr students have the opportunity to um develop or pardon me To deliver their courses, but also to have a lot of hands on support at the same time So this is actually uh, Joanie Danielson and she this is a program that she created focused on installation art So she was working really closely with a group of grade five students and They worked sometimes inside the school doing large, uh yarn based installations that encompass the entire classroom and also outdoors as well working with natural materials and Yeah tape and things like that was really quite extraordinary In between as students are sort of out in the field I'm actually going out to visit them and to give them, you know Participate in their programs and also to give them feedback on their teaching I also had the students to come come back and do some workshop work with us in the gallery So the Charles H. Scott gallery um, and a lot of what i'm doing is introducing them to practices of looking at art And uh adopting sort of methods for doing that So in this program Lexi Owen actually set up her classroom as a gallery space So she halted students at the door. They weren't able to come into the gallery until she introduced them to the gallery space Uh gave them the gallery rules and had them come in And in small groups they had the opportunity to View and interact with a number of sculptures that she had produced here at Emily Carr They then came together as a larger group to share their observations their sketches To produce sounds that they thought that her sculptures might have made to really kind of unfold or unwrap this work The students themselves I think benefit quite a bit from these programs as well It's an opportunity for them to engage with art making in a way that they don't get to do During their regular program. So um In this particular instance, I this is a student that was in Lexi Owens class And uh, I actually uh had the chance to interview him and ask him But what it was that he had learned in the program And so he was showing off a monster sculpture that he had made and he explained that He learned all about what monsters look like where they live and all of those really important things. So So it's just it was really exciting to see kind of how his imagination had been sparked And uh, and then some of the really ambitious things that he was taking on as a result Um, so it's really I find kind of fascinating for the students that have taken part in this course And uh, we're just actually wrapping up our third term. We're about to go into our fourth um, I think a lot of people um They come into the course partly because they're curious about teaching I guess There are a lot of family car students that are are wondering about what that experience might be like And how it might relate to their practice as an artist So some of them are interested in going on to become a A teacher And so taking a program at a be a degree at ubc or ffu But uh others are kind of interested in what it might be like to teach in more informal context Pardon me context as well. So thinking about um, you know galleries museums community centers Or as I do working with uh pedagogy as a kind of medium in their art practice as well So I think this course is a really interesting introduction to uh pedagogy to and to practice Um, and I also have to say too. It's also an opportunity for students to discover that they may not want to teach at all So that I mean that's often an experience that beginning teachers have Uh, you know once you have the the idea of what the classroom is like and then you have the reality of what the classroom is Like and it's not for everybody Um, so at the end of term students come together to actually present on what they've discovered about teaching and learning and how their philosophy around pedagogy is changing um, and I think this is a really nice moment for people to Really reflect but also don't learn about what all of their colleagues have been doing So it actually is kind of a catalyst. It's a way for them to start thinking about how they might bring this into the future Uh, we have actually started to develop a pilot and um for next term where we're going to be working with the alternative high school program And uh, what we're hoping to do is have a select group of Emily Carr's students working almost like artists in residence With a group of alternative high school students So both Marisol and I feel that there's enormous potential for this course to continue expanding and uh for new sort of partnerships and and things to kind of carry on from here. So I'll just leave it at that. Thank you It's now my pleasure to invite our next two presenters Barbara Cole is an artist curator educator and curatorial consultant in public art in vancouver. I'm sure many of you know, Barbara and um, susan fendrick finley who works on community development projects in south hill um, this is uh It's a story with a lot of different parts and a lot of different people. Um, that's really hard to fit into five and five We're doing five and five um, so in 2009, um, I was approached by the south hill bia to do a public art plan for their neighborhood Which was quite a unique situation Um, I actually worked with holly who just left. Um, she was a master's student at the time and it was an intern um, and so uh, we worked together with a task force a public art task force formed from A number of um, already very active Community people as well as business people that susan was one of those And we worked. Um, well, we met I guess about every two weeks for the whole summer Gathering input and testing directions of what kind of a An art plan this should be It was meant to unroll over eight to ten years And also to eventually get that plan approved by the neighbors We um, participated in the south hill festival and gathered a lot of input from there But I should I should also say um south hill It's an area on phraser street between 41st and 50th avenues one of the oldest Vancouver neighborhoods it overlooks the south slopes Was once a real commerce a real center of commerce every bank branches there Um, and also it's got one of the highest populations Of new immigrants in the city and also the highest population of children Um, so I worked with the task force once the plan was approved and and Put forward the task force uh expanded a little bit and became an implementation committee Um, and so through that implementation committee. We actually started to launch The first of a series of projects The art plan actually used the thematic of pattern To be interpreted in a really broad way and the first category within pattern that we used was something called urban urban urban fabric So the first artist that we worked with was renais van helm And renais actually developed um banners and a related wall mural for the south hill library Um We also just before I get into looking at what some of the projects looked like We in 2010 Holly and I team taught a course here at emily car using the south hill art plan as a kind of a framework for curriculum And we took the students out into the the neighborhood of south hill the uh the art committee The public art implementation committee Acted as acted as leaders and led the students throughout the different blocks of the neighborhoods And then students were actually put into direct contact with business owners And started to develop proposals for public art projects within the neighborhood So the students met with them shared their ideas and then it culminated with A peer review panel similar to what anybody who was designing a public art project would be faced with in presenting their ideas And then they had an exhibition and a kind of a reception following So here's a before and after of renais van helms a pattern recognition mural for the library and um renais van helms art practice is one that A part of that anyway is that she gathers designs Of and pattern from different cultures From architecture from textiles And so taking that already started kind of area of research and interest she She then directed it specifically to south hill and looked at the various populations that make up the community of south hill and represented that in different kinds of pattern This was a huge a huge task. Um it involved People painting all the way from high school students through to experienced artists Contributing their time to actually create this work um And the the last work that i'm going to show is this was a project that I was actually involved with not so much through coal projects my public art consulting business, but rather through the non-profit arts organization that i'm involved with other sites for artist projects And we partnered with the the public art committee the bia public art committee In commissioning instant coffee to do a project They chose this site, which is a really interesting kind of empty lot looks like an alley, but it's actually an empty lot between two buildings And with their typical kind of fashion of taking minimum means and creating huge impact They created this space that's now become a kind of a community meeting space Susan was telling me that really the breakthrough here was when a number of High school kids. Well, maybe they weren't high school, but the soccer club Wanted to take their team to Haiti And so they they needed a place to meet for their bake sale. So Well, we'll meet you at the pink alley with so So it has it has become a place that people have taken over as a very much needed Meeting space in in the neighborhood So i'm going to turn this over to Susan Great, so I live in this neighborhood and i'm involved in community development projects there So I was invited to join the public art Committee as we are forming the art plan and one of the big benefits for me has been to work with people like barbara and holly And I've learned so much from working with art professionals. So it's been a great two-way partnership Um at the same time as that was happening. I was involved in another project working with an artist Where I partnered with the south vancouver neighborhood house We actually got a grant to do a public education project from welcome bc And we thought public education brochure how boring we said let's do something more creative And we wanted to somehow capture the stories of different generations of immigrants in our neighborhood because that's very much the fabric of our neighborhood We're a neighborhood of of people who've come in waves of immigration over the different decades And so we thought maybe a documentary Contacted netty wild documentary filmmaker and she said nah, you don't have a budget for a documentary But she said why don't you explore interactive on on some on a web based platform And and it was actually something that she was as a filmmaker wanting to learn about and wanting to explore So she took us on as a project in a similar way to how barbara took us on as a project And once again, we benefited from working with an experienced artist We netty brought on two other artists photographer Shannon mendez and jeremy mendez as a web designer and they created this cool platform. It's a This is actually homes and businesses from our neighborhood and you can hover your mouse over one of them You click on this one on any one of these homes or businesses and the person comes out and they tell you their story And so here you see ben the tailor who has a little tailor shop on phraser street Really interesting guy, but because of the language barrier, you probably many people don't know his story He's able to tell his story in chinese with translation and you find out he had to escape the japanese invasion famine in china All kinds of major life experiences And it's it's been wonderful to get to know him better through that Once you get into the people's stories, we used still black and white photography We used black and white photography To to capture the the the person's stories and and it's the stories of real people. So besides ben who came from china we have erwin who came from germany and Experienced a lot of prejudice here, but but also overcame that and now has some very vibrant friendships within the chinese community We have nazrin who came from afghanistan. That's actually her daughter there in the pictures But she she fled the war in afghanistan and then found out that some of her problems from afghanistan would follow Her to vancouver and has a fascinating story as well After we did that project we decided to apply for a vancouver 125 grant And we were inspired by the work of jr. He's a peresian street artist who blows up huge black and white Images and pastes them on the outside of buildings and we thought oh that would be so fun to experiment with pasting With posturing in our neighborhood and we um we were able to get the grant and we thought we'd use these wonderful images We already had from the inside stories project Then we had to get businesses on board And find out who would let us use their wall and then we had to figure out how we could Get these images up. So we got the community on board We had a posturing party day and people came out and went up ladders and we took wallpaper paste and pasted up these They're they're 10 feet by 12 foot posters. So they came in panels and we had to paste each panel up separately But it was a great way to take people who Sometimes feel on the margins of society. They've come as immigrants to the community and to put them front and center In our community. We didn't want their stories to get lost. So we also posted up some qr codes So if you were curious, you could flash your phone on the qr code and you'd get to the website and you'd be able to hear the people's story The third project that the art committee worked on this year was A project called john oliver changing faces and it was actually the 100 year celebration of john oliver secondary school So as the art committee, we decided we'd work with the school to mark that event and they were planning celebrations within the Walls of the school. They were going to have the alum come back But we thought we wanted to do something on the exterior of the school that would involve the wider community in their celebration and so we were able to get a senad grant and work with A couple of experienced artists a photographer in particular michelle Fleming and mentors some of the john oliver students. So they actually the students were the artists in this project but we use the experience artists as mentors and They met with people at the south hill festival who were alum or current students from john oliver Did these great face shots again? It's a bit inspired by j by jr But this time we didn't poster them we Printed them on choroplast and we we got something more durable We had to work with the vancouver school board facilities department If you do anything on the walls of a school It's very complicated and you have to meet all their standards And they have to put it up and it's very expensive. So those are some of the challenges when you're working on these buildings But it's it's like it was a wall space that was just crying out saying put something on me Please put something on me and we just had to do it We also didn't want the people's stories to get lost. So we had some students work as interviewers and they Created a set of questions They wanted to ask about what high school was like when when other people went to high school in different decades And so we've got those interview quotes up on a website as well And the final project i'll show you here was done by the south hill bia in partnership with Viva vancouver to create a little pocket park And you saw it with the pink and black zebra striped alley There is a real need for community gathering spaces in our neighborhood We don't have a central town square And so we're trying to create these little pockets here and there and this one is called south hill hot tubs and If you're looking from the other direction and you see someone's head there, you'd think they were sitting in a hot tub One of the challenges in this project was Finding the space to build it and the bia was able to partner with a local church and and get the pieces built in an indoor location But by the time it got put up it was put up at the end of the summer So we haven't had much chance yet to see it as a seating area with people sitting on it So we're waiting for the good weather next summer to to make that happen again But I think the key things I'd say out of all of these projects has been partnerships partnerships partnerships And learning to work with people, you know as a resident. I don't always share the same values with the bia about everything But but we learn to partner in the things that we can partner on where we can work together and where we do share something And on the other things, you know, we give each other a bit of space Now I would like to invite germane co Germane is a vancouver-based artist who makes artwork of everyday actions familiar objects and common places germane Okay, great So i'm here to talk to you about a new project that was launched About a month and a half ago within the framework of the vancouver park board's new field house studio residency program in which they've given artists The use of the some of the vacant caretaker cottages in in vancouver parks in for two years in exchange for A certain amount of community-based art activity. It's a very generous amount of time to develop a project And my project entitled league was a proposal about gathering People from all kinds of backgrounds together in the park elm park To play invented games and sports And so i'll as i'll explain it's it's a proposition about thinking creatively about rules About strategy about negotiation conflict resolution maybe even And different kinds of performance But I wanted to just take a step back in order to Give you an idea of the the route by which I would have ended up proposing a project like this So it's So by way of Giving you a little bit of background on certain on other works. I've I've done that have a certain element of um Invol community involvement or or interaction So it's it's because it's intended as In my mind there's quite a pointed challenge to citizens of the city About how they could exercise their their creative problem solving um muscles So I wanted to explain how it made sense within the context of my other works And I'll quickly I'll quickly show you just a couple other projects I've done that have had an element of social practice or community engagement So I work in a very wide variety of media including long-term process-based Projects interactive electronic systems permanent public art And urban interventions Like this piece in that I did in downtown Toronto responding to this Odd feature in the at the foot of young street that I always thought looked like a boxing ring So I challenged another artist to fight me there one day And uh So we stripped off our our clothes and and uh, you know a crowd gathered around us gave us some coaching tips and so on as we went We had a cyclist planted in the audience who rank her bicycle bell to uh to end the rounds so um But my all of my projects start by thinking about some of the kinds of typical behaviors common objects and everyday habits That shape our lives sometimes even without our thinking about them So they try to create situations that encourage us to reflect upon these kinds of of everyday habits And and one way to do so is to kind of reframe them To play with the the kind of the terms by which we're used to seeing Encountering things. So here's a project that responded to the history of the the city of toronto Whose geography has been altered over decades of of um of large-scale engineering And and also as they built up the waterfront as in vancouver And of course it has a longer geological history of being shaped by glaciers and so on So for this work, my team and I took a bolder from northern ontario and rolled it down young street Um, it took four days and then added it to the waterfront of toronto But so one of the the the the fundamental intentions of of my practice is to try to establish quite pointed situations That are experimental in nature um But in which people have to reckon with with um or reconsider various systems of various sorts and decide whether or not to act So for this project, um call I took a rotary dial phone and and gutted it replace the circuits with the programmable circuits Uh and an lcd that says pick up handset for conversation So when you pick up the handset it dials one of a number of people who've agreed to have conversations with strangers um So, uh, and it's a it's an interesting um and fairly absurd proposition in which The people who encounter it feel themselves Negotiating with themselves how to act in real social space So you see this incredible transformation that happens with people when they pick up the phone and they're they they're often quite, um Lighthearted about it as they do so and then all of a sudden they take this their their demeanor completely changes As they hear the phone ring and that and as they're sprung into conversation with somebody else on the other on the other line Right and and then the outcome Is up to them, right? And so, um Yeah Here's another project that that that plays with the habits and the tacit rules of urban spaces So I built a generic bus shelter on the inside of this storefront gallery space And then I knocked out one of the one of the windows so that this you could only access the space from the street So this it became this kind of in between space Between the gallery and the and the um and the street um so So the work that I make is often just described as as conceptual in that it begins with an idea and it doesn't necessarily have a fixed Physical form but what is important to me is that it does create Real um if sometimes absurd propositions in which the people who encounter these things that I make feel themselves Negotiating how to act In social space and in relation to the expectations the sort of the sometimes unspoken rules by which we're meant to act And in social space. So it's about creating crafting provocative Ideas and then putting those ideas to the test in the real world So this league project is um grew out of A certain number of related beliefs That you see embedded in in my work And one of those is that is a belief in the average persons that you know The general audience's ability to make sense of of unfamiliar situations Even if they might be you know, sometimes needed to be prodded or surprised into into engaging um, another belief is in the in the value the fundamental value of The experience of figuring stuff out um negotiating strategizing within Within familiar or unfamiliar situations um and another And you see this come out in the sort of experimental game likes character of some of my work um another belief is that Thinking creatively has has a lot to do with play um with trying out strategies with finding inventive solutions to problems that or to goals that may that may or may not even be clear at the outset um and and You know finding the surprises that happen when you shift habits and so on So this is a game that we played at at so we've had some more or less three kind of gatherings already, uh, they're meant to be smaller gatherings weekly larger gatherings monthly And um, sorry, this is a game that someone brought uh with the the vague idea that We should try to play ping pong with more than two people and it it went through iterations And ended up with this game called massively multiplayer ping pong um And so it's it's it's organized around these these weekly gatherings Larger monthly gatherings that are open to anyone Um, and so in each case we might start with an existing game. Uh, for example, this is one that the artists cedric bonford and verena camaniards brought with um that they used to play in in uh college that involves uh throwing juggling balls into the cracks of An overstuffed couch and you get more and more and fewer points depending on where where it is and it can be site specific Depending you could bounce balls off of walls and so on But so we might start with an existing game or you might invent a new one from scratch um, and and the expectation is that each game as um As well as it's playing field its strategies and so on might evolve over time New equipment might be invented. Um Or adapted Uh, so the idea is that it would that this this um project is is a kind of um sandbox for sandbox a kind of sandbox for experiments around improvisation around performance Uh cooperation strategy negotiation Uh different kinds of social relationships like we played this game on on the weekend that was um That we've just it's sort of I've sort of provisionally called it sonic pickup sticks but It ended up creating the situation where You'd had a blindfolded person in the middle of a circle with you know people wielding sticks and so it's all of a sudden This is is very you know uncomfortable for me It was a very uncomfortable social situation But it was like a a kind of thing that you evolved organically and so we went with it um But so participants ideas participants would have experienced the value of emergent behavior Adapting and evolving things through iteration. So it really views games as a sort of as a very serious um Not only fun, but also a serious and and quite holistic way of problem solving You know more so than than an approach that that that In which we think of ourselves as just these disembodied brains, right? So it's it's really in this the sound mind in a healthy body kind of principle So I don't really see my role as a as a as anything like a a counselor or a babysitter or anything like that It's really more like a coach someone who's who's or a catalyst someone who's Helping other people set up situations that allow them to learn and and and experience change um The project's in really early stages, but I'm hoping it's going to find its own body of participants who have that's kind of of interest in questions of of strategic decision-making Rule bending Hacking and and so on or even have a tolerance for this these kinds of states of uncertainty There's a blog as well that has a sort of theoretical side That both exists as an organizing tool and also as a platform for more theoretical reflection on some of these issues And you know, there's there are this is where you can find us. It's it's as I mentioned a project That's in really early stages And that is going to spread by I think Word of mouth as much as anything else So please if you know of anybody who who you think would be involved interested in such a project, please Please help spread the word I think that was yes, I went over time Now I'd like to introduce carolin wahn Carolyn has been actively involved in art and cultural initiatives in the downtown east side since 2004 and for the last Four years. She's been working with pivot legal carolin and Thank you to the organizers for Making this event happen and for inviting me to speak at it. I'm just going to turn my Time we're on So I want to talk to you today about the project that I've been working on for the last four years hope and shadows And I want to talk to you About a couple of things I guess about our goals in terms of engaging an audience with this project and also Some of the things that I think about in terms of engaging the downtown east side community and engaging communities and people who are marginalized because of social condition and I'm going to start with a story so, uh, this is uh A picture of a gentleman named dan and I had a woman from toronto who sent an email a couple of weeks ago and she told me that She had purchased the hope and shadows calendar from one of the street vendors And she said she didn't know too much about the downtown east side community before that And she had a really great interaction with the vendor that she met I don't know if it was dan or or not, but dan works down at georgia and granville typically sometimes at pender and granville So she said she met this guy on the street had a great interaction with him in a conversation He told her about the project. He told her about the photo contest that We hold annually in the neighborhood where we distribute a couple of hundred cameras to residents there And they have three days to document their lives Um before returning the cameras to us and And she bought a calendar from him and she said she took that calendar home and or back to her hotel room and she spent some time that evening flipping through it And looking at some of the photographs in the calendar As well as reading the stories about some of the photographers and about The context of the images and about some of the people in the images And so she would have been introduced to amy and to shannon and amy's on the left Or on yeah on your left and she was the photographer and she took this self portrait Um this year our contest theme was what I value about my community And this photograph was chosen for the cover of the calendar And for us it really represented a community value that's very important one of friendship and social connection for people who are in the downtown east side Thinking back to the woman from toronto who would have been looking at this photograph She would have been reading a little bit just a tiny bit about amy and shannon's live She would have learned that they're both single moms in the community. They have large families They've both experienced home being homeless Had a number of struggles and that they're now very engaged or have always been very engaged in their community They're in a parenting and poverty action group They participate in programs at the crab tree community ywca community center And that they're very connected to this uh this space that they call home the downtown east side And she also would have seen joe thompson's photograph now joe took this picture in the hundred block of east Hastings And he took this photo at a protest which by chance was happening on the day that we Distributed cameras to the participants It was a photo taken at a a protest outside the pantheon old pantages theater This at the time uh was the still the site of the demolition So the building had been knocked down the debris had been left there for quite a while and the neighbors had gathered the residents had gathered to To demand that mark williams clean up the mess but also to To call for a hundred percent social housing at that site and so this and many photographs because this was probably this year one of the most documented Events in the neighborhood so there were many photographers who took photographs of many people participating in different ways at this protest um and in particular This photograph represented Very important community value, which is the community working for social justice She would have also seen ramie's photo also taken in the same Hundred block of east Hastings and this is at community garden Which is operated by the portland hotel society. It's right beside insight the safe injection site and onsite the detox center and treatment center above Insight and so these were some beekeepers On again on the left is sara and sara works at the drug user resource center also known as life skills on kordova She's there with her mom who is a master beekeeper and Her mother julia is teaching a number of people in the community How to beekeep and they're producing honey and selling honey in the neighborhood And she would have seen This photo by denny curtis and this photo for For the contest and in terms of again the contest theme this year of community values represented another important Value to people who live in the downtown east side, which is one of caring for for people who are suffering and in particular Uh, or sorry to say in this photo Denny did not know james and the woman in the photo before she took it But she came across them on the street and she was very touched by that Moment of tenderness between them and she asked if she could take their photograph and they agreed And when I had a conversation with james later about this This photo he he shared with me that um, his friend was actually comforting him because he had just earlier that day learned that his mother had passed away and so Uh, I think for for denny when she found that out later just to To feel the you know that she had been allowed and given permission to to document that moment Was pretty incredible for her Um, and also I think just again shows that that caring that people have for people in the community and and There are other photos in the in the calendar that show that one image that's in the 2013 calendar this year That's appeared in the calendar many times before is An image of the missing women's memorial down in crab park that is another um site that is often photographed by people and Always gets a lot of votes when we take the photographs to the community and and present them for people to Tell us which uh photographs really resonate for them And so the woman who from toronto who would have been looking at the calendar again would have uh been reading about The downtown east side and learning that you know The missing women and the epidemic of violence against women in the community is something that touches people personally because the photographer of that particular image gary donaldsson Wanted to call the photo friends that I miss and had taken that image because it was important for him to Let the other people in vancouver know that um That the missing missing and murdered women was something that touches people in the community personally Um, and why is this important and and why do we do this project? Um These are some epithets I guess of uh Concepts that people have of the downtown east side some of them are headlines that have appeared in major media And and one of the real goals for us and engage in the audience is to give people alternative narratives counter narratives to To a lot of concepts that people have about the neighborhood Um, in particular the one on the bottom People in the downtown east side are lazy tax eaters and they're there by choice that That one I included in there. I was actually having a conversation about a week ago with a woman A young woman who's working in public health in the neighborhood and she only just recently started working in the downtown east side And she said, you know, I really want people to change the way they think about the community And she said she was also talking about uh friends and family of hers And she said I said well, what is it that they think and she said well They think that people there are lazy And that they're there by choice and I really I want to qualify there by choice because I I think what they They mean by that is not you know There are a lot of people who choose to live in the downtown east side because that neighborhood They value that neighborhood and they enjoy living there and it's a community where they feel comfortable and non-judged But I think what people are saying there, which is an attitude that we would trying to try to address through this project Is that that people have chosen their social condition, which certainly is is not true um And I want to include myself in this as well in terms of when I'm engaging with this community. Um I'm unlearning ideas and beliefs that I have about the neighborhood as well And I think that's really important when you're working in in any community context um A mentor for me uh was julie rogers and julie's on the left of this photo here And what I learned from julie and julie um passed away from cancer in the spring of 2010 So I knew her for a few years and she was a photographer with the project For multiple years and she had more winning photographs than any other photographer that was had worked with us and all of her photographs were portraits and they really Resonated and touched people because her portraits Always showed people's human spirit and their real That essence that's in all of us that little burning light that we have and uh And so that's what I learned from julie and from working with her on this project was to always remind myself to to bring that To my work that when i'm working and engaging with people that i'm seeing them as as humans and as my equals Because that's what julie saw and if we think of photography as a reflection of how we see the world Well, then julie certainly um is a real role model in terms of seeing our humanity Uh, I think that The other uh real power that this project has is you know, there's a lot that happens through the photographs and the stories But because we've also been able to combine this, um Economic aspect to it, so we're providing sales opportunities for people in the downtown east side Just hearing the rain coming down to mancouver. It's very dramatic um because we're working with About 200 people each year who work with us as vendors They're having those Personal interactions and and moments with people in the streets where they're having conversations They're meeting people. They're telling their own stories as well as sharing their stories about the community Um, we partner with van city a lot on this project and they've been incredible about five years ago They came on board and they said we'll help you distribute your calendars to the vendors so that they don't have to travel so far to restock And I was talking with one of the uh women who works at one of the van city branches And g was telling me, you know that very first year that we started I have to Confess to you. I felt a lot of apprehension That we were doing this and I felt nervous when the vendors were coming in and you know, they were they were a little bit rough looking some of them and she said I can't believe that That I felt that way initially, you know, I've just really turned around on my thinking in that after meeting them and You know, I I have such great interactions with them And and so I think that that's really the goal and that's the power of this project And it doesn't happen In big ways. It's just small Incremental changes and small transformations that happen one conversation at a time And And so I think you know looking out looking forward I included this photograph by Justin of his partner Cynthia And this was taken at the regent hotel a couple of years ago and It this photograph won the juli roger's memorial award for best portrait. We created an award in her honor And I think what I wanted to end with this photo is that It it shows that hope of looking out looking forward I believe that social transformation is possible And it's certainly possible in in our individual lives as well Transformation Cynthia at the time said, you know, I was looking out I was living in the regent at that time and I was looking out the window and I was just thinking of a better future for myself and I saw Cynthia earlier this year and she's made Remarkable changes in her life and has I think, you know Now embodied what was her hopes that she had when this photo was taken and And my hopes as well for the project in terms of of building understanding and connecting communities and One of the other presenters said it, you know putting people who are marginalized in the center rather than on the margins I think this is one of the strengths of this project and one of the things that we have Worked to to bring about and And for people to have that opportunity to tell their stories is Is very valuable and I hear that as feedback back from the participants that we work with Joe Thompson whose photograph that we saw earlier was Interviewed by the West Ender this earlier this year and he said, you know We're actually really good at telling our own stories when we have that opportunity and so That's That's all that I'm going to say for today. Thank you so much Um, and now I would like to invite patty frazer who is a scholar writer media producer and theater Practitioner who has an engaged art practice First off, I'd like to just say thank you very much for inviting me here And maybe this is a good way to end the 10 by 10s because I'm going to be showing you a project that Isn't even done yet. In fact, I'm right in the middle of it And have just come down here to spend some time to present the project to you And we'll have to hurry back to the makeshift studio Where my partner and I corn brown are Um, working with a group of 11 young Self-identified artists Who we want to mentor in a community engaged practice While they produce their response to the the housing crisis But first off, I also wanted to say that this project is Being able to be happened because of our support with from the canada council the bc arts council um a partner We are partnering with the housing justice project at the university of british columbia and Believe it or not the real estate foundation So I just wanted to start by kind of kind of regrounding What it means for me to be a community engaged artist And there's that foundational definition that Describes people who do this kind of work as someone who fosters evokes Solicits participation in the creation of art that seeks to serve the vital interests of the community And it's through this inquiry into the vital interests of our communities um with story And art is sort of where my practice intersects And as I mentioned, um, I'm partnering with corn brown on this particular project Um, and if we are able to secure funding for the second and third phases part of our idea around this project Is to take these young artists that we're working with right now And have them work with us on two other projects that are going to be Working in other communities around narratives around homelessness and housing issues And I have a particular interest in seeking out and working with children on on this issue Now the impetus behind this project was the identified need from Policy makers and housing activists for narratives from people that challenge our current notion of what it who and And what it means to be homeless And as I said before I work with narrative And narrative I like to think of is the story that we as a culture Assume that authorizes and founds and sets in place our ways of experiencing the world So we started the project in september. We met just a couple of hours every week And we invited in what we framed as housing visionaries to talk to this group of young people And a new narrative started to emerge within our group And it's a narrative that sees the housing crisis as a problem of injustice in the face of affluence It sees the lack of safe affordable and adequate housing as an abuse to our basic human rights So we've started to frame this project as housing justice is a human human rights issue Um, so here's the picture of us um at the purple thistle And I just wanted to kind of Give you a sense of who's who we're working with One of the participants has moved 13 times in two years. One has moved 41 times in 20 years and he's 21 years old One has moved nine times this year alone. Some travel two hours to get to school and to work Over half the group has attended post-secondary Institutions and summer graduates Some of them have two jobs. Some of them have three jobs Most of them are shuffling debt All of them are underemployed All the participants are in deep core housing need defined as having to spend over 50 percent Of your monthly income on housing Many of them are at risk of becoming homeless But the key and this is another narrative that's be Coming through in this project is that none of them see this as unusual Uh in night in 2004 there was a stat that came out of vancouver that's put 29 of all homeless people under the age of 29 So there's another narrative that's emerging in my work with this community That it isn't only individuals who are at risk Of being homeless or homeless It's a generation And for those of us who are working in culture Um, I think we need to start to think about what this means For those of us who work in the realm of ideas and images and stories that help define a community How we're going to be working with youth in the future. We really have to start to think about The sort of nuts and bolts of our practice What happens when there's no space No space to live and no space to work and no space for us to work with them And now in the housing justice project, um, the irony wasn't lost on corn and I that uh, we had to struggle to find a place to do this project Um, and even though we were associated with a research project at ubc Because of the demands of this project, there wasn't a cultural or educational or public space That we approached that could accommodate us and not for lack of some people for trying and I I know you're in the room right now And I thank you for that So we had to find a place through the generosity of an individual some old school union activism And um, uh youth run Collective these are all spaces that are on the margins. They're not in the center of the of our cultural institutions So when we think about space and we think about youth and we think about a generation now that's working two or three jobs that are moving around at With so much fluidity it's breathtaking. We need to think about where we're going to work creatively We need places that can cook food And serve food food has become a huge part of this project We need safe places to store gear Safe places for us to work as the community engaged artists We need Spaces where we can work imaginatively With the youth and with other communities as well. This isn't just about youth We need to think about how we can accommodate people who are traveling long distances in order to participate So as I said before we started this project in tandem producing stories that challenged our current perceptions of homelessness But when culture and art And community intersect narratives change And the story as I remind you that we assumed That set and placed the way that we experienced the world is challenged And reframed and often it's turned into a creative inquiry. That's what art does in community um and so, uh Sorry Kind of getting lost here I had my rant As you can tell I'm really in the thick of things right now um This is uh The purple thistle where we're working and you can see behind me the free food It's part of the project So, uh, we were here at the purple thistle for uh meeting every Couple of hours through through a couple of months And then we did find a place to actually start producing our videos and that's what we're doing right now and it's at the um maritime labor center And I wish I could show you what's being produced between when I had to put this this slide show together And what's actually being done as we speak. I just so wish I could show you And I hope that we'll get an opportunity to do that at some time But I wanted to talk about how um This this this notion of how community engaged artists are right in the center of um what I think does help to produce change The jeff jeff chang a writer once Maintained that cultural Change of course proceeds before political change So that when we're working in culture and we work in the realm of ideas and images and stories It's artists that are are in some ways really essential to To helping to have change take place And I I know many of you in this audience already know that that I don't need to say that but I think we need to work together to continually reframe and re-speak about how important our work is in community Because every change takes a leap of the imagination And I have to say that the work that we've been doing with the youth The narratives we are probably not going to be producing narratives a lot about being homeless Because they've taken it and they've re-changed and retooled the narrative and their story is about Profound change and they're looking at the root causes of this crisis And they're not thinking about themselves They're thinking in very very large frameworks So I just like to say if we don't If we don't have spaces to work creatively with community And we don't I think really start to actively involve ourselves in how we can Produce these spaces We're going to end up as we all know in a city that isn't going to have a lot of art produced in it So That's it. Thank you very. Oh, can I just tell you that we've got a website? And that the pieces are going to be launched and It's all just happening all at the same time. It's www.housingmattersmedia.com and By december the end of december We should have the pieces up and there'll be a public exhibition that will be facilitated at the roundhouse, february 7 2013 so thank you very much Could you join me in giving a hand to our seven presenters this morning? I think that was a wonderful opening to our day We'll have seven five or six or seven more presenters after lunch this afternoon