2020 At A Glance: What Feeds Us
This year has jam-packed our lives with unforeseen events, but our youths at What Feeds Us (WFU) have taken this as an opportunity to advocate for social issues they are passionate about through art and creative mediums. Our youths have undertaken two major projects and are currently in the process of their third initiative!
The WFU group created the #ListenToMe project which involved creating peaceful protest signs about social issues that are important to them. The project caught the attention of our community partners and became a travelling art installation. The project was featured at Boys and Girls Clubs offices, the CIWA Youth Forum, Genesis Centre Pink Shirt Day and International Women’s Day and offered viewers the chance to create their own posters to add to the original project. The interactive installation created opportunities to have conversations about a variety of social issues facing all Calgarians. One of our youths felt a strong connection to this project and said “I am able to be a part of something bigger and I feel included. I feel happy and feel like I’m making a change in my community.”
Although Covid-19 put a halt to our in-person programming, the WFU program moved online to weekly meetings and a new youth project was born out of the quarantine we all experienced together. #ThroughTheWindow is a creative project involving decorating the windows of our homes with positive messages of hope during these uncertain times. It allows an outlet of expression that can be done safely at home. We featured #ThroughTheWindow on our social media as a form of an online showcase. We truly are inspired by our youths’ ongoing commitment to positive community influence.
Our youths have also been working on their poetry and spoken word skills and have made leaps and bounds in terms of their skills as young poets, despite the difficulty of doing it digitally! They are now collaborating with our Youth Arts Action group for our Poetry and Photo digital summer project which will document their experiences and thoughts during their quarantine experience and beyond. For several of our sessions, we will be joined by two spoken word guest artists: Wakefield Brewster, Rubix and our photography artist, Vincent T Joachim! Their knowledge and experience will be such a valuable resource for our youths. At the end of our program, we will be putting together a poetry and art book to showcase in the early fall. We hope to produce both a printed and digital compilation of the work!
