Thanks to a grant from CLICK, Mr. B’s grade 7 class at Britannia Elementary in Vancouver experienced a week-long journey with this year’s LEAD mentors Candice Halls Howcroft, David Lyle, Damian Rumph and myself, a program designed to empower youth and enhance their self-confidence through the arts.
The class was full of great listeners who were very empathetic. They were totally amazing and they really supported their peers. They have a very special community, which is great because that was this year’s theme, community, what it is, what is special about theirs and what qualities each youth brings to it.
We began with an introduction to LEAD, the shape of the week and an art activity where each youth drew a coloured line across both sides of a paper, then they all created line drawing self-portraits on that same paper in pencil. They loved the self-portrait Mr. B drew. They wrote their names on the paper and listed some of the ‘gifts’ they bring to community. Once complete they placed their portrait on the floor and had to connect the coloured lines to make a circle, introduce themselves and state their gifts aloud.
In the afternoon they went in pairs in search of images that reflected their community. Here is where the LEAD magic happened. Here everyone was in process…the beautiful, messy, challenging, ever evolving process of creating, of going deep, of communicating and collaborating, of thinking critically, of trying and trying again. There was excitement, frustration, disappointment, playfulness, challenges and solutions, the discovery of new ways, the forging of new thought patterns. The class was engaged every inch of the day!
Mr. B had some rigorous requests: photos had to be new…original. They had to be photos that no one else had taken. They had to represent the community and each student had to explain their visual metaphor. They could not be cliche, they could not be of flowers (they already had a great series of those), they could not have recognizable people in them and they had to be something they would want to hang on their walls.
This ‘do not take’ list challenged youth to really look deeply for inspiration, to take in the details of their surroundings a bit more, to find something they had walked by dozens of times. When I asked how they were dealing with these challenges they offered the advice, “Don’t give up, keep trying and believe in yourself.”
This was not about taking the perfect photo, this was about the experience, about building on personal experience, editing it if you will, to become better, about discovering that it is ok to be where you are right now and to plan a path forward with positivity and not letting doubt stop you. It was about finding empowerment on the journey…knowing you can always make adjustments.
This was deep learning and something these youth can carry forward on their own journeys.