Last Tuesday we held our first sewing circle at the Community Centre. It was a cozy and fun evening as we stitched together the first layers of the Treasuring Strathcona legacy art piece with new and old friends.
The foundation of the piece draws inspiration from Janey and Jay’s “in the long ago…” project that was made in collaboration with youth from the Strathcona Childcare Centre earlier this year (read more about the project here: https://earthand.com/2019/04/30/treasuring-strathcona-garden-trails/ ).
Janey, Jay and the kids wanted to imagine how the space of this neighbourhood might have looked and felt before European contact and what plant, bird, fish and animal life might have lived alongside the Indigenous peoples of this land.
They used images of footprints to incorporate the idea of mapping place and being on the land. This is something we wanted to carry into the legacy art piece, a mingling of ancient and recent histories and depictions of plant and animal presence alongside human life.
Treasuring Strathcona from its inception has been focused on the idea of mapping the neighbourhood and exploring how cartographies might be reconsidered, animized and decolonized. The final piece in this project will live at the Community Centre and our intention is for the work to map the many histories that are held in this vibrant place.
Our next Sewing Circle is November 21st (7-9pm) and will be held in the Multipurpose Room on the 2nd floor of the Strathcona Community Centre. Come join us and add your mark to this collaborative neighbourhood art work.