Art can build up community and its citizens
New mural shows how creativity through artmaking can transform space
A city is the potential of its people. So, how do we uplift people in our city so that they can flourish? Community arts educator Gerten Basom has a few ideas, some of which revolve around art!
Basom passionately believes that art has the power to transform and improve a city. “Art helps build cities,” she says. “When you start with art, you unleash many other good things.”
Hamilton’s very own monthly James Street North Art Crawl can attest to this, with the increased street vibrancy generated by art studios and, now, new restaurants and cafés that draw people from neighbouring cities and towns. And, of course, as people attract people, it can only get better.
Basom uses artmaking for public spaces to build community. For Basom, public art is an opportunity for community members to share ideas and vision. “I get excited about how art can help develop deeper conversations and stronger relationships that can bridge sectors and cultures,” she says.
Basom is particularly interested in using art to nurture our young residents especially, a sense of belonging and personal agency. Her latest project on York Boulevard demonstrates how creativity through artmaking is transforming space and also uplifting young people.
The York Boulevard Parquette, between Ray Street North and Pearl Street, was an overlooked city-owned property, previously identified by the Hamilton Pollinator Paradise Project (building a Pollinator Corridor across the city). It is an ideal site to plant pollinator-attracting gardens, welcoming bees, butterflies, birds and other biodiversity that are declining everywhere, both locally and globally. With four blooming garden plots, what was missing to animate the space further — as well as replace graffitied aluminum fences — was a mural. The 10-panel wide piece — 40 feet long by eight feet high — depicts pollinators as well as local native plants.
Basom created the mural with students from the “Alpha program” alongside other students from the Hess Street Elementary School. The Alpha students are newcomer children, many of whom are not yet fluent in English and have experienced many upheavals in their young lives. “We began with sketchbooks and sketching outdoors, which the students readily gravitated toward and applied their own personal skills to.”
“For most of these new Canadians, it was an opportunity to engage in a community-related project, which would act as both an art project as well as personal ownership of something in their community and direct living space.”
It’s no mean feat, however, to get children to work together on an art piece under the best conditions! “I didn’t anticipate that some of the shapes would begin to morph outside of the lines I had created. One young student added yellow circles on flowers — it was difficult to contain, but I didn’t stop him because he improved it!” Basom laughs. “And through that process, he made it his own.”
Since the mural painting on panels was carried out within the school, other children would gather around at recess and watch, and ask to participate. All age groups hoped to get a hand on a paintbrush — including the teachers!
Inspired by the works of Matisse and the brilliant murals of illustrator and muralist Rafael Lopez, “bold, bright and beautiful” is the way Basom describes not only the art they created but also the children themselves.
What emerged from the project is not only a stunning piece of art and animated public space but also the developing of a sense of pride in the newcomer children. Kids wanted to make sure their names were on it. “Where are our names?” they asked.
“It’s their mural. It’s the sense of ownership that will transform it from graffiti and keep it as a mural,” Basom says. A placard with names and photos has been added next to the mural to identify the many hands and hearts that helped.
During the artmaking process, Basom and the teaching assistants had many opportunities for teaching moments. Together with the children, they talked about art but also about the importance of pollination for food production and to the health and resilience of our community, today and for the future.
There was an understanding, too, that what they were doing mattered, Basom says: “That’s the turning point when people understand that they are making a difference. ”
Beatrice Ekoko lives in Hamilton.