Art & the city

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This article was published 17/08/2020 (2109 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A two-week day camp focusing on architecture and art has helped high school students get back in learning mode.

The City Builders Camp, a program set up by the Winnipeg Arts Council and the Seven Oaks School Division, introduced a group of students from grades 9-12 to architects, a contemporary dance group, photography, film and the some of the city public art installations.

“When I was joining the camp, it said architecture, and I thought this would be interesting, so I joined it for the architecture side,” says Belanna Johnston, who will be going into Grade 12 at the Met School at Maples Collegiate in September. “When I started to realize they were focusing on all kinds of art, it was interesting to see what a camp could do, like going places and learning about art. It was very amazing.”

The arts council has been holding the City Builders Camp off and on since 2014, says Dominic Lloyd, the council’s program and arts development manager. It adapted this year’s camp to COVID-19 restrictions by having many of the events taking place outdoors so that everyone could be at least two metres apart.

“We find ways to connect the arts to the process of city building, whether that’s through planning, architecture or design, so we run camps for young people to see the connections between artistic practice, and how the physical world around them is created and how it’s built and operates.” Lloyd says.

“It’s not just roads and bridges and engineers. There are artistic elements to everything we do that makes the city interesting.”

One of the memorable works Johnston saw on the public-art tour was Life Journey, a butterfly-focused mosaic sculpture at Northeast Pioneers Greenway that was created by Denis Préfontaine and the Kildonan East Collegiate Girls’ Club in 2015.

“My favourite was the one about the butterfly,” Johnston says. “There was the caterpillar representing a newborn girl and a chrysalis representing a teenage female and they had the butterfly blooming into your full potential.”

“My favourite was the one about the butterfly. There was the caterpillar representing a newborn girl and a chrysalis representing a teenage female and they had the butterfly blooming into your full potential.” — Belanna Johnston

Architects from Grey and Ivy Architecture and Design helped the group work on playhouse designs, which they first created after a visit to Old Market Square. They went on to create models of their designs using cardboard, paint and decorative materials, Johnston says.

“We learned about making the layout of the homes, almost like blueprints,” she says. “And we learned about the planning and the final part of (designing a home), the overview and the side view.”

The campers also attended an outdoor dance session by Weather Parade Dance Theatre, who then offered lessons and choreography tips so they group could come up with their own dance number.

“The dance my group did was like fighting but we were really in control of our fighting movements and we formed it into a dance with a beat in the background,” Johnston says. “We only had that one day to practise, so we only practised it three times and then we performed it for the professional dance group.”

The photography sessions took place at Martha Street Studio in the Exchange District. That also meant putting their cellphone cameras away, she says.

“We did photography with real cameras instead of cellphones, which was real cool for me,” says Johnston, who added the group also learned different printmaking techniques.

City Builders gave the day campers a chance to explore subjects they never would have learned at school, Johnston says, and perhaps the camp will steer them to future career plans.

“I’m at the age when I’m trying to figure out what I would want to do when I’m older,” Johnston says. “Grade 12 is more like that big jump where you figure out what you want to do.”

alan.small@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter:@AlanDSmall