Creating art in the spaces we share
Art, in all its forms, gives a community its character. Whether it's a mural, a special event or a quilt that celebrates diversity, the process of creating the art is just as important as the final product.
We bring community members together with artists and organizations–first to develop an idea, then to learn how to do it and finally to create something that has lasting benefit to the community.
Our projects are community-led and fall into three broad categories:
Art in the community
These projects begin in our communities. They can take any form. What's important is the idea, what it means to the community and that residents are welcome to get involved in their own way. Here's one example of community arts in action.
Cameron Dragon Mural
The theme of dragons throughout Cameron Park sparked the idea for a 108-foot exterior dragon mural at Cameron Centre. Participants from the Centre’s summer preschool and summer camp and the Seniors Artist Studio helped bring this playful, magical family of fire and ice dragons to life—much to the delight of community members who use this facility.
Wesburn community members were eager to create a new mural that showed what healthy living meant to them. They created stories about play, sport, gardening–and apple trees, to honour the orchards that used to be in the area years ago. The 210 residents worked together, getting to know one another in a welcoming space.
With help from teaching artists, students and community members designed and created 19 dragonfly mosaics–to complement the dragon Eco-sculpture in Cameron Park. The seniors garden club then worked with the City to design an accessible garden planter and social area, using the mosaic dragonflies as a feature. The project celebrates the park and welcomes all.
Working with members from Progressive Housing, My Artist's Corner, Burnaby Mental Health and the Centre Preschool, over 200 community members created 'life under the sea'–which features 20+ unique sea creatures in vivid colour.
The symbol of a butterfly is recognized worldwide–yet each butterfly in nature is unique in its own way–a perfect metaphor to represent and celebrate diversity in the Bonsor community. Over 200 community members joined together to create a kaleidoscope of 54 colourfully painted butterflies adorned with glass beads to catch the light, creating movement and colour as the wings cast shadows that dance along the wall and energize the space.
Art in Burnaby schools
This program helps students create art for their community. It gives them opportunities to work with groups like seniors and students from other schools in a supervised setting. Artists help them tell their stories, suggesting what kind of art form would work best and then teaching them the skills they need to create the project.
Led by artists, 470 students and community members learned how to draw, paint and make collages of lions and a colourful garden highlighting Lochdale Community School’s values–respecting others, caring, kindness and safety.
More than 700 participants from Edmonds and Twelfth Avenue schools, adult language students from LINC (Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada) and Strong Start Program families shared ideas of what it meant to be connected. Through collage and photography, they explored the meaning, symbols and imagery of different animals and how they connected from a personal, universal and cultural view. The 30 photomontage collages travelled to and from each school community where each group added to the composition and learned about collaborative and process-based art.
Our Community Arts program partnered with Gilmore Community Elementary to develop and facilitate an arts engagement to create 10 outdoor murals. Together, 470 community members designed and painted murals depicting West Coast animals in their natural habitat.
The community that supports Lochdale Community School and the Strong Start Program families created a 9' x 12' quilt to celebrate diversity. The project gave 360 participants the opportunity to discuss how one 'shows up' in their community and everyone celebrates and honours what they have in common and what makes them unique.
Art in the parks
Each summer, artists travel to parks throughout Burnaby and share hands on art activities with community members. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, drop-in creative play activities will not be available in Burnaby parks this summer. Check back in 2022.
Park bin project
In previous summers, community members worked with artists to paint a variety of bins located at fifteen different parks.
Community Art Development Program
This program is what makes our art in the community, park and Burnaby school programs possible. We bring together community members, organizations and artists to develop projects proposed by you.
Partners have worked with our community members to accomplish hundreds of projects in the past 20+ years–including health and social welfare organizations, local businesses and national corporations, arts groups, charitable foundations, community associations and our local school district.
A Community Art development program success story
We partnered with the Suncrest community to develop and facilitate an arts engagement project–a wraparound mural on the community emergency container. Led by artist Emily Gray, 425 community members from Suncrest Elementary, Advantage Preschool and Fairhaven Residents worked on the design and painting of the mural. Participants learned techniques for drawing and painting while observing and discussing the parallels between patterns in nature and patterns in their lives. Through this exploration, a mosaic of stories of animals working and living together became the theme of the mural.
We're looking for arts engagement projects that help your community. The scope of your project can involve any of the arts: visual, literary, theatre, music and dance. Contact us to discuss your arts idea. If it's something that fits within the Community Arts Development Program, you may want to develop a proposal.
As you create your proposal, ask yourself:
- What positive changes to the community will this project bring about?
- What organizations could help make this project successful?
- How will the project welcome all community members who want to help? Is it inclusive? Is it accessible?
- Will it make a public space more welcoming, usable or active?
- Will it offer opportunities for training and learning new skills?
If your project is approved, our support could include:
- partial funding
- planning advice
- artistic process
- resource information
- recommendations on artists who can help
Contact us
Community Arts Development Programmer
Phone: 604-297-4532
Email: [email protected]