Risk and Excitement: The best first day of work. EVER.

The fun continues at Harbourfront Centre!

After my wild and crazy summer working at HFC’s Theatre Camp, September has seen my return to the Centre as an Artist Educator in the School Visits programme.  I really enjoy the title of “Artist Educator,” in case you were curious, because it somehow manages not to take the emphasis off of being an artist.  Artist is still first.  Which I think is really valuable, particularly in this educational setting, because the kids coming to us already have teachers in the traditional sense and they don’t necessarily need another teacher in the same way.  I think what we have to offer as artists first is what makes the programme really unique and valuable.

In a nutshell, here is what happens at my awesome new day job (or one of them, anyway): Teachers contact Harbourfront to register their class for one or more of our programmes, of which there are an almost infinite number.  The head honcho, who is a fairly fabulous lady, gets a feel for what the teacher is after and passes the assignment on to one of us Artist Educators.  We then work with the teacher to meet the needs of his/her classroom, which could mean many, many things, but the general idea is that we teach things that would fall under the headings of history, social studies, urban studies, environmental studies, and social justice education through the lens of whatever our individual artistic strength is—visual arts, performance, dance, music, etc. 

Part of Harbourfront’s mission is to make the arts and culture accessible to everyone in Toronto.  I think this is in large part why so much (if not most) of their programming is free, especially the summer festivals and many of the exhibits.  The School Visits programme is aiming to take that to another level and to not only make it accessible (although there is a small cost) but also to make it relevant and engaging. 

And, of course, one of our goals is to get kids (and ourselves) past that little voice in their (our) heads that says, “I can’t.”

Enter Ramune Luminaire (which is such a rockstar name), our guest for day one of Artist Educator training, also known as Artistic Development (much like teachers have Professional Development).  She is a really cool visual artist who facilitates workshops for all kinds of people, inclusive of everyone from the artistically trained to those who cringe at the thought of picking up a paintbrush.

But, in an effort to remind us that anyone can do art and that this is a really important message to communicate to all of our classes, Ramune started the day by having us make marks on paper to music.  You could use any mark-making tool or substance available, and they were diverse and plentiful, and all you had to do was make some kind of mark on the paper.  It didn’t have to be a picture, it didn’t have to be pretty, it just had to be…

This went on for a while, which was fun…and then we all got an envelope containing something meant to inspire us—a word, a phrase, a picture, an object, etc.—and our assignment was to respond artistically to it somehow.  I thought this was a really fun way to get us creating—and oddly I found that most of the actors in the room felt this was easier than making marks to music.  For me, I liked it because it gave me somewhere to start and something to play with (my envelopes contained objects—a cotton ball and then a sequin, which sort of reflects my life and personality in a strange way…but nevermind that right now).

And it just snowballed from there…

We worked on making books that expressed who we were, our only rules were that we had to take risks and whatever we were doing had to excite us.  And I think those are good rules for art and life, having to take risks and having to be excited about what you’re doing.  Because if you aren’t taking risks then you probably aren’t growing, either personally or artistically, because comfort zones become stagnant spaces fairly quickly.  And because if you aren’t excited about what you’re doing then it probably isn’t meaningful to you and you probably aren’t doing it to the best of your abilities and beyond, and art doesn’t pay well enough for that and well, life is too short to do things that aren’t meaningful and exciting.

Later we were sent out to explore Harbourfront and its immediate neighbourhood, since much of what goes on there is site-specific.  And it was nice to sit there and sketch the Canada Malting Company building (an old warehouse, complete with silos), to people watch, to ponder the waves of the Harbour, and even to appreciate the plastic grass with faux rubber bits of dirt on the West Lawn.  Location has always been important to me, personally and artistically.  Knowing where you are and where you’ve been, these things are so important to figuring out where exactly you’re going.

Of course, the next step was to respond to this artistically…with the same rules as before, but more freedom in terms of the project, the medium, etc.  I had started embroidering paper earlier, which for whatever reason I found really satisfying and interesting artistically, so I decided to stick with it because it was exciting, though somewhat painstaking.  And for my risk, I chose to alter a book I found in the piles of things, a series of essays about the various ethnic groups of Toronto.  While this particular book didn’t necessarily mean anything to me, books have always been sort of sacred to me, and the idea of “defacing” one was a step outside my comfort zone…

This is my final project, unfinished. All the pencil lines still need to be embroidered—it’s time consuming.

At the end of the day, we had all created these wild, original, beautiful things.  And it was so thrilling to be in such a creative environment (and to be paid to be there!!) with so many brilliant and talented people.  It really got the ball rolling and inspired me…

The rest of the week was pretty amazing, too, and maybe I’ll write more about it at a later date, but this one day really drove home to me the value of having a job you love and an outlet for pent up creativity…