Artwork Details

Cultivating Communities

Artist
Killarney Community Centre Society
Year
2017
Neighbourhood
Killarney
Location
Playground adjacent to licensed preschool classrooms
Description
The Killarney Community Centre Society built semi-permanent planter boxes in the playground courtyard adjacent the licensed preschool classrooms. The project targeted licensed preschool participants, youth and seniors and was open to all members of the public.
The consultation phase included connecting with patrons through a series of workshops facilitated by lead artist Pat Beaton. Topics focused on:

• what access to gardening means to people,
• reviving past skills and passing them on to new generations of gardeners,
• discovering different ways that gardening inspires us.

She helped participants translate these thoughts into images which in turn were engraved/woodburned onto the panels by the community.
The building phase taught rudimentary carpentry skills; the growing phase taught program participants elementary gardening skills through hands-on gardening workshops. The garden enhanced programming spaces by creating a new outdoor program space.

The project offered learning opportunites through a workshop series. The seminars were delivered by a variety of experts; mainly Fresh Roots, The Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society for skillsharing workshops and permaculture seminars, and finally, they sought-out expertise from the community on indigenous plantings and plant usage.
They partnered with Fresh Roots (Norquay Field House Resident and Urban Farming Initiative) and shared their knowledge in urban farming, management and planter boxe building. In addition, their summer farmers helped tend the garden via their SOYL program which hired youth in the summer months to grow, cook and sell healthy food in their community.
Medium/discipline of Project
Garden/greenway
Park Board Funding Program
Neighbourhood Matching Fund

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