150+ Creative Acts was a participatory project that aimed to inspire the community to do 150 or more acts of inspiration.
In the end, it included one exhibition with six artists and 721 viewers, three school projects with 75 elementary and secondary school students, five workshops with 69 participants, three festival booths with 132 visitors, and I made three candles to celebrate 479 creative acts.
150+ Creative Acts was a wonderful success, and we couldn’t have done it without every single person who submitted a creative act to us. In such a short time, we were reminded by the local community that creativity manifests in every one of us and that’s such a beautiful thing to celebrate.
As we wave goodbye to such a humbling, exciting project, we wanted to acknowledge those who made everything happen.
We first kicked off 150+ Creative Acts with the youth of the community leading the way, so we’d love to thank Ms. Barnes’ art class at Stanley Humphries Secondary School and Angela Duclos and students at Kootenay Columbia Learning Centre for starting off the project.
Thanks also to Mitchell’s Supply Ltd. for the discounts on materials and the perfect space to hang up the mural that SHSS students created, to Crumb’s Bakery for exhibiting the KCLC students’ work, to Deb MacIntosh at Zuckerberg Heritage Park for the permission to hang up artwork, and to the City of Castlegar for letting us set up a booth at Spirit Square for our launch and for allowing the artwork to be put up around town.
You all contributed to an exciting beginning. We had so much fun at the festivals this summer and we’d like to thank the organizations of Kootenay Festival and Sunfest for allowing us to set up our creativity booth.
And thank you to the City of Castlegar for letting us participate in Canada Day. We couldn’t have reached over 450 creative acts if we had not had the participation we received at these festivals.
One of the most exciting parts of 150+ Creative Acts was being able to travel into the community to encourage everyone to be creative. These travelling workshops were an integral part of the project and we’re so thankful to the organizations who allowed us to do this.
Thanks to Kinnaird Elementary School for allowing us to go into two classrooms and foster creativity in young kids with a fun scavenger hunt.
Thank you also to the Kootenay Family Place for having us there for two workshops, one involving the Columbia Basin Alliance for Literacy — these workshops were especially important to help give parents of small children the time and space to be creative and that was incredibly powerful and important.
And, of course, thanks to the Kootenay Society for Community Living for having us for a workshop and touching our hearts.
We wouldn’t have gotten the publicity to receive all the creative acts that we did without help from the media, so thank you so much to all the media, especially Castlegar News and The Goat FM Radio for helping us with that. Community challenges such as 150+ Creative Acts rely so much on the local community and we are ecstatic about how well the project has turned out because of the help from everybody.
We hope that everyone involved enjoyed it as much as we did and will continue to incorporate their creativity into your daily lives. This community project was organized by the Kootenay Gallery of Art. We are grateful for the financial assistance from the Government of Canada.
For more information, please visit us next to the Doukhobor Discovery Centre. You can also contact us at 250-365-3337 or kootenaygallery@telus.net.
