Health, healing and connection

What a community knows about care, painted

Some knowledge does not survive a survey. What it is like to recover, to arrive somewhere new, to hold a neighbourhood together through a crisis. It is held in the body, and it comes out in image before it comes out in words.

In depth

Art in a Just Recovery: Reconnecting to Us

Guelph, Ontario, 2023. A community arts collaboration between Art Not Shame, the Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition and Melanie Schambach, on community care through the long tail of pandemic recovery.

The project ran in two movements. First an eight week online programme with the whole group, from February to April 2023. Then eight Art Buddy groups, one in each of Guelph’s neighbourhoods and one online, each working in a different medium: mixed media, photography, acrylic painting, watercolour, bookbinding, linoblock printmaking and mark making. Every group was paired with artist facilitators, and taking part was free.

More than seventy participants had a hand in it. Their individual artworks were composed into a single large-scale digital mural, unveiled in June 2023 and installed at the Guelph Farmers’ Market, where the neighbourhoods that made it pass it each week. Amy Kipp was research co-lead, and the project is the subject of her doctoral work at the University of Guelph.

In 2024 it was one of three projects in Art as We Are: Creative Community Care at the Guelph Civic Museum, a show that ran for a year and drew more than seven thousand visitors.

Partners: Art Not Shame; Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition · Participants: 70+ · Groups: eight, in seven neighbourhoods and online · Research co-lead: Amy Kipp, University of Guelph · Unveiled: June 2023 · Installed: in several locations, including the Guelph Farmers’ Market

The project at Art Not Shame, with the participants’ video stories, a zine and a community toolbox.

Materials, siting and care

Medium and fabrication: Multi-medium. Each neighbourhood group worked in its own form, from linoblock printmaking and photography to watercolour, bookbinding and mark making, and the individual works were composed into a single large-scale digital mural.
Site: Interior, the Guelph Farmers’ Market, a weekly public gathering place in the neighbourhoods that made it.
Installation: Hung as a single composition, at a height that reads from the market floor.
Permanence: Indefinite, in the care of the market and the partner organisations.
Conservation: Interior siting, so no weathering exposure. Condition reporting available on request.

Art in a Just Recovery installed at the Guelph Farmers’ Market — Art in a Just Recovery, Guelph, Ontario, 2023.

A participant painting her own piece in an Art in a Just Recovery session in Guelph, Ontario — Art in a Just Recovery, Guelph, Ontario, 2023.

The finished work

One composition, seventy hands

The completed Art in a Just Recovery mural, a large-scale composition assembled from the individual artworks made in eight Guelph neighbourhood groups — *Art in a Just Recovery: Reconnecting to Us*, Guelph, Ontario, 2023. Unveiled June 2023 and installed at the Guelph Farmers’ Market.

Seventy people, and what each of them said

Every participant made a piece and wrote about it in their own hand. The work is the collection, and the words belong to the people who wrote them.

What the person who made Amanda wrote about it, in their own hand

Tania Walsh, made for Art in a Just Recovery

What the person who made Tania Walsh wrote about it, in their own hand

What the person who made Tracey wrote about it, in their own hand

What the person who made Nasra wrote about it, in their own hand

Charity, made for Art in a Just Recovery

What the person who made Charity wrote about it, in their own hand

What the person who made Lori wrote about it, in their own hand

What the person who made Chukwu wrote about it, in their own hand

What the person who made Raia wrote about it, in their own hand

What the person who made Carla wrote about it, in their own hand

Izabela, made for Art in a Just Recovery

What the person who made Izabela wrote about it, in their own hand

What the person who made Alisha wrote about it, in their own hand

What the person who made Judy wrote about it, in their own hand

What the person who made Sean wrote about it, in their own hand

What the person who made Wade wrote about it, in their own hand

Also in this line of work

This is not a mural. This is a voice.

Out of Our Minds: Building Creativity in Schools. Nanaimo, British Columbia, 2010 to 2011. Students from four of School District 68’s alternative programmes painted through monthly workshops across ten months. The finished work, roughly thirty feet across and the largest single painting in this practice, hung as the stage backdrop at a district conference for several hundred teachers, with Sir Ken Robinson speaking in front of it.

The line along the bottom edge is the students’.

Partner: School District 68, Nanaimo · Commissioned by: Scott Saywell, then a principal in the district and later its superintendent · Duration: ten months of workshops · Scale: approximately 30 ft

Sir Ken Robinson speaking on a theatre stage in front of the finished Out of Our Minds mural, which reads This is not a mural, this is a voice — *Out of Our Minds*, Nanaimo, British Columbia. Painted on a gymnasium floor over ten months, then hung as the stage backdrop at a School District 68 educators’ conference, with Sir Ken Robinson speaking in front of it.

Scott Saywell on a stepladder painting the upper edge of Out of Our Minds, the rest of the painting laid out across the gymnasium floor around him — *Out of Our Minds*, Nanaimo, British Columbia. Painted on a gymnasium floor over ten months, then hung as the stage backdrop at a School District 68 educators’ conference, with Sir Ken Robinson speaking in front of it.

Related work

Project	Year	Place	Partner
Art in Hard TimesA mural made across a city that could not gather, with eleven community organisations, during the first year of the pandemic.	2020	Guelph, ON	Art Not Shame and eleven community organisations
Out of Our MindsTen months of monthly workshops with students from four alternative school programmes. The finished work is roughly thirty feet across.	2010 to 2011	Nanaimo, BC	School District 68
Re-Imagining Sanctuary ServicesStaff and the people they serve picturing what the organisation should become, as part of its strategic visioning.	2022	London, ON	Sanctuary
Queer JoyFifty three 2SLGBTQIA+ students, staff and faculty from four Alberta campuses made individual artworks in one session, assembled into a single digital mural. Supported by Egale Canada and Women and Gender Equality Canada.	2024	Calgary, AB	Mount Royal University
Art Dialogues: Subterranean CreativitiesAn online arts-based research series with the University of Victoria, on the creative work that happens below the surface.	2026	Online	University of Victoria