In December, our excited and ready-to-collaborate classroom packed up our art supplies, our Visual Journals and our open-minded attitudes and hopped a bus to 2 School for a week long exploration of the theme “Collaboration Within a Community.”
Spending a lot of time beforehand exploring this idea about how communities collaborate, we did a lot of pre-work by actually getting out into the community to collaborate. Our class met up with the Brentwood Seniors Association for their monthly tea a couple of times to chat, and socialize with our community’s seniors. This went far better than expected. Students and seniors both enjoying the time to eat some snacks, and discuss life in the past, and the present.
Upon arriving at 2School we were in awe of the downtown community of Connaught and Beltline. Students immediately noted differences from our area of Brentwood. Most notably all the public art, the buildings and architecture, and the busy hustle and bustle of downtown.
The week went by so quickly as we sketched old artifacts, explored how various organizations collaborate with their community such as Inn from the Cold and the Mustard Seed. We explored how the Grace Presbyterian Church helps its community, and discussed ways we could collaborate more to help out our own community. We worked with Education Matters to discuss how funding gets allocated to schools, discussing what is important for students in a school, and wants vs. needs for education.
We looked at how public spaces are excellent collaborative spaces – our favourite being Devonian Gardens – such a great place to meet, talk, work together, and collaborate! We even got to bring joy to the employees at the CBE Carl Safran Centre by singing them some Christmas carols we had practiced – creating a happy community of adults and children.
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