On the website
Article by Shimshon Obadia Excerpts...
...[T]his section of Fascieux Creek was once a luscious wetland ..., the perfect learning environment on this school’s grounds. It was
covered...by the school’s administration many years earlier and now the school benefits from a legal-sized soccer field and an uninterrupted sightline across the entire property.
...As of this writing, the first phase of re-naturalization is nearly complete and funding for the final phase is almost in place. But... this community, originally only a few students, now an impressive mass of parents, concerned citizens, local naturalists, and environmental consulting firm, and more, fought for almost a decade against points of concern everywhere from the size of that soccer field to the idea of children-turned-flower-thieves at the sight of fresh, local flora.
...This is when I came in. Working with the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Eco-Art Incubator research initiative founded by UBC faculty members Nancy Holmes and Denise Kenney, I have been providing art as a means to attract attention to the work these students have been tirelessly committed to, while simultaneously providing a creative outlet for the environmental concerns directly impacting their education.
...Fighting for the money to get their wetland restored was only one part of this work; fighting against the mainstream prioritization of what looks good on paper, such as outdated laptops for an entire school, versus what students want and
CLEARING Spring 2018
www.clearingmagazine.org
need is another. This is the work these students have tirelessly been pushing for. In a stream like that of Fascieux Creek, fighting the current only gets so much attention; flowing gracefully up the stream can captivate passersby for the rest of their lives.
...This is where eco-art comes into Fascieux Creek: when everyone else cannot imagine something changing, we began to make that change happen.
...So how does art beat concrete? This is a question I asked myself when first starting the Daylighting the Classroom project. I wondered how this partnership with the University of British Columbia’s Eco Art Incubator, and École K.L.O. Middle School students and faculty could be used to get an integrated learn- ing ecological system for the students where they could have a mutually beneficial relationship with nature for the sake of their education.
...The students at École K.L.O. Middle school were already
greatly invested in the project, and wanted to see it through for the benefit of their learning, their planet, and their community. Here my project quickly turned all the way around from being meant to restore a wetland through art, into a project meant to empower the students affected by this lack of integration with nature.
This article can be found and read in its entirety on the CLEARING website at:
http://clearingmagazine.org/ archives/13593
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