A Learning Log

Each year, the artists in my neighbourhood host an Art Walk.  They gather together in each other's homes, open the doors, and let people come through to look at and purchase local art.

I love the walk.  My friend and I try to do the walk each year and we keep threatening to knit and sew up a few pieces to participate ourselves.  We really enjoy the opportunity to see our neigbours' talents and to support their work.  (I have to admit, part of the attraction is also looking at other people's homes in the neighbourhood.) 

Last year, on the walk, I picked up a beautiful print by Andy Macpherson.  Its message: justly, tenderly, humbly reminded me of how I want to be - in community, in relationship, in life. 

I also bought a fabulous coat rack with hand crafted tile, and, when I went to pay, picked up a flyer that described the Biela Biela project of the Working Centre.

Some Institute participants will remember the Working Centre from the 2007 sessions at Queen Street Commons, and the memorable Sustainable Food Systems presentation by Joe Mancini, the ED of the Working Centre, and Katherine Piggott, from the Region of Waterloo. 

Biela Biela is a project inspired by the artistic vision of Andy Macpherson and Susie Fowler, and supported by others in our community with talent and experience in social justice, the arts, social activism and community building.

The flyer tells me that the Dagbani people of Ghana have a proverb: "Biela, biela, nda nam wobgu" or "Slowly, slowly, the elephant was not made in a day." 

"This project borrows the proverb to give name to a vision of a more just and peaceful world realized through art and design." 

The convening group seeks to:

• "recognize the role that art and culture has in changing the world
• facilitate connections between artists and groups working for justice
• prodce and provide quality ethical products (note: they define quality as hopeful, Canadian, spiritual, cool)
• provide big ideas through branding, marketing, and promoting
• create employment
• close the gap between what we know and what we do"

I'm blown away.  

How can we create and shape a culture of justice?  Biela, biela suggests that it "requires the long view, the slow and steady, regularl practise of intentional living, the habit of living artfully, creating designs and spaces that are meaningful." 

"While the task is elephant in size," these artists, my neighbours, declare, "it is accomplished in community, slowly."