We had many enthusiastic visitors to our yarn bombing pop-up table at Mt Pleasant Park Festival! Lots of beautiful pom-poms were created. Some visitors stayed for over an hour to make five or more pom-poms each. It was a pom-pom marathon! Participants were given the option to donate their pom-pom to our yarn-bombing project, or to take their creation home with them. A few awesome artists took the idea one step further by yarn bombing themselves! At the end of the evening, we gathered up all the pom-poms we had collected to create a yarn bombing installation next to the park. As we hung up our installation, we were greeted by cries from nearby festival goers of, "Look! They're making art!" What a delightful evening! Thank you to everyone who pom-pomed with us!
Thank you to everyone who came out to our guerilla art workshop yesterday! It was such a fun and inspiring experience to collaborate with all of the participants. Guerilla art is a playful way of brightening and animating the local neighbourhood. It is an art process which involves installing anonymous and mysterious artworks in public areas to intrigue and delight unsuspecting members of the public. Like random acts of kindness, guerilla art has the potential to create magical exchanges between strangers and make our neighbourhood a more interesting and lovely place to live. The workshop stated out inside at the community centre with three stations set up offering different options for mini guerilla art projects. One station had collage and drawing materials to create bookmarks, with the intention of installing them at Mt Pleasant Library for library visitors to discover as little gifts. Many beautiful bookmarks were created, including some with found poetry! Another station featured pom-pom making supplies to create mini yarn bomb installations. This station was led by our friend Dierdre, a local yarn bombing artist who we met when she attended our Creative Neighbourhood Mapping Workshop. When we learned that Dierdre has expertise in yarn bombing we knew she would be a perfect guest facilitator at this workshop. Dierdre even brought in a cat brush and showed us how to use it to make super fuzzy pom-poms! At the third station we had loonies and supplies to write messages to fold up and tape onto them for lucky members of the public to find. It was lovely to read all the kind and supportive messages that participants choose to write. After we finished creating, we went for a walk together to install our guerilla art. We started at the library to drop off our bookmarks, then set out walking together in the direction of Dude Chilling Park. As we walked we looked for places to leave our message loonies. It was thrilling to imagine who might find them! We also brought along some googly eyes to make impromptu faces in the world around us. These googly eyes perfectly complimented a little guerilla art face which was already on a garbage can! When we reached the park, Dierdre told the group about her yarn bombing installation which is on a fence near the tennis courts. We then added our own pom-pom yarn bombing to the surrounding area. One wonderful participant whipped up this crocheted butterfly to add to our collection! Overall the workshop was an inspiring experience where each participant's creativity, humour, empathy, and playfulness shone. We headed back to the centre feeling like we had brightened up the days of many strangers in our neighbourhood.
We had a lovely time hanging out in the community centre lobby, sipping tea with visitors and chatting about our finished creative neighbourhood map! Visitors were able to check out the many points of interest, personal histories, and secret attractions around Mount Pleasant collected on the map, as well chat with us and each other about their own experiences of the local landscape. The work will be up at the centre for the next couple weeks, so make sure to check it out if you are in the neighbourhood!
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