The Community Corridor of Inclusion and Resilience is a community-engaged art project representing a collaboration between local North Hastings organizations and the North Hastings community. It was driven by North Hastings Integration Association (NHCIA) and has found a home establishing strong roots at North Hastings Community Trust.
A multi-phased project, the Community Corridor of Inclusion and Resilience (CCIR) involves building a collaborative public art piece that celebrates unknown and known cultural richness in our community that will leave a public art legacy. CCIR centres and honours indigenous knowledge, it is intergenerational, decolonial and involves a deep exploration of social inclusion. This project is led by, and grounded by, Indigenous Elders and knowledge
keepers in Kijicho Manito Madaouskarini of Algonquin First Nation.
Remembering and Resistance–Phase 2 of CCIR–will build on the knowledge from Phase 1 and is rooted deep in relationship building. Covid-19 has impacted our communities with profound losses and instability. Our focus in Phase 2 will reflect the crucial need to recognize, remember and grieve colonial violence, and honour and resist through a collective community art piece that concludes in a woven textile installation and memorial.
Beginning with the abundance of the harvest in September 2022, there will be six gatherings over a year, grounded in Indigenous ceremony and rituals, and deeply connected to land and seasons. All our gatherings will weave together the themes of remembering, honouring, grieving, connecting and hope.
We acknowledge funding from the Ontario Arts Council, without which this project would not be possible.
Mentoring provided by
A YEAR OF INCLUSION AND RESISTANCE
2022/2023
The project has entered its second phase. Watch the space below for updates on what’s happening.
Recent events appear at the top.
Scroll down for earlier events.
Watch a video about Phase 1 of the project. (4:06)
Phase Two of the project is now COMPLETE!
Click the Play button to watch a 3-minute montage of all the events in 2022/23
GATHERING ALL THE THREADS
Gateway to
Community Healing
September 21, 2023
After almost a year of community art events, it was time in late September to bring the second phase of the Community Corridor of Inclusion and Resilience to a close.
The last gathering took place at the community centre of the North Hastings Community Centre. Forty-four attendees took part in an event that looked back on four previous events:
Braiding Knowledges: A Discussion of Land, People And Place
November 17, 2022
A community forum and educational event on the relationship between local indigenous people, local settlers and the land itself.
Loose Fibres, New Knots: A Theatre of the Oppressed Event
January 19, 2023
An event that used Theatre-of-the-Oppressed as a way to high-
light and explore homelessness in North Hastings.
Felt Hearts, Satin Spirits: Memory Boxes For Inclusion And Resistance
March 16, 2023
A gathering to product shadow boxes as a means to remember people lost to the local community.
Recipes For Resistance: Weaving Words, Intertwining Ideas
May 11, 2023
A poetry and fabric art event highlighting the need for resistance to oppressive forces and ideas.
May 11, 2023
The final September gathering involved a variety of events…
…Contributing to a large rock garden nest installed in the Trust garden, with rocks, twine and markers available for people to contribute on their own…A large gate weaving project with the medicine wheel at the centre. Viewing of an installation of the Shadowbox memorials made by participants at the March 2023 event…Viewing of leather braids created during the November 2022 event and the large collectively-made heart weaving created in May 2023.
The event ended with a Theatre of the Oppressed performance on the daily impact of the housing crisis on community members, presented by folks with living/lived experience of being unhoused.
Participants left through the newly woven gate, a symbol of the hope for community healing.
Click Play button to watch a video of the event.
9 minutes
WEAVING WORD,
INTERTWINING IDEAS
Recipes for Resistance May 11, 2023
Community engaged art is most successful when it acknowledges past happenings, current realities and dreams about the future. This idea was at the core of the May 11, 2023 workshop in the Community Corridor of Inclusion and Resilience. Twenty-six people attended the gathering, held at the North Hastings Community Trust in Bancroft. The event comprised two activities, creative writing and weaving, to help us identify and resist forces that push against us as we deal with past hurts and seek to pursue new dreams.
Participants divided themselves into four groups. Because the day was warm and sunny, the big door at the back of the Trust building was opened to admit light and fresh air, allowing one group to actually move outside.
Part One was led by artist Anna Camilleri of ReDefine Arts. To her question, “What are we resisting?,” each group member responded with one word, written on a piece of coloured paper.
Anna then asked, “What do we need to feed what we want to grow?” Once again, group members came up with words and phrases, but this time collaborated on joining them together to create collective “recipes for resistance.”
For Part Two of the event, artist Eliza Plumley facilitated the collective weaving of fabric into two large, pre-made wire heart sculptures. A table full of beautiful textiles was provided for participants to choose from, along with fabric markers if they chose to include words in their weaving.
Elder Noreen Tinney, of Kijicho Manito Madaouskarini Algonquin First Nation closed the event, leading the group in the traditional Travelling Song.
Watch a video of the event.
4 min 30 sec
Remembrance was the focus of the most recent event in the year-long North Hastings community art project, Community Corridor of Inclusion and Resistance.
FELT HEARTS AND SATIN SPIRITS
Memory Boxes for Inclusion and Resistance
March 16, 2023
On Thursday afternoon, March 16, over 30 people gathered at the North Hastings Community Trust building in Bancroft to create shadow box memorials for a loved one; or to honour someone important; or to communicate grief over the housing crisis, the opioid crisis, colonial violence, loss of bio-diversity; or to represent some aspect of resistance.
Organizers provided a variety of cardboard boxes and several tables full of art materials. Fabric, paint, tape, ribbon, magazines and random objects were available to stimulate imaginations and fulfil visions. Project coordinator Marlena Zuber and fabric artist Eliza Plumley circulated among the participants, providing encouragement and helping with materials.
Despite the serious work of remembrance and grieving being done, the room buzzed with conversation and occasional laughter as the participants shared ideas, ate pizza and listened to music.
At the end of the two-hour session, several of those who had created boxes presented their work and commented on the experience. Among the comments:
• “Mine is for all our friends we have lost. It’s been hard for me to do this.”
• “I lost my friend in September. She was just magical. When we’d go for drives to places we would enjoy seeing animals together. Making this box has been really cathartic for me, thank you.”
• “My box is for both my grandfathers who passed away one year apart. They both enjoyed hunting, fishing and trucks. They really taught me how to be a man.”
Here are the boxes made at the event…
“SITUATION CRITICAL”
Watch a video about the theatre event
and what followed.
12 MIN
“BOX FULL OF MEMORIES”
Watch a video about the memory box event.
5 minutes.
Almost 60 people were dramatically confronted (literally) with the reality of homelessness at the second public event sponsored recently by Community Corridor of Inclusion and Resilience.
Elder Noreen Tinney of Kijicho Manito Madaouskarini Algonquin First Nation opened the event.
LOOSE THREADS, NEW KNOTS
February 19, 2023
In line with a continuing theme of the CCIR process, fabric art played a role. Local textile artist Eliza Plumley led participants in a symbolic act of wrapping stones with fabric and yarn–perhaps a picture of hard realities wrapped in caring and a concern for justice.
The focus of the event was a Theatre of the Oppressed performance. Theatre specialist Greg Thomas had spent the preceding day guiding a group of local people in creating a drama about homelessness. The short play was based on the lived experience of group members who have been, or are now, homeless.
The powerful piece was interspersed with audience participation and discussion which led to moments of both frustration and connection.
The event finished with a challenge to the audience to take action by contacting local politicians to ask for action on safe, affordable housing. There was also a plea for people to consider getting actively involved in an overnight refuge project being developed by the North Hastings Community Trust, co-sponsors of the event.
Elder Tinney closed the event by leading in the Travelling Song.
In two weeks, Overnight At the Trust opened its doors–on the coldest night of the winter so far.
“SITUATION CRITICAL”
Watch a video about the theatre event
and what followed.
12 MIN
BRAIDING KNOWLEDGES
November 17, 2022
North Hastings is unceded Algonquin territory. In light of this fact, how do we come together to care for this place, and for each other?
This was the focus of a presentation and conversation that took place November 17, 2022 in Emond Hall in Maynooth, Ontario, on unceded Algonquin territory now known as North Hastings. About 50 residents attended.
Elder Noreen Tinney opened and closed the event. The conversation and presentation was led by Omàmìwininì Madaoueskarini Anishinaabekwe, educator, and consultant Christine McRae (Luckasavitch).
The event also featured a textile-based participant art-making activity led by artist Eliza Plumley: the creation of a 3-strand leather braid, with each leather strip representing Indigenous people, settlers and other non-Indigenous people, and the land.
The finished braid symbolized a relationship and reciprocal care, and doing so from a good heart.
Watch the presentation and conversation
1 hr 4 minutes
IT BEGINS
September 22, 2022
The new phase began with a gathering of the Planning Group, at the library in Maynooth. We gathered around a table filled covered with discarded pieces of fabric, sharing our gratitude for the gifts we have received from others and from the land, and our hopes and concerns for the project.
As we talked and reflected, fabric artist Eliza Plumley led us in an exercise that involved shredding the fabric into strips and splicing the strips into long strands that will be woven together at a later stage of the project. The result was a set of colourful balls of fabric awaiting a new use.
Old into new, discarded into re-purposed.
