Peace Tiles World AIDS Day Project • www.peacetiles.net
Salt Spring Island is being invited to participate in an international
art project that brings together communities around the world in
a creative response to the AIDS crisis. Dubbed "Peace Tiles World
AIDS Day Art Action", this collaborative workshop is designed to
engage children and youth globally in the co-production of twin
art installations.
International Peace Tiles project will create vibrant exhibitions
of the "visual voice" of thousands of children and youth in public
spaces around the issues they care about. Through Peace Tiles workshops
and the resulting murals, the project seeks to raise awareness of
issues, and create bonds of understanding within and across communities.
Here on Salt Spring, artists, activists and concerned community
members are passionately encouraged and welcome to participate in
Salt Spring's Peace Tiles workshop at the upcoming Community to
Community 2 conference taking place October 20-22.
Peace Tiles begin with 8x8 inch panels of plywood. Each
participant is encouraged to bring artifacts from their life that
speak to a personal experience with HIV/AIDS or their knowledge
of the pandemic. These artifacts (photos, letters, scraps of cloth,
newspaper clippings, etc) become part of an 8x8 inch collage. When
put together, the tiles create moving and uplifting murals that
capture the vibrancy and hope of our children and youth around the
world.
The first Salt Spring Peace Tiles mural was made for World AIDS
Day, 2005, with the Global Awareness group of Gulf Islands Secondary
School. The finished Salt Spring mural was sent to Leribe, Lesotho,
a small country in sub-Saharan Africa that Salt Spring has been
developing a "twinning" relationship with. Early in 2006,
members of SOLID travelled to Lesotho to deliver and install the
Salt Spring Peace Tiles Mural, and to conduct a peace tiles workshop
at Pitseng High School, the Gulf Islands Secondary School's twinned
school. The tiles that the African students create have returned
to Salt Spring Island.
"This is an incredible opportunity for Salt Spring kids to be part
of something truly global, because there are Peace Tiles workshops
happening in Senegal, Uganda, India.... All of these projects involve
kids who are directly affected by AIDS, through losing family members
or even parents. For Salt Spring kids to connect with these kids
really brings the AIDS issue home. And for those kids in Lesotho,
to know that their artwork is on display in Canada, is a huge affirmation
that they matter, that the world cares about them."
Watch this video update from SOLID members in Lesotho at the Pitseng High School, a twinned school with Gulf Islands Secondary School on Salt Spring Island. Just press play.
A growing international art project that helps to bridge the gaps
between cultures and continents in engaging youth around the world
in global issues has taken root on Salt Spring. The Peace Tiles
project has traveled to a host of different venues in Canada over
the last month under the guidance of SOLID’s Meron Moroz and
members of the Global Youth of Gulf Islands Secondary School.
“The collaborative art project is designed to engage globally
thinking people in the production of a dynamic mural project that
is a mingling of voices from around the world”,said Moroz.“This
exchange is a unique approach to the project and brings our world
together,demonstrating that the goals and hopes of youth for global
peace and justice are the same around the world,” said Moroz.
In June, Moroz attendedthe Youth Forum at the Vancouver Community
College along with GISS students Eric Sigmund,Cassandra Storey,
Michelle McBride and Ryder Bergerud.The youth facilitated a workshop
with international youth delegates that focused on using the peace
tiles to engage youth and as a vehicle for the delivery of a message.
The purpose is for youth to be given a visual voice that can speak
to whatever their focus is.Following that, the tiles traveled to
the World Urban Forum at Canada Place inVancouver for June 18-23,where
the peace tiles exhibit and workshop was part of the‘Taking
IT Global Youth UrbanCafé’. The café was a gathering
place for youth initiatives in the sea of booths and exhibits.
The interactive art exhibit invited people to create a collage
peace tile that spoke to their issues and described why they were
there.The next stop in the tour was the Peace Forum on June 25th
at UBC where Moroz participated in the ‘Youth Peace by Piece’exhibit.
Here the tiles from the previous forums were displayed and the concept
demonstrated as an opportunity and vehicle for public engagement.
The tiles from the various venues and forums, representing a global
voice for peace and global awareness, combined to form dynamic art
murals that travelled to the International AIDS conference in Toronto
in August of this year with SOLID.This collaborative mural of peace
tiles from these workshops can be seen at the SOLID office onMcPhillips
Ave.
To see an online gallery of these incredible peace tiles, visit
http://www.flickr.com/photos/peacetiles/64297678/
Participants in the workshop should come equipped with collage
materials, art supplies, and open minds. Please call Meron at 537-2993
or email moroz @ saltspring.com
for more information.
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