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The Visual Arts Centre’s Outreach Programme is mandated to facilitate public engagement with the visual arts, to move art more fully into the centre of our lives and to reach those who might otherwise not have the opportunity to participate in the visual arts. We have been actively involved in community outreach programmes and projects for the last twelve years, either on site at our School of Art and gallery or out in the larger environment. The Outreach Programme operates on a project by project basis; we work collaboratively with other educational institutions, community organizations, independent artists and social workers, lending our expertise to projects that embrace art as a means of social or individual well-being, conflict resolution, etc. As a non-profit organization, we seek individual funding per project from foundations, corporations and government agencies; projects are dependent on receiving adequate funding. In addition, we contribute ten percent of the Centre’s fundraising revenues to these projects.
The Visual Arts Centre has worked with a wide range of partners to provide, for example, specialized ceramic programmes and workshops to youth and teens with learning disabilities and emotional and intellectual challenges. We work with teens at risk or with special needs partnering with such organizations as Dans La Rue, L.O.V.E., and numerous teen community centres. Through generous funding from various foundations, we have worked with the Montreal Institute for the Blind and the MacKay Centre for the Hearing Impaired. Through partnering with socially engaged multi-discipline artists, other projects have embraced adult populations; the visual arts are employed as a tool for conflict resolution and the promotion of multicultural understanding.
The Montreal Association for the Blind and the VAC’s Outreach Program collaborated on an exciting project in Spring 2009. Thanks to a generous grant from the Webster Foundation, one of our teachers, Helga Schleeh, worked with eight teens to create self-portraits out of clay. The teens threw themselves into the project with enthusiasm, first experimenting with simple pinch-pots before moving onto the challenge of self-portraiture. Using their sense of touch, they transferred the hollows and shapes of their own facial features into the wet clay. The forms were fired at the Centre in our ceramic studios and were hung in a permanent installation at their public entrance hall. and the general public. We have successively run approximately 70 of these courses to date.
Last summer, we worked on a collaborative project with LOVE - Leave Out Violence - which resulted in a profoundly moving exhibition. LOVE, a non-profit organization, works with youth aged 13 to 18 whose lives have been burdened by violence, either as victims, perpetrators, or witnesses and it is through photography, writings and multimedia and video pieces that they first learn to understand themselves. In the Visual Arts Centre exhibition, held in our McClure Gallery, the youth of Leave Out Violence traced the dramatic evolution of this organization from its humble beginnings in Montreal to a global youth movement.
Through their creative work, the participating teens are able to begin to transcend barriers and change people’s perceptions. More importantly, they acquire specific skills and in the process, develop a community conscience. In this way, they change the course of their lives. LOVE spreads the message of non-violence in schools and communities across Canada in Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and in New York City.
We are deeply grateful to the EJLB Foundation who have generously supported our Outreach programmes for the last ten years. We have also received funding from The Chawker’s Foundation, le Fondation Jean & Marcel Coutu, the Zeller Family Foundation, CRB Foundation, TD Bank Financial Group and the City of Westmount. To all our sponsors, the Centre is deeply grateful.
If you would like more information or would like to sponsor a project, we would like to hear from you. Please contact Christina Thomson by telephone: 514-488-9558 or e-mail: outreach@visualartscentre.ca
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