The Sunshine Coast Arts Council is planning to expand its artist-in-residence program and have Coast artists working in local schools with teachers and students for months at a time to help develop youth arts skills and expression.
“Our intent is to expand to any school that’s interested in it,” arts council curator/director Sadira Rodrigues told Coast Reporter. “In September, we’re hoping to include Langdale plus two more schools and then roll it out from there. We’d love to be able to do it in every school by the time we’re done.”
Langdale Elementary was a pilot project for the program, with artist Nadina Tandy working in the school once a week between January and March of this year.
“I wanted to expose the kids to different artists and exploring stuff,” Tandy said in an interview. “They worked really hard and I know they had fun. And they produced unique art. None of it’s generic. They expressed themselves, that’s what I was after.”
Some of the results are on display in the current exhibition at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre in Sechelt at the Young People’s Own Show. The show features some of the work by students this year at Langdale Elementary, Kinnikinnick Elementary, Davis Bay Elementary and the home-schooling Spider Program. Some of the product of Tandy’s work with the Langdale kids is included in the exhibit. The show runs until May 5, to be followed between May 9 and May 26 by a Young People’s Own Show with artworks by Coast secondary school students.
Tandy said she enjoyed the in-residence project, and believes the students and teachers did, too. “It was designed for them,” she said. “I wanted them to succeed and to feel they could express themselves and that nothing was wrong with what they did. It was their art and their expression. They loved it.”
On a visit to the current exhibition with her students on April 26, Langdale teacher Natasha Tousaw recalled that when she would announce to her class that Nadina was coming that day, “Everybody was, like, ‘Yes!’ We learned a lot and had a lot of fun, and to see it displayed like this is really magical.”
Langdale principal Duncan Knight said he got a lot of positive feedback from parents about the program. “They told me what they really appreciated was that students were coming home talking about what they were doing each day, and they were using a lot of the language that [Nadina] had taught them, like ‘If it didn’t work out the first time, just look at it with an artist’s mindset and then change it.”
Rodrigues said the arts council is intent on growing its young people’s programs, both inside and outside the school system. “It will be a range of different things. We’re already looking at a digital program that’s going to start in the fall. We’re building out our workshops this summer so instead of just one workshop, we’re going to be offering four for young people. It’s really part of a bigger commitment to playing an active role.”
