Art as We Are: Creative Community Care

August 24, 2024 @ 8:00 am - March 2, 2025 @ 5:00 pm at Guelph Museums

Organized by Art Not Shame and Guelph Museums, Art as We Are: Creative Community Care spotlights three projects centred in collective community-making through art and involving about 200 local creators: Art in Hard Times (2020), Art in a Just Recovery (2023), and Community Fabric (2024). The exhibition also shares the origin story of Art Not Shame.

In 2020, artist Melanie Schambach led a team of artists and social support workers in the creation of The Mural Project: Art in Hard Times. Collectively, they aimed to amplify the voices of those who identified as: newcomers, LGBTQ21+, Black, Indigenous, people of colour, street engaged, adults with developmental exceptionalities, and youth struggling with mental health and addictions.

In 2023, Art Not Shame, Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition, and artist Melanie Schambach collaborated on Art in a Just Recovery: Reconnecting to Us, a project that explored community care in pandemic recovery. Through a series of in-person and online art-making workshops, participants were partnered with Art Buddies in creating artworks that came together in a large-scale mural.

In 2024, Art Not Shame, Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition, and Guelph Museums collaborated on the Community Fabric project 一 a ten-week community-arts series in which participants worked together to create a community quilt, build social connections, and develop skills to support their mental health and wellbeing. The completed quilt will be unveiled in the exhibition Art as We Are: Creative Community Care, which opens for public viewing on Saturday, August 24.

Throughout the exhibition we will be inviting visitors to view the art and stories of participants in these three projects. This includes sharing what we learned throughout our collective art practice: a zine series on collective artmaking and community care; short video stories sharing the process, experience, and stories of Art in a Just Recovery, the music of Joni Nehrita created as a part of Art in Hard Times, and more. 

You can view the zine series by clicking the following links: Click here to view the Community Care Through Collective Artmaking Zine, Click here to view the Organizing Collective Artmaking Projects Zine, Click here to view the Spaces of Community Care Zine

We will also be inviting visitors to the exhibit to join us in creating a community banner using the art supplies at the centre of the gallery room.

We can’t wait to make Art as We Are, together!