I recently met with Brian Hardie, a Vancouver-based visual artist, in Toronto. He told me about the founding of a new non-profit initiative he is researching and developing called “Artists Without Borders.” Brian has been spending the past six months connecting with and meeting people to explore and expand the idea and the model for this initiative.

“Artists Without Borders is an international charity providing art programs for school-aged children in communities where access to essential learning opportunities is limited due to conflict, poverty, natural and climate related disasters. The organization believes that the children most in need will benefit by engaging in creative activities such as drawing and painting, sculpture and related crafts, music, and dance. The highest priority are those communities most in need.” (from Artists Without Borders pdf, click the link to read more.)

Over the course of our conversation, we discussed the need to learn from successful outreach programs where artists are going into communities in Canada—some were remote, some under-resourced or under-serviced, some correctional centres, some communities were facing issues including youth suicide, homelessness, or poverty. The successful outreach programs we discussed included: DareArts, ArtsCan Circle, Blue Print For Life, Sistema New Brunswick, Leave Out Violence (LOVE), to name a few.

We also talked about the need to look at lessons learned. When artists go into communities that they’re not familiar with or have never lived nor stayed in, what are the challenges, risks and potential dangers to both the artist and the community? What kinds of training, preparation, work, post-work debriefing and evaluations are needed in order for an outreach project to be successful?

Brian also showed me an amazing video Landfill Harmonic: The World Sends us Garbage…We Send Back Music about children and youth making instruments from junk found in a landfill site in Paraguay and how they went on to form the Landfill Harmonic. So inspiring! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXynrsrTKbI

If you’d like to know more and connect with Brian about the development of Artists Without Borders, please reach him at: brian.hardie@gmail.com. Visit his website here: http://www.brianhardieart.com/

 -Seanna Connell, Project Director

ArtBridges/ToileDesArts Sponsor