Above: Students from LSK in Sipne’katik First Nation, Nova Scotia create art that inspires others to go in a good way. Photo Cathy Elliott.

Cathy Elliott is an artist educator with DAREarts’ First Roots program. Once a month, Cathy shares her stories and experiences working with our First Nations youth in remote northern communities such as Webequie (ON), Marten Falls (ON), Sioux Lookout (ON), Attawapiskat (ON) and Indian Brook (NS). It’s an honour to be able to share these stories with the ArtBridges community and I want to thank Cathy and Marilyn (the founder of DAREarts) not just for their amazing work, but also for their willingness to share. I hope you enjoy!
– Cora, Indigenous Community Arts Coordinator & Communications Assistant, ArtBridges

“In a few weeks, DAREarts founder Marilyn Field will be attending the Power of the Arts National Forum as a presenter to share her insights on what DAREarts is able to accomplish through the arts. She’ll be talking about how we offer kids and youth the tools they need in order to succeed in life, no matter where they come from or what their circumstances may be.

She’ll be talking about how the arts empower kids to find their inner strength. She’ll be remembering her own experience as a teacher, working with kids no one else wanted to deal with: how she played music and engaged them through the arts, how they responded and how they influenced her work with kids today: “Why question the violence in our schools when we’ve let the arts go? The arts allow our children to arm themselves with the power to make positive choices in their lives as they find their voice.”

At last year’s forum, DAREarts met with artists, medical practitioners, psychologists and city builders who already understood that the arts save lives. We listened and brainstormed about how to support the arts by ensuring that they are as protected in this country as, say, hockey and Algonquin Park. Marilyn will inspire and be inspired this year, no doubt. So much hope, so much work to do.

When I learned about the recent loss of youth to murders in Thunder Bay and Rexdale, I was filled with a sense of futile dread. These murders, a thousand kilometers apart, involved young men killing and young men being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I read how some people said that “programs just aren’t helping,” and that things are just getting worse. I also read about arts programmers in these communities struggling to do what is needed: to give the kids enough self-esteem and purpose so that they don’t have to go out and find it in a gang.

I was so heartened to hear, after the tragedies struck, that the victims’ loved ones proclaimed that there were multiple victims in these murders: the fallen and the killers: grief and forgiveness.

But the fall-out goes far beyond these kids and their families. It affects all of us. I’m struggling with this. I don’t live in Thunder Bay or Rexdale. But I’m moved by these deaths just the same. I hear that crime rates are down but that violent crimes are being committed by younger and younger Canadians. And younger kids are being killed. Why?

Have we all lost sight of what makes us human in the sense that we don’t need self-preservation as a fall-back position if we have something to dream for? And why this feeling of doom? Because funding for the arts have fallen away so much.

There are too many kids dying for want of something to do with their days, their dreams, their lives. There are too many similarities between our First Nations kids who travel far from their homes to get a high school education and economically challenged Rexdale kids struggling to stay in school. They’re all good kids.

Let’s support them. Because no kid should ever feel helpless, or hopeless.

Or expendable.”

Read Cathy’s previous posts:
07/04/14 – Excellence is Earned: Stories from a DAREarts Artist-Educator
05/23/14 – Introducing – DAREarts Atlantic: Stories from a DAREarts Artist-Educator
04/29/14 – DAREarts Out on the Land in Attawpiskat: Stories from a DAREarts Artist-Educator
03/24/14 – My Drum’s Journey: Stories from a DAREarts Artist-Educator
02/16/14 – It Starts With a Circle: Stories from a DAREarts Artist-Educator

Read DAREarts’ profile on ArtBridges’ Community-Engaged Arts Directory and Map
All photos courtesy of DAREarts