Artists Aura and Chief Lady Bird share reflections, tips and tools about their experiences creating murals in collaboration with communities to create spaces for dialogue, healing and self expression. They frequently collaborate with both Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, schools and organizations in Toronto and the GTA. Aura and Chief Lady Bird sat down for a Skype conversation with ArtBridges’ Indigenous Community Arts Outreach Coordinator, Megan Feheley.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Megan: What are some of the challenges that you have run into during your mural projects?

Aura: One thing that Chief Lady Bird and I really like to emphasize is community. We have our fees that we work within, we’ll always pitch that first, and will always say that if you have a set budget and it is less than our fees, then we will work within that. And whether we need to scale down the project, whether we need to do it a little bit differently- we’re really open to working with people because this work needs to be done for community.

Chief Lady Bird: We acknowledge that sometimes funding comes from different places, and it’s different if we’re operating within larger institutions or government funded projects where they have resources and it’s not directly connected to our community. In that case I think it’s important to outline our fees and the amount of work that we do because it is a lot- but when it comes to people in our community, then that obviously can be more important to support.”

Click here for the full ArtBridges Tips & Tools: Creating Indigenous Art Spaces in the City. For more FREE resources and tools like this, please visit the ArtBridges Resource Portal or reach us at info@artbridges.ca.

The ArtBridges Tips & Tools Series is funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation and translated with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage Interpretation and Translation grant.