Spoonful of Dirt

Our second school workshop, invited by Leisure and hosted by Galerie Optica, was held on a smoky day last June. In fact, on this day, Montreal had the world record for poorest air quality We had planned to again hold the workshop in the wonderful beautiful Champ des Possibles, but decided to stay indoors, as exposure to air pollution is dangerous. Nina took this event as an opportunity to discuss wildfires and forest custodianship by First Nations with the children, and gave them a space to express their feelings related to climate change and intense weather events.

Next, Nina led the group in some imaginative play where they reencountered the at-risk species we had made habitats for in the last workshop. The children “became” the species, moved around in space as they might, and then wrote a short text describing their day as if they were their chosen animal. The loose parts and natural elements of Leisure’s exhibition definitely helped the students enter an imaginative, emotional state of being for this work.

After that, Andrea took them into another room in the gallery where large tables were set up and she showed them some plant-made dyes of bright colours and how to fold and bind pieces of fabric to allow for interesting dye patterns. The students then copied their animal stories onto the fabric and had lots of fun experimenting with the colour combinations and effects of the plant dyes mixing.

Here are some images of the resulting flags, which we hung as prayer or wish flags for interspecies care.