From the pink cherry blossoms associated with Japanese culture to the orange marigolds ubiquitous on el Día de Muertos in Mexico, colour can be an important cultural marker. Which colours do you associate with your culture?
A new box project in the Pembina Valley invites the community to consider this question. The project, from the minds at the Golden Prairie Arts Council (GPAC), allows community members to externalize and concentrate their culture on the blank canvas of a wooden box.
For Nigel Bart, the executive director of the council, the aim of the box project is to “promote inclusion and cultural diversity in our region.”
“What we're doing is decorating or clothing the boxes according to one's cultural background,” says Bart, Executive Director. “We have nine of these boxes, and we're essentially giving them out to community cultural groups, and we want them to reveal the . . . colourful variety of cultures in our region.”
Fortunately, for anyone whose mind conjures up images of how their culture might be represented in an artistic manner, there are still boxes available.
“We're [still] looking for members of the community to come forward and pick up a box,” says Bart. “The boxes will be on display in Carman for the month of September, so you have a couple of weeks to decorate it and clothe it however you want.”
Bart stresses that anyone is welcome to pick up and decorate a box.
“We're really looking for some interest . . . in promoting cultural diversity. It doesn't have to be any specific culture. It can be any culture,” he says. “We want a diverse amount of people coming forward, so we’ve reached out to . . . Pembina Valley Leadership Immigration Partnership as well as Carman Wellness Connections, but we're still trying to reach the demographic that might not be [the] dominant demographic out there.”
The box project is a part of Manitoba Culture Days, which is in turn associated with Canada Culture Days.
“It's usually a September event that culminates in some big artistic parties in the urban areas like Nuit Blanche, but right now, we're trying to raise our profile at Golden Prairie Arts Council and just bring about a healthy community dynamic.”
Bart says that any type of decoration and creativity is welcome for the box project.
“It's not really about art so much as it is about culture,” he says. “You don't have to be a great painter to paint these. You can wrap fabric around them and paint them all in colour, but it's there to just reveal . . . that we are a deeply cultural, dynamic society in our region.”
The plan for the completed boxes will make for a unique viewing experience.
“They'll be brought back by . . . the end of August,” says Bart. “Once they're brought back, we'll [suspend] them in the courtyard at Golden Prairie Arts Council. They have a certain way of suspending [them], so it'll be a very interesting installation.”
Bart says that the boxes, once they are installed, will be illuminated in the courtyard.
For now, the boxes are ready to go and waiting to be decorated. For more information about the project, visit the Golden Prairie Arts Council’s website here, or call 204-745-6568 to inquire.
~With files from Ty Hildebrand~