Art Creates Life

ART CREATES LIFE
My people will sleep for one hundred years and when they awaken it will be the artists who give them back their spirit. Louis Riel
Art is spirit, art is voice, art is healing, art is life. These words from our Elders and children remind us that the power of creation resides in us all.
THE NEED & SOCIAL IMPACT
Blue Quills First Nations College is a small independent Indigenous post-secondary institution with doors open to all learners. We are the first Indigenous controlled educational institution in Canada and our ancestors have left us a legacy and responsibility to create educational opportunities that honour our knowledge and welcome the knowledge of others. We also know we that those responsibilities invite us to serve the broader community and the next generation of students. The current discussion in Canada on population trends and Aboriginal education encourage us to do everything we can to inspire our people to build relationships that will lead to future post-secondary studies.
Free art activity affords opportunity for expression when a new language is being learned. It provides outlets for many emotions and ideas which often cannot be verbalized. Leighton, E. Roby
In this time of Truth and Reconciliation, we have so much work to do among ourselves and to build good strong relations with all who live in these lands. We must recover language, knowledge, ceremony, economy, and self. And we must do this in our own communities and build bridges with other communities.
Art lifts the spirit, and the spirits of so many of our Elders and families are heavy with the legacy and inter-generational impacts of Residential School.
We want to CREATE LIFE ENERGY - bring spirit back, bring joy back, reconnect the generations, bridge cultures, create a model for learning that can be adapted to school programs. Waldorf and Indigo schools nurture the creative arts first, knowing and trusting that it will support a stronger drive to learn and grow. Many learners have not had a positive education experience and we will work with local communities to identify participants who have been marginalized but have the desire to pursue advanced education.
At Blue Quills we know that art facilitates growth and learning and belief in self in all ages and we need to sustain the people as well as the funding. In previous short workshops our participants have acknowledged that creative process has helped them transform. Our students from other cultures have told us that their experience in the Blue Quills learning environment is life-changing. We also know the generations need to work together - school has created too much separation, compartmentalizing our lives. We also know that our knowledge comes to us through ceremony, but that young people especially feel separated from ceremony, they often don’t know how to start that connection. We know too that art is a universal language and can facilitate cultural bridging. We know that the creative experience enhances learning and workplace performance, inspiring creativity in decision making, planning, relationships,...
Those communities that are richest in their artistic tradition are also those that are the most progressive in their economic performance and most resilient and secure in their economic structure. John Kenneth Galbraith, economist