Sunshine Coast Art Crawl
A LOCAL ARTS & CULTURE FESTIVAL
Our inaugural Imagination Network project was inspired by a series of short stories written by a group of Good Samaritan Canada Christenson Village residents who were living with dementia. These stories were written using the Timeslips method, a story creation process developed by University of Milwaukee Professor Anne Basting, that replaces the pressure to remember with the freedom to imagine. The process uses evocative photographs as a launching point for a creative exercise in which a group of individuals—both living with and with-out dementia—construct a story surrounding the image.
In collaboration with a team of professional artists, volunteers (consisting of caregivers, family, seniors and community members) participants selected four of these stories to work with. Over a period of three weeks, this same group designed and created installations, songs and short performances inspired by these stories.
ARTCRAWL SHOWCASE
The three weeks of design, creation and rehearsal culminated in a showcase that took place during The Sunshine Coast Art Crawl, a three day event in which hundreds of artists open up their studios to thousands of visitors from the Greater Vancouver Region.
For these three days, the activity room and surrounding space at Christenson Village transformed into an open art studio for over 500 locals and visitors to explore, engage with residents, and relish in the creative world that had emerged. In addition, small audiences were invited into the Dementia Care Cottages for short performances in the company of the original story-creators.
These three days—and the public response and engagement to the work—laid the groundwork for the larger Imagination Network projects to come.
