New Mural In Centretown Brings Respect
January 27, 2012
Respect. What does this word mean to you? Respect means a lot to a group of youth in Centretown who recently completed a mural on Cooper st. They chose the theme “respect the art” for their mural, because they want people to appreciate their mural and not “disrespect” it by tagging it. They also deserve a great deal of respect themselves for their contribution to the community.
For the second year in a row, Centretown Community Health Centre has received a ‘Paint it Up!” grant from Crime Prevention Ottawa in order to work with youth at risk in the community to produce a neighbourhood beautification project. We partnered with Operation Come Home, who recruited the youth and Ottawa Urban Arts, which supplied artists Cassandra Dickie and Mike Davis.
We looked at many different locations throughout the neighbourhood and finally settled on a wall on Cooper and Bank (409 Cooper St.). We worked with 20 individual youth, 10 of whom were regulars at our drop-in design sessions and painting sessions.
The mural has imagery from many different cultures including an Aboriginal depiction of a killer whale, a Celtic knot for luck, South Asian mehndi imagery and more.
By representing artistic traditions form different cultures, the youth wanted to communicate that all cultures are welcome in the diversity of Centretown.
All of these images appear in a splatter of paint that is being “thrown” by a mischievous looking character. This plays on the idea of graffiti. Ironically, our mural was created to discourage graffiti and protect a wall that has been the victim of tagging innumerable times. Sound intriguing? You’ll just have to check it out for yourself.