A community weaving exhibition at Richmond City Hall Galleria, Weaving Our Way brings together a diverse and creative community of weavers in intercultural and intergenerational exchange, presented by the Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society and Richmond Art Gallery.

Join us at Richmond Art Gallery on Saturday, September 22, 2-4pm, to hear about the ongoing Galleria exhibition on the theme of "interculturalism” for the Weaving Our Way (WOW) project, and what the indigenous artist-mentor and non-indigenous project leader experiences were like for artist Debra Sparrow and Keiko Honda, Ph.D., Executive Director of Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society. They will discuss their grassroots processes and the work they produced as part of a year-long public art project, to provide some insights to support artistic creations through weaving and cross-cultural empathy. The artist will also demonstrate Musqueam weaving and invite anyone to try their hand at weaving.

Weaving Our Way includes the display of small individual weavings, their accompanying stories, and a collective collaborative blanket. The exhibition will explore the theme of Musqueam weaving, artistry, story-telling, and community organizing, showcasing a multiplicity of heritage in the form of contemporary woven public art.

This exhibition will challenge people’s notions of community as an emergent, living process, rather than a frozen structure. Communities arise within groups of people based on overlapping motivations, identities, interests, and lived experience. Weaving is a metaphor for these connections, especially those that bridge cultural and generational boundaries. The act of communal weaving also forms those very bridges, so that we can act creatively and collectively.

Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society (VACS) supports artists and creative communities, in Vancouver and beyond, and builds cultural resilience in communities through art. To overcome inter-generational gaps and disconnections between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, VACS has developed the weaving project with Musqueam weaver Debra Sparrow, based on the premise that we all have something to learn, to teach, to create, and to weave into a community. Running since 2015, and currently at the Dunbar Community Centre, the project has expanded with an additional artist Dawn Livera and 2017 Cultural Arts grant, to foster a truly sustainable development, skill-sharing, and creative freedom through weaving.