Mosaic

An intergenerational, community arts project for the children of BC’s Southern Gulf Islands

Established in 2007, Island Mosaic is a multi-disciplinary arts education project aimed at creating artistic bridges among the five Southern Gulf Islands: Pender, Mayne, Galiano, Saturna and Salt Spring.  Mentored by the artists and community elders in these communities, Mosaic provides our children with a greater sense of their local history, cultural heritage and identity as Gulf Islanders and British Columbians. Our intent with this program is to alleviate the isolation and alienation that can occur with children from these small, rural communities, and to encourage the children to develop friendships with each other through collaboration on artistic projects while still in elementary school. In this way, the Gulf Islands School District and Ptarmigan believe the students will establish a sense of belonging through identification with their historical roots, which in turn will assist in making their experience while attending high school on Salt Spring Island a more positive one.

In the first four years of the Mosaic Program, Ptarmigan has delivered more than 2,000 of hours of workshops by 43 Gulf Island artists in Gulf Island schools, in out of school programs and in summer arts camps. The disciplines included in the workshops were storytelling, song-writing, animation, music (instrumental & vocal), kodaly music instruction, drumming, dance, fiddle group, pottery, film-making, painting, drawing, paper mache, murals, music therapy, drama, environmental education, astronomy and local history. We have collaborated with four schools, three community centres, Parks Canada, one museum, one conservancy society, one First Nations Theatre Company and two community music societies. Of the four schools, every school has done an activity with at least one other school, some with two.  Overall our Mosaic Program has reached approximately 800 children to date, and we have involved a broad range of age groups, from young children through seniors, in the workshops and events.

In our first fours years of the Mosaic Program, children have experimented with multi-media performance pieces that included visual arts, dance, games, songs, rhymes, stories and skits, especially at the summer camps. Children and adults  from the four islands built relationships by collaborating in the arts projects with the children, including the performance pieces which were the final product in each community at the end of the project.  We have presented three annual Mosaic Community Festivals to celebrate the spirit of the project. 

It was an inspiring, fun-filled experience, as witnessed by the enthusiastic comments in our testimonials section and by pressing the video button at the bottom of this page.   Wholeheartedly-received by all of the students, participating artists and island communities themselves, we plan to continue our activities through our fundraising efforts and look forward to more connection, creativity and fun!