BUZZon - The Art of Sustainability

Winners of Charlottetown first sustainability grants pose for a picture When we hear the word “sustainability” these days, we tend to think of things like water conservation or economic development. Certainly, these are important. But many things feed into the need for a city, for example, to be able to flourish and support its citizens—without using everything up.

So can the arts sustain a city? Probably not—not completely anyway. But Charlottetown’s first three sustainability grants, awarded in October, have such a strong artistic element that the question is hard to ignore.

The answer is most obvious in the grant to the Rag Tag Players, a children’s theatre group based at the Murphy Community Centre. As much from necessity as design, the group has been using recycled materials to make costumes and sets and props for their productions—including the upcoming Where the Wild Things Are. But more than that, the group’s director, Erin Arsenault, makes the case that this small group of troupers can help to sustain the city of the future. “These are tomorrow’s leaders,” she says, “the adults who will live in the city and make d decisions about it.” Using drama, the group fosters self-confidence, innovation and a sense of belonging and working as a team—all certainly attributes that any community needs from its citizens.

The Transform a Street program comes at sustainability—and aesthetics—from another angle. It is Cycling PEI’s plan to transform one block of one street into a “complete” street—something that serves the needs of everyone who uses it—including walkers, cyclists, residents and merchants. And, this, says organizer David Sims, is more than just a question of bricks and concrete. He says that design, especially landscape design, contributes to how a street feels and consequently, how it’s used. He and his group will temporarily redesign a block of Richmond Street, between Pownal and Queen, using the suggestions of people who live on or use that block. And an essential component? “Beauty,” he says. “It’s important that a street is functional—but also that it’s beautiful.”

Beauty is also a driving—or maybe uniting—force for the Upper Prince Street Residents Association project. Residents of the 75 buildings on the street are being offered tulips to plant this fall. The hope is to beautify the street, of course. But, more than that, the idea is that, if residents are united around one project, they can then work together on others that will benefit the neighbourhood, too. Organizer Karen Lips, herself a landscape artist, hopes that the entire project will culminate in a neighborhood festival when all the tulips are in bloom. As the neighbourhood includes Prince Street School, some of the students have planted in the school’s front yard. The project’s unifying objective is creating a neighbourhood—but it’s unifying theme is the neighbourhood’s beauty.

And that, it seems, is the point. Because running through all these projects, like a fine silver thread, is the idea that we all belong to something. And that something should be attractive and worth every effort to nurture and sustain.

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In Her Own Writeby Ann Thurlow

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In Her Own Write
by Ann Thurlow