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 The Water Beneath Our Feet – Mapping the Spirit of the False Creek Watershed

The project is now completed…

STAY TUNED FOR NEWS OF OUR FINAL EXHIBIT IN SEPTEMBER 2010!

General Overview:

  • This is a free community mapping project which means the community comes together to learn more about their “home place” and then they create personal maps to visualize what this area means to them. These maps are exhibited separately or recreated into a larger map.
  • It is being administered by the False Creek Watershed Society with the help of The Roundhouse Community Centre and Emily Carr University
  • The educational sessions and workshops will take place in Vancouver in March-May 2010 and the exhibits will follow
  • Register on this Website – please use the link on the right 
  • This website has Blog capabilities for the section “Photos and Maps” and “Stories”. We invite you to add your information!

The Longer Story:

“The Water Beneath Our Feet: Mapping the Spirit of the False Creek Watershed” is a creative community mapping event whose end results of both individual and composite maps which will be offered for viewing by the public. In a population dense area of the city of Vancouver, this project brings a cultural layer to the process of mapmaking by engaging the creative heart of our citizens to help them visualize their “home place”. It offers an opportunity to map the way participants feel about the land they live, play and work on.

There will be one community mapmaking session each in Emily Carr University and the Roundhouse Community Centre, with at least two pre-event educational sessions. The sessions will occur during March – May 2010.

The process of mapping has been done by humans through countless centuries. Maps of trails, feeding grounds and seashores have been prominent in history books. Maps were one of the first images made by the explorers of the New World. Using as a guide the award-winning model created by the BC artists and community leaders “Islands in the Salish Sea –a Community Atlas” [Heritage, 2005] http://www.heritagehouse.ca/press_releases/salishsea_press.htm we would like to share the idea of mapping one’s “home place” to the centre of Vancouver’s False Creek. In so doing, we will encourage active and creative citizens, whose dialogues and collaborations about the significance of their home will enrich Vancouver’s vibrant culture.

It was not that long ago that the shores of False Creek would have been lined with rocky shores, sealife and birds and its waters filled with fish, seals and killer whales. The forest behind would have been thick with conifers up to a thousand years old, home to bears, cougars and wolves and humming with the sounds of beaver, frogs, chipmunks, much much more.

Today although much biodiversity has been lost, the water is still there, some birds and sea life are still present. Many workshop participants will have visited other wilderness areas that offer some idea of what life in False Creek would have been like before the mid 1800’s when the first logging began.

We will be bringing back the memory of this time when what we now call False Creek was home place. The area provided rich sustenance for a thriving community of First Nations people and many plants and animals. We would like to help recreate a vision of this historical environment through maps, story, memories, painted and photographic images. Participants will choose what of this feeling they wish to portray on their map and they will be encouraged to creatively link the past, present and future.

Our project is an excellent catalyst for the community to learn more about its history and about itself. In the short term, the artists and participants will benefit by making connections and working with community members who are concerned about the land and their local surroundings. In essence we are trying to inspire and motivate a community that is surrounded by concrete and human-based reality. Do they even know they might be missing something? In the long-term, having deepened their understanding of the city’s history by learning from the historians, artists and each other, the participants and artists will be able to further their own creative practices as well.

Participants from all walks of life are welcome. We will offer a valuable lesson of community and creative connection to carry into the world, an opportunity to explore these neighbourhoods, engage with the landscapes of their city and enter into a community discussion in a new collaborative way.

The projects will remain in the communities after they are finished. We anticipate that the Roundhouse and Emily Carr will display these maps in their public areas. There will be exhibits and the sale of posters. The project will gain a wide audience through the exhibit and other potential media.

Our Team will be:

Celia Brauer: Artist and Community Organizer, Staff for the False Creek Watershed Society

Tina Farmilo: Artist, Community Organizer, Co-organizer of the Mapping the Salish Sea Community Mapping Project

Bruce Macdonald: Renown local Historian, Instructor

Wes Nahanee : Artist and Cultural Instructor from the Squamish Nation,

Louise Towell: Artist, Community Instructor, Founder and Staff of  “Stream of Dreams Mural Society”.

Rita Wong: Writer, Critical Studies Instructor for Emily Carr University

Poster for the event. Downloadable version will be available soon!

Bookcover of “Islands in the Salish Sea: A Community Atlas.”  Edited by Sheila Harrington and Judi Stevenson.  Surrey, BC : TouchWood Editions, 2005.