Langara Landscape Design Class at Oak Park Fieldhouse

IMG_9473

A HUGE thank you to Langara instructor, Brian Campbell (and chART member) and his whole wonderful class for the new BEE GARDEN at the fieldhouse. As part of his Landscape Design class at Langara, Brian used Oak Park as a case-study for his team to design and install a garden to support not only our educational hives and native bees, but also our ongoing programming to promote art and ecology. It was a crazy day as we also had our mural refresh happening over on Granville Street. Good thing chART is a collective, because sometimes it takes an army of us to get everything done!

Garden before
Going for the Gold!

Those who walk past Oak Park Fieldhouse regularly on their way to the Marpole Oakridge Community Centre know that our garden was already bee-friendly, if not a bit wild. As our lawn sign can attest, we are “going for the gold” with our water-free lawn and the beautiful dandelions were almost waist high — a mini meadow.

But now the space has transformed into a demo garden with new bumblebee houses tucked in amongst the new planting. Come by and see if you can spot them and the amazing range of native bees that share the space with our honey bees.

IMG_9468

While you will see us out there with our strategic watering of the new plants, we are still “going for the gold” with our lawn. Let’s all remember to be water-wise.

Mural Madness continues in Marpole

IMG_9458

Led by chART’s mural maiden, artist Ashley Guindon, Marpole’s original street mural “Fractal” got a re-fresh during the summer event hosted by the Marpole BIA this Saturday. Thanks to all the amazing student volunteers who brought this mural back to life. Also thanks to Marpole BIA executive director, Claudia Laroye, who is always there with unending support and coffee runs.

IMG_9455

Watch for more murals coming this summer to both Marpole and Mount Pleasant from chART and their mentored ECU student art collective GHIA.

Writing up a Storm…

The Writing Centre at Emily Carr University has collaborated with chART to host a series of faculty writing retreats at Oak Park Fieldhouse. Faculty spend so much time helping their students with writing, they often don’t get enough time to work on their own. The fieldhouse site is wonderful for intense group writing. Led by Heather Mitchell, director of ECU’s Writing Centre, the group spent the day working in “timed” writing periods. It was such a productive and supportive day, that when we finished the request for more retreats was immediate.

In total this spring/summer, we hosted three retreats including one dedicated to creating artist zines. There will be more sessions in the Fall season.

IMG_9174

Environmental Ethics at the Fieldhouse

This summer the fieldhouse was the site for Emily Carr University’s Environmental Ethics class. For six weeks, led by Dr. Cartiere, the class explored numerous challenging ethical questions relating to the environment. Because we were able to base the class at Oak Park, we could take full advantage of our fieldhouse kitchen, so we covered many of the environmental questions through the lens of food!

IMG_9223

We also had several field trips including a visit to City Farmer, UBC Farm and UBC Botanical Gardens. We also had to hand-on visits helping eco-artist Sharon Kallis at both the Means of Production Garden and at Kallis’s “field house” at Trillium North.

We always love a chance to collaborate with other Vancouver Parks projects and working with Sharon was truly inspirational for the students.

Marpole meets Mount Pleasant

IMG_8306We have been SO busy this year in the Oak Park Fieldhouse we haven’t had much time to post, so here are a series of “catch-up” posts to bring everyone up to date.

We have been running several Emily Carr University classes based at the fieldhouse  and one that started in January was an advanced Social Practice open studio. Students in the class developed their own unique create concepts for art and community engagement. Works ranged from creating watercolours from natural materials, group maze making, and a workshop for creating wind chimes from found material. Many of these projects evolved into public workshops that are taking place this month at the Kingsgate Mall in Mount Pleasant .

WE ARE HERE is HERE!!!

Come celebrate with us this Saturday, May 27, 1-3pm as we unveil We Are Here: A Creative Mapping Project for Marpole!

This has been a year-long community initiative in which participants shared their favourite place in Marpole, and 144 entries have contributed to the stitched and paper maps.

Come explore this exquisite textile work created by our neighbours and artists, and take home a limited-edition paper version!

We look forward to seeing you at the Oak Park Fieldhouse (7575 Fremlin) for an afternoon of connection and refreshments.