2School: An Urban Experience What Creates Communities that Make People Want to Live There?

Grade 1’s from Jennie Elliott School focused on examining what creates communities that make people want to live there. Through the lens of gathering spaces, art, and the many people who help to foster a sense of belonging and add community vibrancy and spirit, they ventured into the downtown to discover answers to their question.

While students explored the community of the Beltline neighbourhood, they began to notice art, specifically murals, filling apartment blocks and brightening up alleyways and parking lots. This discovery got students thinking about how communities can create a sense of safety, belonging and gathering spaces in unexpected and, often, neglected places in our city. 

Students learned how the Beltline Neighbourhood Association worked collaboratively with businesses, building owners, artists, and additional funders and volunteers to add 30 murals over three years to their community. The Beltline Urban Murals Project (BUMP) has grown to become an annual festival event for the community. Students reflected that the art brought beauty, vibrancy, elements of surprise and wonder to the community and that many people helped to make this vision a reality. Students also noted that the murals told a story of place through the eyes of artists.

An unexpected surprise waited for students when they got the opportunity to work with Wendy Lees, a community art facilitator who planned a collaborative pop up mural in the East Village. Students were warmly welcomed to join in the painting and work alongside other people, each painting a square that became part of a larger block in the mural. Throughout the day more people came and added details on top of others contributions, creating layers of communal art. The students reflected that they, in that moment, became muralists and had all the people in the community of the East Village; old, young, residents and visitors to thank for the experience.

The mural, titled “We Are One” was displayed at Central Library and then will make its way into the community of Lakeview at Jennie Elliott School, where it can live there as a colourful reminder of community, life and vibrancy, in its gathering space.

Grade 1’s are excited to see where this work will take them. They have begun to reflect and examine the comparisons between the Beltline community, downtown and their own neighbourhoods, while they continue to examine issues related to community and what makes them great places to live.

~ Margeaux Montgomery, 2School: An Urban Experience Coordinator

What Makes a Community? - Calgary French and International School - Grade 3

“What Makes a Community?” is the big question being asked this week at Chevron Open Minds Zoo School by grade 3’s from the Calgary French and International School. They have investigated many parts of their zoo community: observing penguins, finding endangered animals in the Canadian Wilds and learning about Swift Fox conservation from a Calgary Zoo conservation research expert. But perhaps the most significant insight into what makes a community came from travelling to the Eburu Forest in Kenya with the help of some vivid storytelling by Andrea Beaty, Zoo School Coordinator, who recently returned from the area.  The students wanted to find out how the Calgary Zoo is helping to save the Mountain Bongo from extinction and learn more about this elusive forest antelope.

In the Eburu Forest we met our guide and community conservation expert, Donna Sheppard. She is the Calgary Zoo’s Community Conservation Specialist who is working with the local people to help save the Mountain Bongo. There are less than 100 Mountain Bongo alive in the world, perhaps only 10-12 in Eburu. Donna Sheppard has a challenging job, alongside trackers from the local community they go into the forest to search for Mountain Bongo, setting camera traps in remote jungle forests to take photographs. They face long days trekking through thick bush, avoiding stinging nettles, safari ants and the large, and often ill-tempered, Cape Buffalo!

We also learned about another side to saving the Mountain Bongo, working with the local community.  Without community support and understanding of the conservation work being done, Donna’s job would be much more challenging.  Donna works tremendously hard to build relationships with the local people by visiting schools and wildlife clubs in the local area with her co-worker, fellow environmental educator and local Kenyan – Peter Munene. Working together, Donna and Peter help to share the important conservation story of the Mountain Bongo and seek out ways to better the lives of the local people along the way.   At Kambura-Ini School in Kenya, the students were asked to share through art, what they love about nature in their community.   We discovered that what they loved about nature shared some common themes with our students from Calgary French and International School – trees, mountains, forests, animals, fruit, and lakes were shown in the displays from both countries.   There is a Swahili saying in Kenya “Tupo pamoja”, which means “we are all together.”  This simple art display demonstrates how students on two different continents can come together in their own communities to share their love and knowledge of wildlife, connected through the conservation of a species. 

So, when asked the question: “What makes a community?” hopefully the students from Calgary French and International School might tell you - working together for a common purpose makes a community.  To ensure the survival of the Mountain Bongo and other species around the world, it certainly takes a global community.

~ Dawn Hardy, Zoo School Assistant Coordinator