About

Since 2017, Nina and Andrea have created and given several workshops based in place-making, eco-citizenship and community belonging through art. Their first collaborations were conceived as plant-focused creative writing and visual art workshops at an adult learning centre in Laval, Canada. The workshop participants, many of whom had recently immigrated from Middle Eastern countries or faced alienation within regular classroom settings and normative learning models, commented on how the workshop offered them their first experience of feeling connected to the Canadian landscape. In 2019, Nina and Andrea presented a lecture on these workshops entitled “Rewilding the classroom: Encouraging resonant exchange in indeterminate spaces” at Concordia’s Art History Symposium. In summer 2021, they offered two eco-art workshops through a community arts program that Nina co-organized and ran in collaboration with the Point-Saint-Charles Art School in Verdun. Rooted in eco-psychology and public practice art therapy, the workshops were free, open to all, and offered in French and English. Participants were shown natural dye techniques using local plants, observational painting and drawing techniques with which to connect to their local flora and fauna, as well as given opportunities to communicate their hopes for the future of their community garden with the public. More recently, Spoonful of Dirt have been giving collective research, writing, and drawing sessions to various communities in which participants learn about local endangered bird species and reflect on their status using creative responses. The resulting drawings and stories will be used to generate a public educational tool for location-based technologies focusing on endangered species protection. As a collective, Spoonful of Dirt’s approach aims to create spaces that encourage material, practical and psychological connections between participants of all ages and backgrounds and their environments.

Andrea Williamson

https://andreawilliamson.com/

Nina Pariser

https://www.npariserarttherapy.com/