Story appeared in the 2021 issue of QMS Connections Magazine.

BY HAYLEY PICARD, Director of Communications & Marketing

Art in its many forms can be a powerful means of building resilience and identity through personal expression, processing transition and trauma, inspiring social change and connecting with a community. As QMS students traversed the winding, ever-changing path of COVID-19, they used creative processes to articulate their loneliness, confusion, and anger to re-connect after social isolation.

Throughout the 2020–2021 school year, students created stunning and evocative visual and digital art pieces, photography, spoken word poetry, and films. Students in Grade 7 collaborated on a Founders mural for Phase II of The Learning Centre, Intermediate and Senior School students painted “Bee School” banners which were hung on Government Street, alumni, parents, staff, and students joined forces to create a Centennial Heritage Quilt that makes visible our unique values and history in material and design. Student creations were also featured in on and off-campus art exhibitions and won awards at the Cowichan Valley Arts Youth Council’s show Awake and the BC Student Film Festival. Recognition and the results of these creative endeavors are an after affect for creative youth and community members searching to express their values and experiences.

“This year, more than ever, the healing capacity of art was key to our programming. Our entire Fine Arts Department committed to developing curriculum and environments where our students could re-establish their networks at school while learning artistic techniques aimed at strengthening the self,” outlines Angela Andersen, Fine Arts Department Head. “In visual art and in the performing arts we work to find a balance between the process and final product. In the end, it really is up to the students to commit to a process of self-discovery. The journey is for the soul, the result is for the ego. Both have a role to play in the artistic world.”

As we emerge from the ugliness of COVID and begin to unpack personal experiences, artists, young and not so young, will continue to lead the way by showing us how we can create our own light and beauty tailored to our unique journeys, no matter how dark the path may seem.

Art in Times of Crisis

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