St. Stephen's College Collaborates with the Art Gallery of Alberta to Host an Art Hive in Downtown Edmonton

  • 20 July 2021

St. Stephen’s College is delighted to be partnering with the Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA) to host an Art Hive in downtown Edmonton throughout the summer months. Beginning July 8, 2021, join AGA educators and art therapy students from St. Stephen’s College every Thursday from 12-1pm in a community-based art making initiative that is free and open to all.

About this Collaboration
The collaboration of St. Stephen’s with the AGA is born out of the recognition that art-making facilitates creative, relational spaces where art-makers are enabled to encounter and find meaning in their experiences. Art Hives help to promote creativity, healthy self-expression, problem-solving, and the strengthening of one’s inner and outer resources. When art-making is done in community, it cultivates social engagements, counters isolation with connectedness, helps establish mutually-supportive relationships, and it fosters creative, non-threatening spaces where lines of division are bridged.

What is an Art Hive?
Art Hives are small, community art studios that are open to all, and welcome participants as artists. These safe(r) and inclusive spaces use art making as a tool for collaboration, dialogue, skill-sharing and community engagement for people across different cultural, socio-economic backgrounds, ages and abilities. No art training or experience is required to participate!

An Art Hive:

  • welcomes everyone as an artist and believes art-making is a human behaviour.
  • celebrates the strengths and creative capacities of individuals and communities.
  • fosters self-directed experiences of creativity, learning, and skill sharing.
  • encourages emerging grassroots leaders of all ages.
  • provides free access as promoted by the gift economy.
  • shares resources including the abundant materials available for creative reuse.
  • experiments with ideas through humble inquiry and arts-based research.
  • exchanges knowledge about funding strategies and economic development.
  • partners with colleges and universities to promote engaged scholarship.
  • gardens wherever possible to renew, regenerate, and spread seeds of social change.
    (from www.arthives.org)

To learn more about Art Hives, visit www.arthives.org or check out this excellent conversation from May 2020 between Dara Armsden, Head of Education and Learning at the AGA, and Olga Perju, local Registered Art Therapist and Clinical Director at St. Stephen’s College, where she teaches and supervises art therapy students.

Where and When?
The Art Hive is held weekly all through the summer on Thursdays, Noon–1pm, at the Art Gallery of Alberta. More information can be found at the AGA website.