La Toile Magique (the magic canvas) is the story of twenty-five high school students (12-rural First nations, grade 9nd, 13 urban, non-Aboriginal, grade12) who responded to an invitation to participate in an extra-curricular, arts-based activity -- painting a fifty-five feet long canvas by five and a half feet wide. The purpose of the arts-based project is to explore notions of culture. La toile magique is a story about the virtues, and transformative powers, of non-formal learning environments.
N.B. A (French) documentary was done to capture the process of La Toile Magique
Imagine you are a high school student and you are completely fed-up with school; you are one among 1,500 students. You feel alone and that no one cares. It is your last year and you're stunned you have made it this far. You do not really understand what's kept you here but you know one thing: it was not motivation, it was sheer obligation. You are in a school that sucks; nothing worthwhile goes on in this school; no interesting activities be it in-class or extra-curricular. The only thing you have got going for yourself is that it is your last year-- if you make it. Then, one day at the start of the school year, the art-teacher in your school makes an open invitation to students to participate in a project.
One morning in August, before the school year started, Nikol was thinking about her work. She couldn't imagine another school year as an art teacher working on typical art projects. Nikol was feeling as constrained by her school's curricular stipulations as the students did. She also felt like challenging her own learning. Then, she got an idea: to create an arts-based, extra-curricular activity in her high school to explore notions of culture between two groups of students, a rural, Aboriginal group and, an urban, non-Aboriginal group. Nikol had an idea of what school might participate in the project; consequently, she felt that it would be necessary for the students to raise travel-funds in order for them to meet one another.
Because Nikol knew this would be a time-intensive project she wanted students to respond to the invitation by letter explaining why they wanted to participate and how they would negotiate their time. Once chosen, the students would have to make a commitment of seeing the project through. While Nikol waited for the students to respond, serendipitously, she made contact with a rural, Aboriginal high school and propositioned the art teacher, Marjolaine, to participate in the project. Marjolaine said she would extend the invitation to her students and get back to her.
Thirteen grade-twelve urban students were chosen. When they met for the first time, they recognized one another but they didn't know each other's names. They determined that they would meet during their lunch breaks. The first few meetings with Nikol were spent getting to know one another while trying to better understand what representing one's culture on a canvas meant. As they came up with ideas they drew them on paper and laid the papers on the canvas to see what it looked like. A few weeks went by before the students started feeling confident to draw directly on the canvas.
movie clip: toile starting
During this time, twelve grade-nine students made a commitment to Marjolaine to participate in the arts-based, extra-curricular project. They waited with anticipation to receive la toile in order to start. When La toile arrived (a journey of ten-hours by bus), it was their turn to explore how they were going to represent their culture on canvas. After a few weeks, with more drawings on the canvas, they returned it to their Montreal co-creators.
The canvas traveled between both schools for about six months, in other words, the student-artists got to know each other on canvas first before meeting one another in person. During that six-month period both groups of students raised funds so that they could bring the arts-based project to completion together. Seven months later, numerous e-mail exchanges between the co-artists, and money raised for the student travels, it was time to take the ten-hour long journey to go meet the co-creators of La toile magique. As a means to deal with the anticipation some students slept, others listened to music, while one of the participants wrote the following poem:
Bonjour a nous et bonjour a vous
A ceux la bas qui pensents nous
A nous qui regardez tous nos visages
et qui espere tant que notre voyage
malgre toute nos differences
et m'aie malgre la distance
nous avons tous les emotions
ce que j'ai h'aie surtout
c'est qu'on fasse enfin un tout.
English version translated by Natalie Zur Nedden:
Hello to us and hello to you
to those of you who think of us
to you who look at all our faces
and who hope that our voyage,
despite our differences
and albeit the distance
we have the same ambitions
and live the same emotions
what I especially look forward to
is that we all become one.
The bus pulled in on an Aboriginal historical site where they would spend the following four nights and five days camping, getting to know each other, eating, singing, and finishing the painting of La toile magique. Two large canvas tents were constructed for the youth.
La toile was hung in the Chaputain, a long-house built of birch with a pine-floor covering. The Chaputain was surrounded by rapids that merged into the salty part of le fleuve St-Laurent, the St-lawrence river.
During the five days Elders in the Aboriginal community visited the student-artists supporting their work, sang for them, and taught them about Innu culture.
(video clip: camping site)
For some of the students this was their first experience in nature--being exposed to the soulfulness of mother earth and father sky and all the gifts of the creator. Being connected to the earth is as much a part of education as is literacy. The act of living five days outside in the open, senses awaken--the smell of pine, the sound of the rapids, the taste of the salty air, the softness of the breeze, the stillness of the moon, the sparkle of the stars--and, the view of it all, calms and nurtures the body and mind, the heart and soul. One participant put it this way, It immediately relaxes you; it touches you deep down. This environment is like therapy. Everyone needs this in their life. I don't know if they realize how lucky they are to live in an environment like that.
Five days later, and the painting of La toile magique completed, it was time for everyone, including La toile to go to Montreal to exhibit their work of art, and spend another four nights and five days exploring Montreal.
(video clip: Montreal, centre culturel de Laval)
And then it was time for the good-byes....
(video clip: les au revoirs)
For my Master of Arts thesis I interviewed a total of nine student-artists (rural and urban) and their teachers one year after the completion of the arts-based project (Zur Nedden, 2003). Based on the question that guided La toile magique: represent your culture on the canvas, and judging by the documentary I saw, as a researcher I expected the students to relate stories of deconstructing racist ideologies. Instead, the student-artists related stories of their school experience. The students were eager to participate in my research because they felt that this would be an opportunity for them to share how they experienced being involved in La toile magique. They informed me that the documentary, as much as they valued it, did not tell their story; they felt the documentary was more of an "adult's" representation of the students' engagement with the arts-based, extra-curricular activity. When I interviewed the students, themes emerged from their school experience; I composed the following poem using words from the student-artists' transcript:
spend time in school
but have no time
to fall into myself
to think
to get involved in a subject
we're here to learn
but we don't learn
everyday I hope
I hope to learn
see each other everyday
but know one
not one day
surrounded by people
but feel alone
school's suppose to teach us
all along
be independent
and I'll be strong
strange
but everything's decided
and all one sided
I have no say
in time or content
in how or why
everyday
reminded
don't be late
or get the gate
be independent thinkers
they want us
but memorize everything
they tell us
"be critical thinkers"
they tell us
but our opinions
they're all stinkers
they're not interested
they don't want to know
grade ten and twelve
pressure hurry study
tests
school and work
for tomorrow
but wait a minute
I don't know who I am
they want to teach us
be accepting
but all around us
is rejecting
when rejected
who to turn to
want us to listen
but no one wants to
not interested
in us
don't even
like us
some view us like parasites
then wonder why
we're not in sight
(Zur Nedden, 2003, p.73)
Drills of learning, end-of-period school-bell rings, contrived and time-segregated curriculum, no freedom of what, when, and how to learn, coupled with an inability to understand the connectedness of what they study to how it relates to their every day lives are some themes that emerged in their stories of experiences of school. Generally, the students felt that school prepared one for work, but not for life, that school did nothing to support and nurture students' critical thinking abilities.
Moving from negative perceptions and experiences of school to being engaged in an arts-based extra-curricular project was wonderful and confusing according to the student-artists. It was wonderful because they identified characteristics of La toile magique that highlight the holistic nature of learning in context. It also raised their awareness (to a level of questioning) as to why education / school is not typically like that.
The process of making La toile provided an opportunity for the students to choose to participate; they chose when, and how, they were going to participate. All participated but differently. For example, some students who felt they could not draw participated by telling culturally-based stories to help their Innu classmates represent their culture on canvas. Some students composed music to accompany a mini-documentary a couple of students made to record their process. Some students only drew while others drew and painted. Only a few chose to be interviewed for the "professional" documentary while others wrote newspaper articles recounting their experience with La toile. There was a myriad of ways for the students to participate and learn.
Following the same vein of the previous poem, I composed the following poem with the themes that emerged as a result of being engaged with La toile magique:
an invitation
curiosity awakened
a journey
titillating
literal and physical,
emotional metaphorical
spiritual and meaningful
cerebral and intellectual
a journey
a space
to call their own
a place
not their home
come together
music, friends, drawings and paint
lying, kneeling, sitting, standing
on the floor, table, chairs and logs
paper to canvas explorations of self and other
planning, fundraising,
eating and sleeping
challenges penetrating
tight schedules
destabilizing
unquestioned thoughts
swaying
falling images
permeating
evolving
one and all
by the river
with no walls
currents flowing
moonlight guiding
pine and birch
protecting
dancing peace together
makoushan
painting
all are equals
Chaputain
time folding into self
self emerging
throughout time
stories, knowledge
body mind
traverse time
circles,
hand in hand
culture
breathes through time
cells
evolve, revolve
dislocate, relocate
La Toile Magique
a journey not forgotten
La Toile Magique
an engaged embodied learning
(Zur Nedden, 2003, p.78)
The making of La toile magique surpassed any estimated amount of time the teachers could have predicted. Most of the students' schedule prior to their involvement with La toile was already tight, to say the least. Final school year, final exams, part-time jobs, total school disengagement, involvements with various school-committees, pressed students' available time. However, their curiosity and determination to learn something about the other drove their commitment to the project. There were times where some students questioned their ability to finish their school year but the project provided them with the stamina to "stick-it out".
A closer look at La Toile reveals that a complex cross-discipline web of knowledge comprised the possibilities and outcomes of this opportunity. To illustrate the holistic nature of the arts-based project below is a list of subject matter and qualities, with some examples, that the student-artists were exposed to and developed
| Subject Matter Qualities | ||||||||||||||||||||
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The table represents how subject matter weaved its way throughout the project, which resulted from self-directed learning--La toile provided the context but the learning comprised much more and student-artists took charge of their learning. Interestingly enough, the qualities which emerged as a result of being engaged in the collaborative extra-curricular, arts-based project can be transferred into skills, which is one of the mandates of state-mandated curriculum, skill required for the labour market. In the table below I juxtapose examples of (from the above table) the qualities from above with their respective skills. For example, one needs a clear mind in order to organize, developing relationships is similar to team working.
| Qualities Skills | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The tables explicitly illustrate the skills and content matter learned intellectually, spiritually, emotionally and physically. The tables also reveal an embodied education experience one that contributes to self-development and, prepares youth for employment. La Toile Magique embodied qualities that almost assured her success choice, trust, care, balance and, low student-teacher ratios. The project provided learners with freedom of choice: first, to participate; and second, to decide how they were to participate. Their choices varied from how they wanted to participate in the documentary film to deciding how to fundraise (due to time constraints this was not possible for the urban student-artists). Marjolaine and Nikol trusted their students and, consequently, they individually and collectively took responsibility for and, directed their learning; there is no doubt in my mind that the student-artists would not have reaped the rewards of their efforts without the care, support and respect of their teachers and from one another which, in return, fostered mutually supportive learning environments.
Finally, the arts-based project provided the youth (and the teachers) a balanced, holistic learning experience; meaning, they learned spiritually, emotionally, physically, and intellectually. The relationship between the role of teacher and learner falls within this balance. Although this inquiry focused on the student-artists, Nikol and Marjolaine grew / learned as much as their students, whereby, they equally felt transformed by the process.
The story of La Toile Magique magnificently illustrates that a structured curriculum is not necessary to ensure learning outcomes nor is it necessary to control students by deciding when and how they learn. Young people are naturally curious which is a beautiful and essential motivating quality in learning. La Toile offers an understanding of the importance of education that is not separated from life and which leads to personal development and a sense of community.
So, why did I choose to tell the story of La Toile Magique? To give students a voice, to validate their experience and their wisdom, because I deeply believe in what the student-artists have to teach. As they explained how and why La Toile Magique impacted them they naturally enumerated characteristics that formal schooling should be founded on freedom, care, respect, time, balance, and trust. Images of La toile magique
Note: This excerpt is based on my MA thesis, La toile magique: Student-artists exploring cultures, school experience and transformation (Zur Nedden, N. 2003). The thesis is interspersed with student narratives, poetry, and photos of la toile magique and its process. If you are interested in viewing the documentary please contact the author directly at nzurnedden@oise.utoronto.ca. Please keep in mind that it is in French and Innu with French subtitles.