{"id":25624,"date":"2020-01-10T17:34:04","date_gmt":"2020-01-10T22:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=25624"},"modified":"2020-01-10T17:36:38","modified_gmt":"2020-01-10T22:36:38","slug":"students-get-creative-juices-flowing-for-mayors-celebration-of-youth-arts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/students-get-creative-juices-flowing-for-mayors-celebration-of-youth-arts\/","title":{"rendered":"Students get creative juices flowing for Mayor\u2019s Celebration of Youth Arts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

They have grown up together sharing their passion for\nart, but as local Grade 12 students start the New Year by preparing to say\ngoodbye as they go their separate ways, they are coming together to end their\nhigh school careers on a high note: a professionally curated art show at the\nAurora Cultural Centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Students from all local high schools are hard at work\nputting the finishing touches on visual and performance art pieces that will\nfill the historic halls of the Church Street School next month as part of the\nMayor\u2019s Celebration of Youth Arts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mayor\u2019s Celebration of Youth Arts, now in its seventh\nyear, brings together the creative talents of all graduating art students who\nwork together to curate a show in a professional gallery space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The show opens Saturday, February 1, with an opening\nreception for the visual artists on Wednesday, February 5, followed by an\nevening dedicated to performing arts on Wednesday, February 19 (backup date is\nset for February 26) before the show closes at the end of the month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking to The Auroran in the lead-up to their winter\nholiday, students from St. Maximilian Kolbe Catholic High School and Aurora\nHigh School shared their excitement for things to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA bunch of us have known each other since Grade 9 and we\nhave worked our way up to this,\u201d says St. Max student Abby Bingham. \u201cBeing able\nto get that recognized in this space means so much and it is really important to\nme. I am going to miss everyone so much next year and I think this is a way to\nbring closure to everything. We\u2019re all a family and we have created a safe\nspace to talk about our art, what we create, do what feels right to us with the\nfreedom to express that to each other. I trust these people in my class with\nsome of the things I haven\u2019t even told my family and it is just one of those\nthings where now I get to share that with the rest of the world and it means a\nlot to me to be a part of this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Projects slated to take pride of place at the Aurora\nCultural Centre have been worked on all year so far, Abby explains, and working\non art ranging from self portraits to posters, QR codes and other media to\npromote the show, have allowed students to explore many areas with few\nlimitations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cArt is more about self-expression, whereas the design is\nmore catering to what other people want to see,\u201d says Abby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fellow St. Max student Nicole Hiscox picks up the thread,\nadding: \u201cWe\u2019re given instruction but we have so much freedom to do what we want\nto express our own story. I think a lot of us have been focused on trying to\ntell a story in our art, which has been really cool to see because a lot of the\nstudents in our art classes have been taking these classes since Grade 9. We\nhave travelled as a group to this point, so we have just become a big family.\nNow with the art that we\u2019re doing, it is about connecting and just becoming\ncloser, which is really exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Student Grace Power has been working on marketing\ncampaigns with Abby as part of their design course. There, they have learned\nthe creative power it takes to create everything from an evocative ad to a\nGoogle Doodle. QR codes being finalized will, she says allow art-lovers to\nexplore their works even further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou will be able to view the piece on a website as well\nas read information about the artist from the school that created it and see\ntheir different pieces,\u201d she says. \u201cThere might also be a forum for them to\nleave comments for the artist about their piece, so that will be a nice way for\npeople to connect with the art that students have here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephanie Demeter, a student from Aurora High, is helping\nto coordinate the performing arts aspect of the Mayor\u2019s Celebration of Youth\nArts. Describing herself as \u201cmore of an ensemble player\u201d whose interests lie\nmore in the behind-the-scenes aspects of performance, Stephanie says this\nsemester has provided her and her fellow students a wide variety of areas to\nexplore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have done classical pieces at our winter concert and in\nour in-class time we have done some history as well, studying romantic and\ntwentieth-century music,\u201d she says. \u201cThat has been a lot of fun. It has just\nbeen a group of us since Grade 9 and this is our last year together, so there\nhave been a lot of amazing experiences so far. The things they are putting\ntogether [for this show] in their own time expresses a lot of creativity and it\nwill be really awesome to see that kind of expression from Grade 12 students. I\nknow these past four years of music, this group of students have travelled the\nworld together, we have competed together, and just to see what everyone has\ntaken out of that class time and just ran with it and put their own spin on\nthings to put on a solo performance is just really amazing. I think public\nspace, for visual and performing arts, especially for students, is really\nlacking so this is a really unique and amazing opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their words are music to the ears of Christina DiPaola,\nGallery Assistant at the Aurora Cultural Centre, who is providing a guiding\nhand for the students pulling everything together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo hear that people are seeing it as a cumulative\nexperience and it is a sending-off into new things, that\u2019s really exciting to\nme and that is the idea,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re going to have five or six schools\ncoming together for all this and this is like the cross-pollination you get in\nuniversity with students from everywhere coming to one place. You get to see\nhow other students your own age are responding to culture and the times and also\ntheir personal experiences while meeting other artists in Town.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adds Abby: \u201cFor our final piece, we have to create something that is focused on social issues and it can be anything from depression, to anxiety, to world hunger, or even more personal issues. I think it is kind of giving us an opportunity to explore something we either feel connected to or make a statement about something that is happening in other parts of the world or to other people. The culture really gives us an opportunity to explore these things and we can use our voices, put it through art, and have it displayed here for everyone to see. I like that there\u2019s not that many limitations on it. It\u2019s a free project and you can totally express yourself. Anything you want to say, you can put on canvas and it can be shown to thousands of people here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They have grown up together sharing their passion for art, but as local Grade 12 students start the New Year by preparing to say goodbye as they go their separate ways, they are coming together to end their high school careers on a high note: a professionally curated art show at the Aurora Cultural Centre. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/2019-01-09-05.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6Fi","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-18 00:27:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}