Artasia at Wesley Queen Street

I think the best word I could use to describe the kids at the Wesley Queen St EarlyON location would be “curious.” Whenever they saw me at the crafts table with all my materials laid out, they would always gravitate towards the various colours and fabrics I had spread across the surface, sometimes even picking up the fabric markers without any guidance. I rarely had to ask them to come join me, as they were usually willing to approach me by themselves. Without even speaking, eyes wide and mouths agape, they were fascinated by everything that stood before them — even if just for a limited amount of time (given their short attention spans), I was really pleased with their enthusiastic attitudes towards art-making. 

These attitudes were especially evident on the week that we did tie dye together. When they all sat around me I asked them if they knew what “tie-dyeing” was, and practically none of them were familiar with the activity. They were nevertheless entranced by the fact that they could completely alter the colour of white fabric using this strange, natural liquid, and would often watch their fabrics soak in the turmeric and beet dyes without even taking their eyes off their art for a whole minute! I was mostly impressed, however, by the extent to which these young kids were willing (and able) to push the boundaries of the instructions I gave them, taking our programming in a whole new direction. On week 5, for example, we made a ‘fruit salad’ together using felt, paper, clay, along with some other crafting materials. Our activity for this week was intended to include all kinds of foods (and recipes that kids can write down), but some of us decided to restrict this activity to fruits for the EarlyON kids to make it less complicated for them. To my surprise, after some of the kids got bored with making fruits, they started to get even more creative — one of them asked me if it was okay if they made a hamburger, and I said that of course it was! What began as a fruit-salad activity turned into an entire barbecue, where kids had the opportunity to make any choice of food they like, so long as it was something they were willing to “share” with their friends. Another boy made a ‘snake’ for the fruit salad, and after I asked the table if everyone was willing to eat snakes, everyone declined — the boy included. However, we were able to make a compromise by deciding that the snake was in fact made out of chocolate, so that everyone agreed they would “eat it” for dessert!

Lauren Misiaszek