The Arts Beat
By Kate MacLean
On the streets and in the galleries, people are calling for change with a creative flourish.
Contemporary artists often seek to express their personal politics through their art, using every medium from the canvas to the stage to call an apathetic public to action on political issues such as gender equality, the Canadian housing crisis and human rights abuses. One example is the Taste This performance art show coming to SAW Gallery next week. This group of transgendered artists seeks understanding and equality by educating the public through their art.
Artists like this have inspired activists to use the same approach.
Less in-your-face methods of protest like letter writing and NGO lobbying take too long to promote change, leaving people to suffer, homeless, hungry and poor in the meantime.
“There are alternative models of organizing opening for us,” says Ottawa activist Brian Edgecombe. “There’s more to us than being rational beings. You need to express things creatively.”
People suffer every day because of government cutbacks and a lack of community co-operation. Activists who have enough courage to speak out are saying enough is enough, or acting it out for a curious crowd of onlookers.
As a member of the activist scene in Ottawa, I have seen drastic transformation over the last two years.
We have expanded our use of traditional methods of protest like chanting and picketing to more artistic endeavours like drumming, dancing and street theatre, applying the old adage that all the world is a stage.
These days, it is commonplace at Ottawa protests to see drum circles, skits on the street depicting the group’s political messages, spontaneous singing and street fairs.
Recently, I took part in the Homes Not Bombs action on Mackenzie Bridge in Ottawa. A group of about 200 activists gathered to set up a home complete with furniture, a garden of vegetables and flowers and a daycare.
The energy and enthusiasm was overwhelming. People were singing, serving food and doing theatre in the street. One participant, who dressed as a clown and called himself “Resisto the Clown,” juggled for the police.
They were not amused, but we were.
People spontaneously joined our group at the sight of the street fair, which speaks to my point.
Ottawa residents should be more aware of the need for political change. We live in the nation’s capital, after all — the place where national public policy is formed. But picketing and chanting are now so negatively viewed that some people might be put off by a crowd of people yelling tired slogans like “Hell, no! We won’t go!”
I mean, really.
“Changing the face of activism makes it more accessible to all people instead of just some,” says Jen Dobbie, who Belongs to the Ottawa chapter of Homes Not Bombs.
People you wouldn’t expect to see at political rallies are cropping up: grandmothers, kids and formerly apolitical people.
At the Homes Not Bombs protest, an Ottawa homeless man came to sing with us because he said he was tired of police harassment.
It goes to show that peaceful, fun activism can go a long way in this town.