Community Arts is about:
~Encouraging the creative nature within each of us that reflects the Divine's first identity as Creator.
~Including artistic wisdom in conversation with social, theological and spiritual ideas and practices.
~Seeking to be of support to artists within the parish, and the wider Visual Arts community in Victoria.
~incorporating the visual arts with other arts modalities to encourage multidisciplinary engagement.
Intiatives already in progress are:
Presence of Visual art by local artist's in the main sanctuary; developing gallery quality art space; a 'Little Cabinette" gallery in the Office foyer. Our future hopes include workshops, artist talks, poetry, theatre with visual arts events, and street art including performance and murals.
We collaborate with the St John's music ministry, facilitate Soul Space retreats, and provide learnings on how to be more deeply connected to our world through beauty, nature, sacred text and lived experience.
St John's emerging Community Arts initiative is co-led by Artist Advocate, Cornelia van Voorst, and Family-Arts Minister, Ruth MacIntosh.
Both Ruth and Cornelia are certified Therapeutic Arts Practitioners through the Canadian International Institute for Art Therapy (CiiAT).
We invite artists who are looking for a spiritual home, or who want to collaborate on the behalf of the wider Victoria Visual Arts and Arts community to contact us at communityarts@stjohnthedivine.bc.ca
