BY ELIZABETH NOLAN
For Salt Spring Arts Council
Salt Spring potter Laura Keil was teaching at Fernwood Elementary School this winter when she paused to admire one of the results.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, holding up a small handmade cup with a meld of newly painted primary colours. Keil noted she was a big fan of the decorative work, showing off the vibrant colours and abstract combinations with authentic enthusiasm. Though rough and a bit lumpy, this cup could in fact represent the start of a lifelong artistic journey for its kindergarten-age creator.
“Even though it is very simple and doesn’t require any tools, the hand-building technique is a good foundation and not just for beginners. I still make pots that way,” Keil said.
Nearly 60 years ago, a Salt Spring go-getter planted the seeds that allow moments like this to take place. Juanita “Nita” Brown decided that providing a place to showcase local artists’ work would be a great way to celebrate Canada’s centennial year. Through her vision, a brand new arts council serving all the southern Gulf Islands was born.
The modern-day Salt Spring Art Council has re-confirmed in recent strategic planning that our core work is to provide meaningful opportunities for local artists. Since we serve not just established artists, but also emerging and potential creatives, we know that supporting island artists “from the ground up” should begin right from their earliest years — and we encourage those seeds to shoot, bud and blossom through our programming.
“When children are free to create, they find confidence in their voice through an artistic medium whether writing, clay, paints or puppet-making,” said Bronwen Duncan, the Salt Spring Arts Council’s new executive director. “The pandemic quelled the voices of our children. At its heart, art is about communication, about celebrating each individual’s view of the world.”
As early as infancy, SSAC’s annual, free-to-attend Family Day celebration can introduce children to exciting, multi-modal performance and art making. Crafting Connections — which brings together senior volunteers and young participants in no-cost crafting sessions — has been opening new opportunities for creative exploration at community events and at Mahon Hall. Workshops and art camps can offer a deeper immersion into specific mediums.
Artist in the Class (AiC) supplements the existing art curriculum by funding professional artists to bring new projects, materials and opportunities to classrooms all the way from kindergarten to Grade 12. And if youth pursue post-secondary education in arts, a SSAC graduation scholarship can help launch that journey.
Youth programming is indeed the foundation that can help nourish a healthy, vibrant community as a whole. A deeper dive into the AiC program, for example, shows how it supports creative exploration and growth for children and youth while at the same time giving established artists more financial stability and the opportunity to further their own professional development as educators. Offerings that SSAC funds range from dance and movement to printmaking, painting, photography and creative writing.
Keil has been on the AiC teaching roster for quite a few years and creates different classes for different age levels. She’s often remembered fondly by kids who meet her again in their classroom years after their first connection.
Fernwood teacher Malindi Curtis frequently makes use of the AiC program.
“I wouldn’t have the resources to buy the clay and do the kilning, as a teacher, and kids really respond to having a different person teach them a new skill,” she explained.
In addition to Laura Keil’s clay course, she has booked Sue Newman to teach musical theatre for the spring term. Meanwhile on the other end of the continuum, the Salt Spring Island Printmakers Society has been working exclusively with high school students.
“As part of our mandate, we have an outreach component to our society that we want to fulfil,” said printmaker Nora Layard. “That’s sort of a legalistic piece, but at the same time, we really like working with the high school kids. They’re energetic, they’re innovative, they’re creative. They’re responsive.”
The arts council’s foremost aim may be to foster local creativity, but inviting the community to share in the results of that creativity has been an essential component from its founding days. Building professional experience and portfolios can be critical for students wishing to move ahead into arts careers. Because of AiC programming and the printmakers, over 30 high school students got a boost in that regard when their works were included in an Artcraft Showcase exhibition in 2025. Students who are learning intaglio and relief print methods this year may have their work included in the Th-Ink! Islands Printmakers Biennale, which the local society is hosting at ArtSpring.
SSAC’s winter 2025 youth exhibit featured another collaboration with local artists and educators. Created by the arts council, the project employed AiC teachers Angelo Rosso and Alicja Swiatlon to work with English and art students at GISS. The first group wrote poems on the theme “My Happy Place” and their counterparts then created artworks based on the poetry, without knowing who had authored those poems. Poetry and artworks were professionally mounted and displayed together. This exhibit elicited unusually enthusiastic reviews from visitors and was a perfect realization of two key arts council aims.
“As parents and teachers, we try to prepare our children for an uncertain future. There seem to be increasing external pressures on this generation, whether environment or political,” Duncan observed. “Creativity is a muscle — the earlier it’s exercised, the stronger it grows. And by helping children find their voice through creativity, one by one, we’re building a more resilient society.”