U’mista Cultural Centre
U’mista Cultural Centre
Alert Bay, British Columbia
Age Group
All Ages
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Overview:
The U’mista Commons was a very special project, in a very special place. We were invited by the U’mista Cultural Centre to facilitate a design discussion with elders and community in Alert Bay to transform the grounds of the former residential school into a place for community. The design brief was to ‘co-create a place for community to gather and children to play that honoured their past and embraced the future.’ After almost a year of design facilitation, listening and learning, the form was agreed to and our team was honoured to be invited to work with the community to build it.
For two weeks, we were guided from shore to shore by the community to pick the gorgeous root masses and trees from their rocky beaches while our team worked to remove the English holly hedge planted by the residential school to block the view of parents calling out from the bay to their children in the yard. This story amongst many others we were told there had a deep impact on our understanding of how our hands on the land can be used to oppress a people or to lift them up.
