Moose Jaw’s Journey to Hope Hosts Fundraising Festival Featuring Local Student Art and New Mural – DiscoverMooseJaw.com

The Journey to Hope Adult Chapter and their Youth Chapter brought the community together in Crescent Park on June 11 to enjoy art, support local organizations, and promote suicide awareness and prevention.

The motto of Journey to Hope is to create hope through suicide prevention and awareness.

That’s exactly what the local students of the Youth Chapter did by bringing their creative talents to life in the Crescent Park Amphitheater.

“For me, that means I can help other people who are struggling, who aren’t mentally stable enough to be on their own and be there to openly support them and make more people aware of what is really happening to our young people,” says Brooke Adkins. , a grade 12 student at Peacock Collegiate and a member of the Youth Chapter of Journey to Hope.

She thinks this event is a great way to connect with the community, “It’s just another way to let us know (with) more people connecting and getting involved, buying our art and supporting what we do. , ” she says,

Students from Riverview Collegiate, Central Collegiate and Peacock Collegiate came together to create unique works of art like paintings, sculptures and home decorations for sale at the festival. There was also a silent auction of a collection generously donated by the Gibbs family.

The event also invited people to get creative with rock painting and button making, sponsored and supported by Moose Jaw Pride and Journey to Hope member Cole Ramsey.

There was also a Quilt Raffle for a quilt named “Autumn Leaved” created and donated to Journey to Hope by Joyce Aitkens.

As well as an open mic that featured songs and poetry readings by Journey to Hope youth and a local artist named Greg.

In total, the students sold $630.95 worth of artwork, and all proceeds from the student artwork and Gibbs family art were donated to Journey to Hope. Home decorations made by Central Collegiate students raised $173 which will go to Square One Community.

However, the main event of the festival was the unveiling of a student-made mural that was sponsored and funded by Project 104 and the Moose Jaw Police Department.

“This is a real collaboration between Journey to Hope and young people because (the mural is) very much in memory of anyone who has died by suicide. We invited people to share the names of people they have lost to suicide and so this is truly a memorial and an inspiration and a work of art and heart,” said Della Ferguson, President of Journey 2 Hope. .

The mural is a mosaic in the shape of a butterfly, matching the Journey2Hope logo. The body of the butterfly is a colon that represents a famous quote by Amy Bleuel: “A semicolon is used when an author could have chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to”. The author is you and the sentence is your life.

The butterfly wing is made up of student-made mosaic pieces with inspirational quotes on each piece.

Police Chief Rick Bourassa attended the festival for the unveiling and told Discover Moose Jaw the mural is also part of an 8-year project to combat unwanted graffiti in the city.

“From a police perspective, we were looking at graffiti removal and graffiti prevention and from a school perspective, they were looking at giving students opportunities to be creative,” says Bourassa. “We were able to come up with a plan for the students to be very creative. and develop artwork that would then be installed in the city where there have been graffiti issues.

Bourassa adds that since these murals began to appear in the city, no new graffiti has appeared in these areas.

The mosaic mural that was unveiled at the festival will be installed in Crescent Park in July.