Arts and Community - Week 5

By

Bethany Bernard

This last week in FCD we had Sean Hall come and speak to our class about Community and Art and how those two can be used together. He talked about how the definition of art is breathing something new into existance. One example of that is making empty spaces into a place where communities can gather. He also talked a lot about how our story, God's story and the story of other people outside of the kingdom are supposed to be walked side by side until they become like one journey.

Some of the key ideas or themes from this week are: 

1. Holy Imagination-We are created with the ability to imagine alongside God

2. Sensing life/experiences with the 7 senses-taste, smell, sight, touch, hear, kinesthetic (what God thinks and speaks to us), Organic (What we feel inside). 

3. Truth-It's a person and not a set of ideas and that person is Jesus. 

The challenges this week brought up for me, is to live more creatively and to savour moments more often by using my seven senses. We took this challenge to the streets of Kalispell and went around the small town of Montana with the focus of being the embodiment of love like Christ loves and savouring the moments we found ourselves in. Through this experience I realized that if i am going to savour moments in my life i need to be more intentional about it. We also went on a field trip to visit the mayor of Kalispell and ask her what she feels community development ideally looks like in Kalispell. She gave a lot of good insight as to how government can become more community focused then politically focused. We also visited a local park called BACK BACK park that the community of Kalispell chose to create after a house blew up there last year and it had become an empty lot. This is a prime example of how art turns space into a place. If you ever get the time to be in Kalispell MT you should check that park out it is quite beautiful and filled with cool artsy things like a teepee and a pizza oven. But my favourite thing they built in it is the porch they built that you can sit in. All in all I would say that this week has been a pretty fun adventure of seeing how Art and Community can and should be used together for the glory of God.