What is The Belonging Project? For the next two to three years, Arts à la Carte will be supporting initiatives that foster inclusion in our community. Using an arts-oriented approach, we will assist community efforts that encourage individuals to feel welcomed and included in Red Deer. Arts à la Carte will look for opportunities to sponsor or organize arts-oriented activities or events that invite people to explore and articulate what it means to feel that we "belong". Periodically the results of projects will be shared with the community in gallery exhibits, web-based exhibits, and/or performances. Some of these efforts will also ideally tour the community as well.
Why This Project?
Our Goals
By engaging the community in an exploration of the concept of belonging, we hope to:
A. Generate conversations and other forms of sharing that would facilitate participants’ connection to others in the community, and therefore their overall sense of belonging.
B. Assist the community to understand why "belonging" is important to us all. We want to help people to appreciate that a strong sense of belonging supports the well-being of individuals, as well as the economic health and quality of life of the entire community. C. Help people increase their motivation to share the responsibility for fostering belonging in our community.
D. Encourage the community to engage constructively in conversations that are at the heart of some points of potential tension. We plan, for example, to examine the need that people have to interact with and belong to groups of common interest or background or heritage, while also examining the aspiration we have to create a community where all people feel they belong. The goal is to honour the variety of needs for belonging and the variety of ways that belonging can be experienced.
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Belonging Project |