How the Arts build a sense of community

York Scene Blogger Mia Herrera

By: Mia Herrera

Early in March I attended the launch  for Farzana Doctor’s new book, Six Meters of Pavement. Hosted by the Toronto-based This is Not a Reading Series  the launch offered a night of good conversation, storytelling and music at the Gladstone Hotel.

Though I’m usually a bit shy, with the book launch packed to standing room only, I grabbed a table with a few members of the Brockton Writers Series. The Brockton Writers Series, founded by Farzana Doctor and Sharanpal Ruprai, has gained incredible success as a series for established and emergent writers. I was eager to learn about the series firsthand, and my tablemates explained more about the group’s foundation and relevance to local writers. The conversation eventually evolved into a discussion about the importance of writing groups, spaces and councils – a conversation that soon included a discussion about the York Region Arts Council.

The writers I spoke with were particularly interested in how the Council began and, knowing a bit about its foundation, I found myself relating YRAC’s history. Halfway through our conversation, I became conscious of the fact that I was speaking of YRAC’s foundation with the pronoun “we.” When I realized this, I felt a little foolish. I wasn’t present at YRAC’s foundation the way other founding members were, and I didn’t feel I had the right to join YRAC’s founding “we.”

It was only after, when thinking of this conversation, that I realized that my choice of pronoun was really only a slip that showed how strongly affiliated I felt to the York Region Arts Council. Even if I wasn’t present at the council’s inception, I felt close enough to the council, and the council was important enough to me, to speak in the collective “we.”

My conversation about YRAC reinforced, in my mind, the importance of the arts council. More than the meetings, the workshops, and the grants, the York Region Arts Council is important because it creates an artist collective. It brings together artists of all disciplines and walks of life and gives them a place where they belong. My conversation with the Brockton Writers stressed the importance and key role of arts councils in communities: Councils give regional artists a home and an identity.

A gathering of artists and arts supportors at a York Region Arts Council event

It is important to continue fostering the York Region’s arts through supporting YRAC and founding more artist-run spaces, places, workshops and gatherings in the region. All of these are important in forming artists and, more importantly, communities. In the short time since YRAC’s launch, it has done so much in bringing people together, in creating a network and, consequently, in making the arts even stronger. Only positive things can come from supporting the arts, and there is much to look ahead to. I am proud to say that I am part of the YRAC “we”! It is such a warm, welcoming group. In this day and age of being so distant from each other, even from your closest neighbour, it is exactly what we need.