Middle School Students Showcase Green Enthusiasm at Toronto District School Board (TDSB) Headquarters

Toronto, January 11, 2010 - Middle school students from Brock Junior Public School participating in Arts for Children and Youth's Eco Architecture program will showcase their original ideas for transforming a neighbourhood laneway into a green community at a celebratory exhibition reception at the Toronto District School Board Headquarters.

Arts for Children and Youth (AFCY) Eco Architecture programs provide creative hands-on environmental arts experiences to children and youth who live in under-served Toronto communities through partnerships with schools, community centres, Toronto Community Housing, shopping malls, hospitals and libraries. The program at Brock Junior Public School, led by AFCY Artist and Professional Architect, Barb Lilker, is a seven day series of workshops for 25 participants. The program is funded by a grant from Great-West Life, London Life and Canada Life through their national corporate citizenship program.

The goal of the program is to provide students, teachers and community members with knowledge and innovative learning activities in environmental awareness, architectural design and sustainable building techniques, and to relate these topics to the impacts of environmental change on local habitats and residents. For participants, this is an opportunity to hone their creativity, while elevating their environmental awareness and their ability to contribute effectively to our communities.

"The theme of the program is 'Global Change in a Local Context,'" said AFCY Executive/Artistic Director Julie Frost. "The students at Brock have chosen to focus on change in the laneway adjacent to their school playground, as a way to connect the environmental know-how they are gaining in the program directly to their own environment." Curriculum links include: promoting ecological literacy; math: geometric solids; science: structures and stability; and renewable resources.

The exhibition showcases the Brock participants' environmentally friendly laneway redesigns, in which sustainable eco tree houses supported by newly introduced trees replace the garage lots that presently characterize the alley. Participants are encouraged to design small to reduce their footprint on the earth, to use sustainable materials, to use a green roof, and finally to harness the sun or wind to generate electricity. Each participant learns how to draw their chosen site, develop ideas to implement environmentally aware changes and then translate their drawings into low-relief elevation views in the form of 3-D scale models.

AFCY Artist/Architect Barb Lilker explains the results: "Taken alone, each house design reveals how each student wished to express his or her own way of living in a tight, urban space. Together, the projects create an eco-friendly community, within a lively neighbourhood, that enriches the space it occupies, making it green, habitable and safe." The individual pieces are joined together to create a large-scale mural representing the community.

After the exhibition at 5050 Yonge, the mural will be installed at Brock Junior Middle School later this season.