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By Sheena Roszell

Art Gallery of Grande Prairie launches new program for youth

Sep 18, 2018 | 11:16 AM

The Art Gallery of Grande Prairie has launched a new program, The Youth Arts Laboratory. Three young participants ages 13 to 17 are part of the program where they engage in arts activities in a professional gallery setting.  

Executive Director Jeff Erbach says they recognized there weren’t many opportunities for young people to get one-on-one mentorship through the arts, so they are hoping to do that with several gallery projects.

“And those projects are of great benefit for the gallery. It includes everything from installing artwork and de-installing artwork to the curatorial and research process, and exchange young people receive, in a professional setting real broad skill development that they can apply to either further artistic practice or anything they decide to do in the future,” he said. “We are quite well known in the community for delivering arts education in an extraordinarily broad fashion.  Last year we delivered almost 100 camps, workshops and school tours and so we decided that the area we wanted to branch into was a deeper sense of learning and so with a handful of participants we wanted to actually provide something that was ongoing for several months.”

Grace Larson is a grade 10 student at the Grande Prairie Composite High School and one of the participants.

“It’s been really exciting and something just completely new.  I really didn’t know that this many sorts of different jobs existed within the arts.  It’s been really eye-opening and now that I am sort of receiving mentorship in the marketing and promotional areas, that’s helping me with what I want to do in the future for my career as well,” she said. “I always had some interest in the arts.  I am a musician and in junior high and elementary school I was part of the school district’s Gifted Program for the Arts, but definitely being in this has increased my interest in it and overall knowledge of the arts as well.”

Mia Cook and Sophie Picard are also participating in the program.  It wraps up April 1, 2019 and staff at the art gallery say, depending on how things go this year, they might look to expand the program next year.

“We’re obviously really keen to potentially expand the program next year and that’s going to depend on the analysis of our program going forward and how that ends up, but it’s already really exciting and has been really beneficial,” Erbach said.

 

by Sheena Roszell