F.L.I.C.C
FIRGROVE LEARNING & INNOVATION COMMUNITY CENTRE
Firgrove Forever gallery exhibition launched at
York University's Gales Gallery
as part of the 2023 Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities, May 26- June 2 2023
How it began: The Firgrove Mixed Media Oral Narratives Project
FLICC's collaboration with York University began in 2017, with a collaborative project to bring creative coding to the youth in the community. FLICC has gone through a lot of change within the past few years with the fire, ongoing relocation and through the Pandemic, but our goal to strengthen community culture is alive and well.
Since 2018, we have hosted workshops at FLICC in 360° camera and audio recording, avatar building and virtual world construction, prioritizing the creative spirit of the community members and the way they want to see themselves represented in an increasingly digital world.
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This project is a partnership between Lorraine Anderson and Joel Ong, Associate professor of Computational Arts at York University and supported by David Han, Venesha Cardwell, Liz Tsui, Jo Yetter and Jacob Turola.
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FLICC in Virtual Reality
As part of the virtual worldbuilding process of the project, we have collectively taken panoramic photos in and around the old community centre and around the Connections neighbourhood. The youth are invited to reactivate the space in virtual reality with photographs, sound/music recordings, spoken word poetry etc that are of value to them.
With the demolishing of buildings in Firgrove and the devastating fire of 2020, these new digital spaces aim to keep the memories alive while the community is being re-located (and dislocated), and aspires to ensure that the old centre and neighbourhood continues to be a symbol of gathering, heritage, warmth and love in Firgrove.
We have two Virtual spaces currently:
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Virtual Space 1: The Firgrove neighbourhood
Walk through video SHORT VERSION (3 min)
Walk through video LONG VERSION (8:30 min)
To View the room in Mozilla Hubs Virtual space please visit :
https://hubs.mozilla.com/cmX726h/firgrove
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Virtual Space 2: FIRGROVE REIMAGINED (as part of the Firgrove Forever exhibition @ York University).
During Jan - May 2023, we worked with youth members in the community that were part of a parallel redevelopment project at JF Mall and around JF/Firgrove to recontextualize their artistic inclinations and inspirations from the process. These vignettes became the second virtual virtual world entitled "Firgrove Reimagined". The artists we worked with were :
1. Spoken word poet Venesha Cardwell who performed her work "The Projects" through a digital twin animation;
2. hip hop producer Nathan Baya who developed a virtual stage/studio for his music series "Jane Street Speaks";
3. community advocate and PEACH interim ED Tiffany Ford who showcased her memories in a virtual stairwell modelled after apartments in Firgrove;
4. photographer Stephanie Ampuero who designed a virtual gallery;
5. documentary filmmaker Christine Le who interviewed food stall owners in precarious status;
6. community animator Terryl Knox who designed an interactive stage for repositioning 3D models of buildings in the Firgrove neighbourhood; and
7. artist-philospher Octavia Riley who reimagined her childhood home through poetic and literary lenses.
To access these rooms, visitors would navigate through a virtual ‘lobby’ created by David Han that was a digital twin of the JF intersection stratified by time - a lower level would lead to rooms featuring memories/past experiences, and an upper level stretching up into the clouds leading to rooms featuring more future-oriented imaginings.
Virtual Space 2: Firgrove Reimagined
Walk through video LONG VERSION (42mins)
To View the room in Mozilla Hubs Virtual space please visit :
Art for Learning
For the exhibition, members of the York U team led by Liz Tsui conducted a weekly arts + electronics workshop for elementary youths. They worked on artworks inspired by the art practice of Yayoi Kusama and her Infinity Rooms. Through this project, they learnt about building circuits and how mirrors reflect infinitely when they face each other.
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Included in these workshops were campus visits to the Makerspace at York University, the domes at Betaspace and meals at Burger King!
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The Exhibition
The exhibition itself was one in a series of ‘homecoming’ events for displaced residents to revisit friends and artefacts from the old community, and so we collected items from residents and salvaged items from buildings that had been demolished including road signs, sewing machines and posters to fill the space. We installed the T.A.H.J mural done by Leon 'Eklipz' Robinson - a mural commemorating the lives of several youth in the community that was previously installed on the side of FLICC. We also showcased work from the Grow our Grassways project led by Shannon Holness and Lisa Diaram, as well as graphic design work from Reezy Capone.
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Come visit us virtually or in person
