Moose Jaw Pride is excited to soon have a mural on the back of their Main Street building facing the Cordova Street entrance to Crescent Park.
As much as the local LGBTQ2+ community group is looking forward to their completed mural, Moose Jaw Pride executive director Joe Wickenhauser is looking forward to the process of creating the mural and sharing the experiences and ideas of the community to determine what should be depicted.
“I think really, in a big way, the mural is more about the process than it is about the final result. So we’re pretty excited to see what happens,” Wickenhauser said.
That process will begin Saturday when Karli Jessup — a queer-identified artist and Saskatchewan-based printmaker who is facilitating the creation of the mural — will lead the first of three, two-part workshops upstairs at the Moose Jaw Public Library. The first workshop will be held at 1 p.m. and will focus on what the mural should look like and how the community should be represented.
“Karli is facilitating the process,” Wickenhauser said. “The mural, and the shape and the design of it, is really going to emerge from the community discussion. We’re going to have a group talking about how we want to see ourselves represented. And then we’re going to have a group that is going to be doing more of that hands-on work.”
Wickenhauser is excited to see the community come together to share stories and ideas as the concept and visuals for the mural start to take shape.
“I think it will be a really great opportunity for community members to come together to speak about what’s important to them,” he said. “As people get together and tell their stories, I think we start to see people learning about their history in new ways and learning about the community in new ways. Sometimes we see people in our community who may be older or who may have a different experience than us. We don’t often have a chance to ask questions about that or an opportunity for us to share those stories. That’s true within the LGBTQ community as well as in the broader community.
“I think this is a really great opportunity for people to say ‘I do want to talk about where I’ve been and what I’ve been through and who I am and how I got here.’ I’m interested in listening to other people tell those stories. I think that’s a big part of what we’re going to see.”
The second workshop will begin at 3 p.m. and will focus on building the skills needed to create the mural itself.
“We’re going to have an opportunity for people to do a bit of art and some hands-on workshops. I think that’s really exciting too,” Wickenhauser said. “That hands-on group will be also be discussing things like ‘well how do we design the mural? What are the things that people are saying and how do we want to represent that aspect in the mural itself?’”
Moose Jaw Pride said that everyone who supports respect and diversity is welcome to attend.
There will be two more meetings following Saturday’s initial gathering. Wickenhauser is hoping that work on the mural will begin in May and that it will be completed in time for Moose Jaw Pride Week which will be held from May 26-June 1 this year.
One of the motivations for creating the mural for 2019 is to commemorate 50 years since the partial decriminalization of same-sex relationships in Canada as well as the Stonewall riots in New York City, a seminal touchstone in the fight for rights for the LGBTQ2+ community.
“For our community it’s really important that our community tell our own stories. Sometimes we see history represented from people outside of our community and that can be really damaging,” Wickenhauser said. “For our community to tell our own stories, it’s very empowering. It’s a way for us to talk about the things that are important for us and it’s a way for us to talk about who we are as a community and to have the opportunity to express that visually through public art, I think it’s an incredible opportunity. We’re very grateful to the Saskatchewan Arts Board for providing us with the funding to make that a reality.”
