In light of some exciting news about Project 851, which I’ll share in a minute, it was with a skip that I headed to the fence today to hang “piece flags” for a project of another sort. The Art Project started back in August, 2 months after the homeless campers moved into the park. It started out as a dialogue and the dialogue has continued and evolved over the months. A group of us gathered to stitch on “piece flags” and talk about issues of homelessness. CAWM is the collective of stitching participants that gave energy and work to the fence installation. abOut Damn Spot was a phase of the Art Project that came out the gate with attending the Park and sharing.

and then the fence spoke back and the dialogue was established.

CAWM was not discouraged but rather regrouped and came together to do more “piece” making.

Once the fence had enough “piece” flags to represent a good number of the tents, like 200 or so, we decided to take the project to another level. That was a layer of meaning in Connecting Threads through meanings or slogans of thought about homelessness.

The fence continued the dialogue as visits to the fence revealed missing flags — like someone was shopping and taking the ones he or she wanted leaving the fence with only the threads/ skeletons behind. It’s been interesting to note what flags were being removed; french knot designs, dream catcher patterns, letters F,L,O,A,T,B,H… Walk, Talk, Gimme, Shelter, Never x 3, life, wait, won’t, calm, kind… Can’t help but wonder where the “pieces” have gone and what’s been done with them hmmmmm?

The gobbling of one “piece” at a time or a random few continues. There was also another major exhale of the fence that resulted in all the “pieces” pulled off. This time one kind of had to wonder about the mental health of the fence and also the creepy discard that made it not desirable to save any. It did kind of reflect what was happening in the park as that’s when we were told that actually 108 tons of garbage had been removed from the park site since October. hmmmmm? So coming into 10 months of Park occupation Connecting Threads evolved yet again.

The present layer is about gratitude and community so the inhale on the fence, the continuation of putting the “pieces” back up, names the friends, CAWM members, neighbours and contributors trying to make a difference.

It is an honour to be living in a community with such amazing people.

Oh I almost forgot to share the exciting news of today! Project 851, referred to as UNION by Marianne (architect) just won the award for Heritage BC in the category of conversation!! As I reflect on skipping to the fence I wish our city, bc housing, the province… gets an award for humanizing homelessness and coming up with a human solution to people living in parks, streets and alleys. (We might have to wait a bit for this one).