Our Storied Path
Welcome to the project page for Our Storied Path. As a 2025-2026 Engaging Artists in Communities project, this work aims to connect young learners’ thoughts and feelings about how to imagine active transportation for the Tomsett neighbourhood and community. The project will engage City of Richmond Transportation Engineering and Parks Services. Students will engage in multiple artistic mediums and activities, including neighbourhood walks, storytelling and ceramic art making projects.
The project began in September 2025 and will culminate in June 2026 with a legacy artwork informed by students. A school-wide celebratory gathering will share the project with the wider community. Please check back here for updates on the project.
Welcome to Our Storied Path
Starting the project and a new year! We are up and running with “Our Storied Path” project, and it has been quite a month.
At the start of the month, we began by exploring Alexandra Park, walking along the paths that many of us take on our way to and from school each day. We also talked about ideas that might encourage us all to use more active transportation options, such as walking, biking, and riding our scooters to school.
On January 13, we returned to the school to explore how clay as a medium might help tell stories about our neighbourhood and the diverse forms of life we share it with. Some of these plant-life stories are coming to life on bowls that we will later use in our community celebration.
January
Plants + Pots
Building Paths
On January 20, we welcomed special guests from the City of Richmond: Kevin from the Parks Department and Nathan from the Transportation Department. We met with them at Alexandra Park and explored the layers of planning and design involved in creating a park. We also learned about many of the plants and animals that share our park and call it home. Particularly exciting were the Barn Owls, which have two different nesting boxes in the park, and the trees that have existed since the time of the dinosaurs.
Living Stories
On January 27, we welcomed Cree poet and writer Wanda John-Kehewin. Wanda read from one of her most recent picture books, "Miya Wears Orange" and talked to us about the ways in which stories live in all of us and are also embedded in the land.
We talked about the intergenerational way that stories are shared among families and between generations. And the ways in which finding stories in our experiences and in the world around us can be a way to care about each other, create community, and understand each other better.
Wanda also helped us create our own poetry and story ideas in our journals, by thinking about our senses as guides.
February
Story Blocks
On February 3, we began creating our own stories based on experiences we have had on our way to and from school. We focused on animals and plants we have encountered while walking or biking to school, as well as some of our favourite things about the parks and greenways in and around our neighbourhood. We started drawing out some our ideas onto square paper, that can later be translated into ceramic tiles or blocks.
Setting our Stories
On February 10, we explored Alexandra Park again, this time to identify potential locations for our ceramic installations. We looked for locations that everyone would be able to encounter on a walk or cycle through the park. We talked about how these "stories" might surprise people using active transportation in the area and how they might add joy to the experience of being in the park as well as travelling through it.
We also identified some of our favourite "moments" in the park and discussed how our ceramic "stories" could amplify or reflect these elements.
Building our Blocks
On February 24, we worked more in depth on our storyblocks. Developing our human-animal-insect-plants-soil stories in more detail and adding colour to our designs.
