Shoes, toys and rusty bicycle pedals: Students create art from objects found in Schneider Creek

Karis Mapp · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 10, 2025 6:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: March 10

Grade 8 students from Courtland Avenue Public School person created works of creation inspired by a tempest h2o drain.

Meet Me astatine the Creek astatine Globe Studios successful Kitchener displays the student's hanging creations which diagnostic items collected on Schneider Creek. 

The grounds was a collaborative effort betwixt 2 section creation groups: Textile and The Creek Collective. 

Geoff Martin is simply a co-organizer of the task who helped stitchery the items for the students to use.

"We brought the materials into the classroom, had students deliberation astir the creek, and larn astir the past of the watershed that we unrecorded in," said Martin. 

LISTEN | Grade 8 students make creation retired of items recovered astatine Schneider Creek:

The students were besides asked to prime a fewer of the objects to beryllium incorporated successful their hanging creation designs.

Paired with the kinetic sculptures, the students wrote originative stories astir their items which enactment the exhibit's walls. 

"We're trying to deliberation done antithetic ways of imagining the creek and reasoning of it beyond conscionable a tempest h2o drain and an infrastructure portion successful the city," Martin said. 

"It has a beingness of its own. It has a past of its ain and this is meant to conjure immoderate of that."

Student contributions

From rusty bicycle pedals to play balls, the displays use a wide assortment of objects that were discovered successful Schneider Creek. 

Liam Lilley was 1 of the students progressive successful the exhibit.

"We saw a clump of toys and thought that could enactment arsenic a theme," helium explained. 

"I'm a precise originative idiosyncratic and I thought we were going to person to travel each these steps but they're similar 'you bash what you privation to do' and past it turned retired to beryllium this and it was a batch of fun."

Meanwhile, Thutavi Karumamoorthy drew inspiration from a rusty achromatic footwear sole. 

"Our communicative is called The Black Sole due to the fact that it was precise neat to spot thing similar a rusty sole erstwhile they brought the items to our school," she said. "Everything other was similar sticks, rocks and leaves. So it was precise eye-catching."

For Olami Posi, the task was dissimilar thing she had ever done earlier due to the fact that she lone moved from Nigeria to Canada successful September 2024. 

"I had ne'er seen Schneider Creek before. I had ne'er perceive of it," Posi said.

Unlike Posi, Neko Thompson was acquainted with the creek and drew inspiration from it for her creation piece. 

"As a kid increasing up here, determination was ever thing caller to larn astir it. I deliberation that this conscionable shows everything that tin beryllium successful the creek, immoderate natural, immoderate manmade," said Thompson. 

More than conscionable art 

The students worked on the task for months starring up to the exhibit, which opened at the extremity of February, and they accidental they learned a batch on the way. 

"I didn't cognize Schneider Creek was that long. That's beauteous brainsick however agelong it is," said Lilley. 

For immoderate of the different students, the creation taught them to deliberation deeper astir the watershed. 

"I announcement it much present knowing that determination is simply a creek determination and it makes maine wonderment much astir what I don't know," said Karumamoorthy, who precocious moved to the area. 

Thompson echoed that idea. 

"I decidedly consciousness much connected to Schneider Creek done this project," she said. 

"As a kid, I ever knew that Schneider Creek was there. I would spell connected walks adjacent it, but present it makes maine much funny astir what's successful it and what's astir it."