“How to Draw A Tree” is a participatory art project bringing individuals living with mental illnesses together with trees for a year-long creative, care-taking, reciprocal engagement culminating in an immersive PUBLIC SOUND WALK at the Arboretum, University of Guelph, Canada AND/OR virtually on the web.
It is a play on words- how to draw a tree to us for our mutual benefit. Humans are in a mental health crisis, and trees in climate crisis- we can help each other.
At the heart of this work is storytelling and reciprocal relationship-building through collaboration and creativity, with the goal of combating isolation and creating social change.
This is the first soundwalk by the artist before she engages with three youth with mental illness who will embark on their own forest journey learning from and caring for trees and telling their tale in a site-specific and virtual sound walks to come when the project moves from trees to forest. Every tree longs for a forest.