A STORY TAKING SHAPE, PIECE BY PIECE
This summer, the Toronto Star joined us at The Jamii Hub during one of our Belonging Older Adults mosaic workshops. Their story begins with art, but at its heart are people we know well, relationships that have grown over time, and a community that keeps finding new ways to create together.
Some stories begin with the finished work. This one begins around a table.
For the past few months, our Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at The Jamii Hub have been filled with small pieces of ceramic, patterns slowly taking shape, conversations travelling across the room, and people learning how to turn many individual pieces into something whole.
It is a familiar scene for us. Brenda is there. Mamie is there. Often, we see them another day that same week too, at a different Belonging Older Adults workshop, gathering or outing. Over time, familiar faces become part of the rhythm of Jamii.
This summer, Toronto Star reporter Kevin Jiang joined us for one of those afternoons. He came to explore the relationship between the arts and healthy aging. What he found became a wider story about creativity, friendship, purpose, and what it can mean to have somewhere to return to week after week.
The Toronto Star feature brings together research on arts and aging with the voices of people who experience those connections here with us.
People we know, stories we are grateful to see shared
One of the people at the centre of the Toronto Star story is Brenda Wootten. We know Brenda as someone who shows up, takes part, creates, volunteers, shares stories and most importantly, returns. In the article, she shares something much more personal. As a teenager, Brenda dreamed of becoming an artist and was accepted into art school. Life eventually took her in another direction. Decades later, she has found her way back to that part of herself.
“It just brings out who I truly am, which was buried for so long,”
Brenda told the Toronto Star.
She also spoke about the people she has found here.
“When I come here, it just regenerates me, because there are people here who actually care about me,” she said. “We check in on each other.”
We know what she means. Belonging has never only been about what happens during the scheduled activity. It is also the conversations before a workshop begins, saving a seat for someone, noticing when a familiar face has been away, sharing food, trying something unfamiliar together and seeing many of the same people again a few days later.
Mamie Armaly is one of those familiar faces too. Mamie has lived in The Esplanade neighbourhood for years and has become a regular presence at Jamii. In the Toronto Star story, she shares that although she had lived here for 17 years, it wasn’t until she began coming to Jamii that she truly felt part of the community.
That stayed with us. Because living in a neighbourhood and feeling that you belong to it are not always the same thing. Belonging is one of the ways we try to bring those two things a little closer together.
And then there is the mosaic
When the Toronto Star visited, Brenda, Mamie and the rest of the group were well into a project that had been growing week by week. They have been working with Toronto mosaic artist Alex Ganassini, who has been a wonderful artist to have around our table. Alex brings his knowledge generously. He teaches, guides and problem-solves, while leaving space for participants to make decisions, experiment and develop confidence in their own hands.
The workshops began with learning the craft itself: how to cut and shape pieces, how colours and forms work together, and how a larger image slowly emerges from many smaller decisions.
From there, the project grew.
Together, the group developed designs for the three stone tables outside 262 The Esplanade, which will soon become a permanent mosaic installation in the neighbourhood. The three tables look at this place through different moments in time: the land before colonization, the area through its industrial years, and The Esplanade as we know and experience it today. Different chapters of one place, interpreted and made by people who are part of its story now.
A note of thanks
This project has also been made possible with support from Rama Gaming House (Kennedy) and Charitable Gaming, whose funding covered artist Alex Ganassini’s fee for the mosaic project.
That support gave our Belonging participants the opportunity to work closely with Alex over the course of the project: learning from his practice, developing their own ideas, and creating a permanent artwork together for The Esplanade.
We are grateful for their support in bringing Alex to the table with us.
Something made together, left here together
There is something meaningful about knowing that these afternoons will leave a physical trace behind. Eventually, the workshops will move on. Another art form will arrive. New projects will fill the tables inside The Jamii Hub. But these mosaics will stay.
They will become part of the everyday landscape of The Esplanade: somewhere to sit, somewhere to pass on the way home, somewhere a child might stop to look more closely, and somewhere Brenda, Mamie and everyone else who worked on them can recognize a piece they placed with their own hands.
Before that happens, we are opening the final stage of the process to the wider community.
On September 23, October 1 and October 8, people of all ages are invited to join us at The Jamii Hub and help Alex and our community complete the mosaics. You do not need to know how to make a mosaic. Come learn. Come spend some time with us. Come add a piece.
Soon, it will belong to The Esplanade
On Friday, October 9 from 5 PM to 6 PM, we will gather outside 262 The Esplanade to celebrate the completed installation.
By then, something that spent months taking shape inside The Jamii Hub will have moved into the neighbourhood permanently. For us, the celebration is not only about seeing the finished mosaics. It is about recognizing the people whose hands shaped them, the histories and ideas carried into the designs, and all the hours spent sitting beside one another while the work slowly came together.
A project that began around a workshop table will become part of the place where those relationships were formed.
The Toronto Star saw something we get to see every week
The Toronto Star came to Jamii to explore what the arts can mean as we age.
Their feature goes much further into the research, speaking with experts studying creativity, health and longevity, while Brenda, Mamie and Jamii Founder and Executive & Artistic Director Isorine Marc bring those ideas back to lived experience. We are grateful to see people we know so well given the space to tell their own stories.
Research can tell us that creativity and connection matter. Here, we get to see what that can look like in everyday life. It can look like Brenda returning to art after decades away. It can look like Mamie finding a deeper connection to the neighbourhood she already called home. It can look like Alex leaning across a table, helping someone figure out the next section of a mosaic. It can simply look like arriving at The Jamii Hub and finding familiar faces already there.
And soon, it will also look like three mosaic-covered tables sitting permanently on The Esplanade.
We are grateful to Kevin Jiang and the Toronto Star for spending time with our community and for sharing this story.
Comments