Wednesday Wonder: The Possibilities Project

Let's free-associate for a minute.

Homeless.

When you see, hear, or read that word, what comes to mind?

Artist? Musician? Screenwriter? Creative? Self-discovery?

Be honest. Not one of those words comes to mind, does it?

What about this word: Possibilities?

I imagine you still are shaking your head no. You. . . and you. . . and you, too.

For most of us, associating any of those words with homelessness just doesn't happen.

* * * * * *

Some months ago, I wrote an essay about the award-winning film Humble Beauty, a documentary that opens our eyes to the beauty that is created by people experiencing homelessness. Today, I want to open your eyes again, this time to what can be accomplished when people believe in possibilities.

Move from within.

Don't move the way that fear wants you to.

Begin a foolish project.

Noah did.

~ Rumi

My friend Louise is the public relations director for Calgary Drop-In & Rehab Centre (DI) in Canada, the largest in the country, providing in 2008 more than 350,000 bed nights to more than 12,500 distinct individuals. Louise writes, often movingly, about her work at DI on her blog Recover Your Joy. When I want a lift, I make sure to read Louise's blog. It's full of words about possibilities and about the hope that stirs when possibilities are offered.

A DI lifeline, Louise wrote last week about a partnership between DI and a local church, and offered a glimpse of what that collaboration is producing. I was so taken by what is being achieved that I told Louise I intended to share a bit about the project on my own blog.

The partnership is called The Possibilities Project. The title alone gives you some insight into DI's approach to homelessness. That approach doesn't start and stop with a handout of a warm meal and a blanket; though it provides emergency shelter, DI isn't defined as a stopping place for the night. Nor it is just a place that makes sure that the people experiencing homelessness have clothing to replace what they arrived in, or receive job-skills or job-placement assistance so they can become wage-earners if they're lucky, or get substance abuse counseling to get off the bottle or the needle — all services we typically associate with organizations like DI, wherever they're located.

Most organizations concerned with homelessness are not like DI, however. DI is not your typical shelter.

DI understands that shelter is not the problem and housing is not the solution.

As you learn if you stick around Louise long enough, DI is about helping people reclaim their identity by providing them a place where they find respect, compassion, understanding, and resources. Resources like The Possibilities Project.

In describing the project, Louise writes, "The intention was to create an opportunity and a space where individuals experiencing homelessness could explore their creativity [through the visual arts] and deepen their connection to themselves and the human condition we all share. There was no expected outcome, no destination, no measurement of success determined by how many brushstrokes were cast or notes sung."

Imagine! Outcomes for the person controlling the purse aren't established. Achievement of goals to justify money spent isn't measured. There is no expectation that concrete process and procedures will be put in place as the project expands. There is no red tape!

The wonder of it is this: The project is working for the clients who themselves had not equated the word "possibilities" with their lives.

The Possibilities Project is providing a place and a time where DI clients are experiencing joy, excitement, serenity, and a sense of well-being. The only expectation, Louise says, is that the project will "continue to nurture the spirit of creativity at the heart of each participant" as each "self-directs the unfolding of possibility" in his or her life. As I said, DI is not a typical shelter.

Some three-and-a-half years after its launch, The Possibilities Project encompasses not only painting and other visual arts, its basis, but also poetry, writing, drama, singing and other forms of music-making, and performance. Most recently, for example, the project made possible the participation of a DI client in a form of participatory theatre facilitated by David Diamond, director of Vancouver's Headlines Theatre. (Louise describes that activity, "Power Play: Homelessness", here.) Notably, DI clients have inspired Two Bit Oper-Eh?-Shun, an oratorio whose libretto was written by Onalea Gilbertson and whose music was composed by Marcel Bergmann. At different points in the production, DI's Drop-In Centre Singers performed their own music and prose. Two Bit had its world premiere on January 16 of this year and was reviewed by the Calgary Herald.

The video below is an overview of The Possibilities Project, and supported a talk Louise gave recently. In affirms the meaning of art in the lives of DI's clients, it shows that homelessness is a condition and that art is a way into finding a way out of that condition, to healing and becoming. As Louise says, in committing themselves to taking action through their creative expression, those participating in the project are creating "a different kind of place [for themselves], a place where art awakens each of us to possibility in a place where people matter."


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REMEMBER HAITI

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