An in-between Space
In the heart of the MSCU Centre for Peace Advancement (CPA), you will find the Grebel Gallery. If you’re wondering whether this claim is meant literally or figuratively, the answer is yes in either case. It is true that the Gallery sits in the centre of the CPA—amidst offices, innovation spaces, meeting rooms, and a seminar room. However, its significance has more to do with its ability to catalyze meaningful community engagement.
As one of our three core activities, community engagement drives much of the CPA’s efforts. In addition to our two other areas of focus, research and incubation, we strive to engage community members who might not otherwise find themselves connected or gathered in our space. The Grebel Gallery has been one means for achieving this goal, and remains a program with abundant potential.
The Grebel Gallery is designed to promote a manner of engagement that is whole-bodied, and that promotes mutual learning and shared action. The Gallery challenges the expectations of those who enter – it’s not your typical gallery, and it’s not your typical informational display. Through the Gallery, we aim to form an “in-between space” for various expectations and perceptions to interact. This is the quality of space the CPA is committed to generating, for we believe it has the power to stimulate new insights and collaborations.
We are delighted to work with a Grebel Gallery Team, consisting of approximately ten individuals who bring artistic gifts and passions that increase the capacity of the Gallery and spread the word about “what’s on display in the CPA.”
Near the end of its second year, the Gallery’s walls have seen an assortment of media, from paintings to photographs to quilts. The winter exhibit was titled As the Women Sew: Community Quilts of Mamuján, Colombia. Through partnership with Mennonite Central Committee Colombia, we curated a series of four quilts and ten photographs to tell a story of displacement and resilience. The women who contributed to this quilting project, who call themselves Women Weaving Dreams and Flavours of Peace, won the Colombian National Peace Prize in 2015. This prize acknowledges their ability to share their own collective healing strategy with other communities around them and, in doing so, interrupting a cycle of violence. This exhibit in itself was an example to me of meaningful community engagement.
Our Spring 2016 exhibit is titled Stories in Art from Iraqi Kurdistan, and consists of artwork created by those impacted by displacement in that region. Through partnership with Kathy Moorhead Thiessen of Christian Peacemaker Teams and Ray Dirks of The Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery in Winnipeg, we are exhibiting artwork created by Iraqi Kurds, Syrian Kurds, Yazidis, Assyrian Christians and Iraqi Arabs.
Each exhibit has brought an opportunity for engagement, via partnership in the curation process, or through the cross-pollination of ideas that take place as people visit the art. It is for these reasons that I consider the Grebel Gallery to be one of the most exciting spaces in the CPA. We are committed to developing new ways to use the Gallery to promote mutual learning and shared action, and to capture the insights, reactions, and questions from community members who visit our exhibits.
As we move into the Gallery’s third year of engaging the community, your energy and ideas are not only welcome, but encouraged, as the space is yours too. uwaterloo.ca/centre-peace-advancement
