UPDATE:
The mural unveiling had to be postponed due to staff illness. The new date of the unveiling has yet to be determined by Beacon Community Services.
ORIGINAL:
A youth shelter in Victoria has received grant funding for a mural project to be done by unhoused youths.
The mural is now complete and Beacon Community Services is ready to show the world the work of art in a grand unveiling ceremony on Wednesday, September 6th.
Beacon has been helping people avoid homelessness for 17 years now and they have been running the Lighthouse program at the site of the mural, the Out of the Rain seasonal youth shelter, for just over one year.
Aside from providing their youth clients with the bare necessities — food, shelter and access to clothing — Beacon says they offer a “Key Worker program” which has staff hone in on everyone in their care to help them achieve their goals.
This program gives their clients access to job training, skills workshops and counselling services to name a few.
“The aim is to offer safe shelter from the streets, but more importantly to provide an opportunity for the youth to stabilize, and begin to make a plan; so, they can ultimately graduate to living the lives they wished for themselves,” said Emily Jackson, Site Manager of The Lighthouse.
The mural was led by the experienced and talented Jesse Campbell, a visual artist of Metis/Cree ancestry who has several well-known pieces throughout Greater Victoria, but the youth clients also got to add to the design and make it representative of them and their lives being entangled with the shelter system.
Beacon Community Services says the mural depicts loved ones lost. It shows those who are watching over them, as they witness a new day, new dreams and new possibilities.
The new mural shows the beauty of hope and the persistent resilience of unhoused youth.
You’ll have to go to the event to see what the mural looks like!
Out of the Rain youth shelter mural unveiling
- Where: 1450 Elford Street
- When: Wednesday, September 6th at 10 a.m.
With Meta limiting the reach of news and media outlets on their platforms due to Canada’s Bill C-18, otherwise known as the Online News Act, it can be tough to have access to all of Victoria Buzz’s news and stories.
But it doesn’t have to be! Sign up for our daily newsletter to have all the latest news delivered straight to your email’s inbox.
