- CENTRE-SUD -
Décembre 2014 - Avril 2015
@ Coop Le Milieu
History of the NeighbourhoodThe Centre-Sud neighbourhood sits east of downtown Montréal, between St-Hubert and Papineau, and between Sherbrooke and the St-Laurence.* While it is officially located within the Ville-Marie borough, this community holds a unique history and community-identity all its own.
This neighbourhood first started to develop in the 18th century. It began as industrial warehouses, and soon residential spaces followed, along with community spaces including schools and churches. The neighbourhood became more densely populated with industrialization, and the population reached 80,000 by the early 20th Century and 100,000 by the 1940s. After the war, mass deindustrialization prompted many of the factories and warehouses to move to the periphery of the city, and the living standards of the Centre-Sud began to decline. Some development and revitalization plans for the city also forced residents to relocate. Considering all this, one thing can be said about the Centre-Sud today: there is no shortage of community organizations dedicating their time to taking care of their own. Today their mark is seen all over the working-class neighbourhood as they host community events in the various little parks scattered throughout this urban grid (I'm told that many of these parks were created after fires destroyed the structures that previously occupied those spaces... just another testament to how this neighbourhood sees the opportunity in hardship.), in their block parties, in their annual spring-clean-up day. These organizations often collaborate with each other, making Centre-Sud a neighbourhood that realizes its potential for transformation and taking care of their neighbours. * The Centre-Sud officially contains the Village, but for the purposes of this project, the Centre-Sud quilt represents the area between Sherbrooke and Maisonneuve, as the Village will eventually have its own Quilted/Quartier.
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La Fontaine and Champlain Streets, 1974.
Photo: Daniel Heïkalo, Écomusée du fier monde |
Coop Le MilieuCoop Le Milieu is an autonomously run solidarity cooperative/art studio. This cozy ethical café and community art studio is nuzzled away on the corner of Rue Robin and Rue Beaudry.
Le Milieu is an invitation. An invitation to connect, to create, to share our stories, our crafts and good food with one another. An invitation to let our hands do what they do best, but might have forgotten. An invitation to learn and to teach. An invitation to realize we have something of value that someone else wants to learn from us. An invitation to consider the world through a new lens: one that is paint spattered and has the grubby fingerprints of a child's hand all over it. This space challenges us to think differently. Here we are asked to reconsider the definition of artist. Art is drawing, painting, sewing, dancing, music-making, sure. Art is also cooking, storytelling, gardening. Art is creating community. Art is living our lives with intention and consciousness, knowing that our every action is shaping our surroundings. You are an artist in whatever you do! Here we are asked to reconsider value: all the materials in the space are available for a pay-what-you-can contribution. Those with more give more so that others with less can come for free. Here we are asked to reconsider limitations: look at this little space, this space that could! We know it looks small, but look at everything we can do here! We teach permaculture, and yoga, and traditional diets! We have improv workshops, puppet-theater performances, afro-cuban dance parties! We make giant marionettes that can barely fit through the door! We make things out of junk that will surprise you! Here, sometimes we forget to even consider limitations, because we know we will transcend them anyways. The co-op runs without external funding or paid staff, and yet the doors are open 4-5 days a week thanks to volunteers come from all over the city (and the world). They have claimed this little corner-front on Rue Robin as a true commons. This space belongs to everyone, and everyone who walks through the door leaves their mark. This is a place where dreamworlds come together, where we take their hand and walk through the door into our realworlds, ready to manifest the communities we dream of. I came to know of Coop Le Milieu one sunny day while we made giant puppets in a garden. I began to volunteer there to facilitate a weekly knitting circle and other activities in the space. So naturally, it became the site for the second community map quilt. And so it was a real pleasure to collaborate with the artists, volunteers, members, participants, and friends of Coop Le Milieu for the Quilted/Quartier: Centre Sud. The pieces of this quilt have been made by folks who know and love this neighbourhood; their stories of this place are secretly woven into each little detail and touch. |
Quilted/Quartier: Centre-Sud
The spirit of "cheap art" that the Coop embodies is evident the materiality this patchwork. Many of the materials used represent the abundance that is available on the shelves of the co-op. The practices used are as diverse as the artists who frequent the space: silk-screen, needle and wet felt techniques, fabric collage, knitting, embroidery and more.
Structurally, the grid like design of this neighbourhood was very different from the map-design of the St-Henri Quilt. It was tricky for us to decide the boundaries of the neighbourhood. The community that is "Centre-sud" exists within the bourough of Ville-Marie, between the LatinQuarter/Downtown and Hochelaga. In many ways it overlaps with the Village, but the Village extends beyond its boundaries as well. And where are the boundaries between the Sainte-Marie neighbourhood? These were questions that we explored together. I realized that this project was also beginning to dig deeper into a practice of critical cartography, where neighbours reclaim the map to define their own boundaries of what spacial boundaries felt true to their lived experiences versus what the map told us where the official definitions of the neighbourhood. This problematic resurfaced many times in the following Quilted/Quartiers.
The pieces of this Quilted/Quartier praise the green spaces of the neighbourhood and challenge the bare concrete surfaces. They celebrate community spaces like the coop, the eco-quartier, and the parks. They celebrate the spirit of togetherness that thrives at Coop Le Milieu. Some of the participants have lived in the neighbourhood for years, and their deep knowledge of the space is reflected in their work. Others were new to the neighbourhood, their interest in volunteering with an autonomously run community space brought them to the streets of this neighbourhood, and they explored the grid with me through claiming a piece of the map.
Structurally, the grid like design of this neighbourhood was very different from the map-design of the St-Henri Quilt. It was tricky for us to decide the boundaries of the neighbourhood. The community that is "Centre-sud" exists within the bourough of Ville-Marie, between the LatinQuarter/Downtown and Hochelaga. In many ways it overlaps with the Village, but the Village extends beyond its boundaries as well. And where are the boundaries between the Sainte-Marie neighbourhood? These were questions that we explored together. I realized that this project was also beginning to dig deeper into a practice of critical cartography, where neighbours reclaim the map to define their own boundaries of what spacial boundaries felt true to their lived experiences versus what the map told us where the official definitions of the neighbourhood. This problematic resurfaced many times in the following Quilted/Quartiers.
The pieces of this Quilted/Quartier praise the green spaces of the neighbourhood and challenge the bare concrete surfaces. They celebrate community spaces like the coop, the eco-quartier, and the parks. They celebrate the spirit of togetherness that thrives at Coop Le Milieu. Some of the participants have lived in the neighbourhood for years, and their deep knowledge of the space is reflected in their work. Others were new to the neighbourhood, their interest in volunteering with an autonomously run community space brought them to the streets of this neighbourhood, and they explored the grid with me through claiming a piece of the map.