Last night, I attended the first of five projects being held by local art collaborative Broken City Lab. This newest project is called Save The City, and its purpose was to “bring together emerging artists and city residents to imagine and prompt creative social engagements and civic activation.”
The Listen To The City event was held at Phog Lounge, and by 8:15pm there were roughly 40 people packed in the front room. We gathered around in groups of 4-5, and a member of BCL sat down with each of us and recorded our thoughts, ideas, suggestions, complaints, praises, and rants.
I was at a table with Pina Ciotoli (of windsoreats.com) and Kelly Ouellette (of Slice of Style), as well as a student who chose to finish high school and attend university here, rather than in Dubai. His reasoning? He preferred the small town spirit of Windsor, over the anonymous cold-shoulder feel of big-city Dubai.
I didn’t get to listen in on any of the other conversation happening around me, but the general consensus at our table was that Windsor is on the verge of something big. It was fantastic having a conversation about the state Windsor is currently in, and what can be done about it. We all agreed that an attitude change is necessary. And we all agreed that unfortunately, the people that attended last night’s event, are not the ones that need the attitude adjustment. How do we reach the rest of the city, and instill a positive outlook?
Another topic discussed was the need for revitalizing the downtown core. There are probably a few Windsorites out there who could care less what downtown looks like. At our table, we all agreed that the core of Windsor is the face of the city, the heart of the city. It’s representative of the entire country, even, for those traveling here from Detroit.
BCL was asking two questions mainly. “What brought you here?” and “Why are you still here?” As for myself, my family has been here for over 300 years, so moving back to Windsor after a short stint in Toronto seemed like a no-brainer. I’m definitely interested in hearing what the others had to say.
The goal for the project is to compile the audio recordings from last night into one “legible” sound byte, and it’ll be posted on the Broken City Lab website. A copy will also go into the Windsor City Archives, as a snapshot of the city in the year 2010.
The next leg of this BCL project is called Sites of Apology/Sites of Hope, and will take place in February (date and location TBA). Not too many details are available for this event, but it’s sure to be an interesting endeavor.
To finish off this post, I want to extend the same queries to you, dear reader. What brought you to Windsor? If you were born and raised here, why are you still here?
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