Artists decorate north core

THUNDER BAY -- Dozens of artists are adding colour to north core as a way of making the city their own.

Every summer as part of Definitely Superior Art Gallery's art programming, Die Active a generation art collective program, adds life and colour into the city’s north downtown by painting murals with emerging artists across the city.

Local artist Kathleen Beda is one of the many faces behind the group’s recent mural on Cook Street.

“We are giving youth the opportunity to stay in the city and make it their own,” Beda said.

“We are teaching them ways to be involved in the community in a safe and healthy way, so that everyone can be involved and appreciate it.”

Beda added that the program allows youth to feel as though they’ve left their mark on the city, making it a bigger, beautiful and more sustainable.

Each year, a group of about 300 youth take part in Die Active, they learn about spray paint, and the best ways to decorate the community in a positive and exciting manner.

The Cook Street mural is a collaborative piece the artists have been working on this summer.

“We are teaching new youth how to paint different techniques as well as different ways to go about being involved in the community that way,” she said.

The youth will take their concepts and build them into the mural. It’s a collaboration of different youth minds and concepts reared together with direction from the main leaders to pull it into a full mural.

Each group has a few leaders as well as youth. There is always someone overseeing the art and giving youth a hand so they aren’t “dead in the water” on their own.

Beda said the youth outreach coordinator created Die Active because there’s a big need for fulfilling those creative minds in the city.

“We like to have that growth,” Beda said.

“Whoever comes learning one year the next year we will have them teaching and the year after that they might be rearing their own wall.”

Beda believes the city needs more art. She said culture is important, it’s who you are, it’s what matters to you, and it gives you a place within the city.

“I want it to be a larger community, so having these direct pictures on the wall immediately creates that engagement in giving back to the city.”