The words are scrawled across the collarbone of the aged department store mannequin: “Use me or abuse me.” If that invitation isn’t compelling enough, a more poetic plea is written on her chest: “Let your imagination release your imprisoned possibilities.” Several anonymous artists have answered the call. The mannequin is naked, wigless, chopped at the waist, and gloriously painted.
She’s propped in the textile area of the 6,000-square-foot space in downtown Toronto known as Sketch. The loft is filled with collages, paintings, banners, photographs, sculptures, and paint splatters on the floor.
Billed as “a working art initiative for youth ages 15-29 who are street-involved, homeless, and at-risk,” Sketch is a place where simple acts of creative play lead to healing, growth, and spiritual transformation.
“Youth who experience street life can be so heavily encumbered with hurt, shame, confusion, and the oppression of poverty, that they often first need to have a sense of safety and restoration, long before they can begin to acknowledge issues of spirituality and faith,” says Sketch founder Phyllis Novak.
Each year, Sketch welcomes more than 600 street-involved youth through workshops, open studio drop-ins, skill-building intensives, internships, and community events.
Michael, 23, moves confidently about the Sketch kitchen, speaking with pride of the day’s menu; chicken, scalloped potatoes, and squash soup. But he was fearful when he first arrived at Sketch, just over a year ago.
“I was dealing with a lot of anxieties because of my past,” he says. He has grown “spiritually stronger” through his cooking, painting, and photography, he says. “I now have a greater sense of what I believe and how I can express that.”
Despite the trauma and violence these kids still face on the streets, Sketch has one of the lowest incident rates of any drop-in program in the city. Why? Staff have several theories. “Part of it is that there’s this invitation to be new every day,” says artist coordinator Kerry Boileau. “You’re not necessarily held to what you’ve done [in the past]. You can choose a new path.”
“Just by walking into this space, people feel valued,” agrees drop-in coordinator Julian Diego. “We try to let people know that it’s their space. And people have fun here. So I think they value their access to it, in a way that they become very protective of the space.”
Novak launched Sketch in 1996, with support from the Christian community, to be “an authentic demonstration of the presence and love that Christianity truly means to bear to the world through Christ.” Years of coordinating drama and visual arts at Toronto’s Yonge Street Mission had taught her that when “someone makes art, incredible transformation can take place in their lives.”
“There is a softening that occurs during the art-making process,” she reflects. “Just being around it causes all of us to drop our guard a little, become younger within, and more able to receive kindness and love.”
Such is the norm at Sketch. Youth may come out of curiosity or for the free meals, but they stay because they find something there that they haven’t found anywhere else.
Spewky, 20, has been living on the streets since he was 17. “Sketch changed my life completely,” he says. “It’s why I wake up every morning. It’s like a family here.”
Sketch board chair John Andras observes, “You’ve got to remember that their lives may have been very bleak. Street life is a hard life. They’re constantly rejected. Then they come to a place where they’re totally accepted for who they are. And they’re accepted for being valuable, contributing individuals that can succeed and create. It’s through that process of creation that a spark ignites, starts to kindle the soul, and a searching begins.”
Then, as a certain painted mannequin affirms, imprisoned possibilities are released and souls are set free.
Learn more at www.Sketch.ca
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