This holiday season, In The Orchard Programming for the Arts is launching its first community-wide art project called the Community Artistree. 

The Community Artistree revolves around the idea of celebrating youth, raising awareness about environmental preservation and community-building through arts and culture. The art installation involves bringing many different people from the community together to work on a common task together.

Together, we will create and raise a large holiday tree at Fonthill's Peace Park. The tree will be the symbol of life, renewal and our ever-lasting relationship to the environment. On this tree, we will hang decorations and ornaments that have been made by youth throughout the community at one of our many ornament-building workshops. 

Ornament-building workshops will take place at Seaway Mall Friday, November 25th and Saturday, November 26th (click here for details) as well as during our Holiday Jar-Making event that is being held Saturday, December 3rd (click here for details). If you would like to decorate an ornment to hang on the Community Artistree, please feel free to give the studio a call and we'd be happy to set up a time for you to come decorate a wood-slice ornament for the tree. 

It is important for us to acknowledge the generous support that we have received for this project to date. De Smitt Lumber and Beamer's Pro Hardware donated the wood necessary to construct the holiday tree and Short Hills Tree Service donated the wood needed to create the wood-slice ornaments. The Town of Pelham provided the use of Peace Park through an in-kind donation. The Salvation Army kindly donated many house-hold items and jewellery pieces - as well as paint provided by Benjamin Moore Paints - that were used to decorate the ornaments. A big thank you also goes to the Ministry of Ontario's Training, Colleges and Universities Job Creation Program, the Ontario Arts Council, The Seaway Mall, M & M Meat Shops, the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the John Howard Society and Youth Resources Niagara. And of course, the tree would not have been possible without the generous donation of time and hard work required to design and construct the tree by Mark McGlaushin.