The Doors of Hope installation will be located on the University of St. Michael’s College campus and will contain 140 doors produced by Catholic students from the Greater Toronto Area.
First held in Paris in 2002, Nuit Blanche, or Sleepless Night, is a dusk till dawn outdoor urban art exhibit which brings contemporary art into public spaces. The Toronto event, which is free to attend, will begin in the evening on Oct. 5 and continue until the sun rises on Oct. 6 across the city’s downtown core.
“If you look at it there are kids from kindergarten to Grade 12 that are going to be represented,” said Maria Tavares, a consultant with the Toronto Catholic District School Board who led the project with teacher John Notting from Mary Ward High School. “It is all about exposure to them and it will be something that they are never ever ever going to forget. The most amazing aspect about it is that they won’t realize how big this event is until that very night when they experience it for the first time; it has the potential to change their lives in so many ways.”
Nuit Blanche will be the second major event for the Doors of Hope. The first, the Catholic Charities 100th Anniversary Dinner, was held in May and served as the catalyst which gave birth to the project.
Last October Tavares was approached by Mary Pen, a consultant hired by Catholic Charities, to help celebrate its 100 years of service.
“She wanted youth to get involved in something that would be creative,” said Tavares. “My first thoughts about this project was about who I would share this project with. In speaking with Mary she let me know that Catholic Charities doesn’t only service people in Toronto but people in the Greater Toronto Area like Durham Region, York Region and Dufferin-Peel.
“(John and I) thought, ‘Oh my God those are our Catholic boards, they are part of our family, let’s get them involved.’ ”
During these early conversations which saw the number of participants grow, the scope of the target audience also expanded as the words nuit blanche began to be a regular phrase in their discussions.
While the project’s physical presence rapidly evolved, the message that art serves the community by providing hope remained constant.
“The whole message behind the Doors of Hope is hope,” said Tavares. “There is always a hope that (students) can do something great in their community ... (and) for students to learn that artistic expression is something that is necessary to our well being as a society is highly important.”
Denzelle Berroa, a Grade 9 student at St. Joseph’s College School, worked on two doors last year while attending St. Mary’s Elementary School. As a life-long hobby artist, Berroa knows the power of art when it comes to instilling and protecting hope. “It is therapeutic because a lot of the times with certain feelings that I have I’ll go and paint or draw something,” she said.
“For students they can think of things that bring them down in their life and then with this they can put in their own ideas to give them hope.”
And it wasn’t just students who were empowered with hope through the Doors of Hope project.
“This whole project started in October (2012) and it was a time when my dad was facing his passing,” said Tavares, who worked on three doors with students at St. Josaphat Catholic School. “I didn’t know if I was going to be able to carry this through but because of how involved I was with the people from Catholic Charities and the belief that I had in this project, it gave me hope to move forward. Being involved with students gave me hope that healing is possible if you do it together.”
Those who visit the installation during Nuit Blanche will be encouraged to scribble their own message of hope onto the backs of the doors. Those messages of hope will make their way to the Where Faith Meets Pedagogy conference to be held Oct. 24 to 26.