Stream of Dreams: Watershed education through community art

 

Creating a Community Art Legacy

ECO-EDUCATION through community art helps people understand their connections to water and to make changes to protect streams, rivers, lakes and the ocean. Stream of Dreams murals are CALLS TO ACTION to take care of water!

In the City of Burnaby, in 1998, someone dumped toxic material into a storm drain. It killed everything in Byrne Creek, including 5,000 fish. Long-time area resident Louise Towell was horrified. Then inspiration by way of a wooden fence mural near the Broadway Skytrain station struck. The Stream of Dreams was born. 

Louise knew what she wanted to see on the fence. Bring those fish back to life, symbolically, by making 5,000 wooden fish, have them painted by local children, and put them on the fence to tell all who pass bythat there is a creek in the neighbourhood.

By Rivers Day, September 2000, the first 1,300 painted fish, painted by students at Clinton, Stride and Edmonds Elementary Schools, were attached to the fence along a painted blue wavy streak. Before long the Stream of Dreams program was invited into other watersheds to help educate other communities about their local streams and to share the dream of healthy creeks and the beauty of community art.

TO LEARN MORE: To read the complete story posted on the Water Bucket website, click on Stream of Dreams: Watershed education through community art