The last few weeks have been full of activity leading up to Holy Week at common cathedral and MANNA. Holy Week held many opportunities for the community to engage in creative activities, so there was a lot for me to learn. I spent the majority of my time in the last two weeks working with community members on two special projects, one of which I will discuss in this blog post.  The second will be detailed in my next blog post.

For the first project, I led community members at common art in painting a large backdrop for a community member’s Easter play, which he wrote at MANNA and enacted with help from Amanda Ludeking. This was such a lovely opportunity to collaborate across the programs and to bring art and drama therapy together for the community. Since it was my first time painting pieces for a set, for the sake of time and in order to include more painters, I sketched out  the setting of Jerusalem on large white paper ahead of time. Then community members worked together to paint the scene with newly-returned acrylic paints. I worked with the playwright and community members to pick colors for each section of the painting.

Painting the scenery got off to a great start with many folks eager to help. It was one of the first large, collaborative paintings I have been able to engage with at common art. I feel strongly about the benefits of working this way to engage folks in communication and creative problem solving. What I didn’t anticipate was the response and strong desire for folks to participate! In fact, so many people wanted to help that I often had to limit participation and rotate painters to maintain social distancing. This is something I learned for next time: to consider more ways to make the process adaptable to the requirements of social distancing. We also crafted a palm tree out of cardboard for the set. It was an exciting challenge to build Jerusalem in one day at common art!

On the Wednesday of Holy Week, the play was performed by the cast at common art. This drew a capacity audience of community members across common cathedral and MANNA. The play was a really moving event, which included some costumes and a Eucharist for the audience. The set allowed many to feel a sense of pride over their role in bringing the play to life! The set expanded opportunities for participation beyond the actors and facilitated co-creation across the community. It was truly beautiful to see the community so excited about the playwright’s work and their strong desire to support him.

This project taught me a lot about bringing group members together for one co-created product. In particular, this was a good reminder to quiet my inner-perfectionist and let this be the community’s vision of Jerusalem rather than mine alone. While I found myself having moments when I wanted the set to look a certain way, I had to remind myself that this was not just my vision of Jerusalem but the community’s vision. In the remainder of my time at common art I would like to explore more covid-safe opportunities for collaborative art making. I look forward to more experiences like this.

-Isabelle Olsson