Inside Out in the neighborhood

Every couple days on my morning walk up Morse Hill road, I circle back through the Kildonan School campus. Hoping to get a job there this fall, I recently moved back into the area, into my home across the street from the large and now empty campus.  This August, the campus sits quiet and weeds grow in front of the building entryways. The sudden mid-summer announcement of the closing of the school has left the neighborhood guessing, and left me, a former and future hopeful teacher, in a state of hyper-dreamism where past memories, future visions and current truths are all braid together.

Two students, larger-than-life, with books the size of my car, peer at me as I pass. They are the ghostly remains of an art project initiated by Hunt, a Kildonan student who was inspired by a JR Ted talk, whose INSIDE OUT project encourages peoples from around the globe to express themselves. Hunt, a very generous dyslexic advocate, aimed to use JR’s INSIDE OUT project as a platform to raise dyslexia awareness and empower young people with dyslexia. Kildonan was a school with the focus to help kids with dyslexia express themselves through one-on-one tutoring and student driven projects.

Back in 2013, Hunt photographed every student on campus and worked with production managers from JR’s studio to paste the portraits to the driveway, the schoolhouse and the library. Still wheat-pasted on the side of the shuttered library six years later, the last two students are emblematic of how the art of the INSIDE OUT project created by the international social practicing post studio artist JR continues to give agency to the marginalized. I am hoping that the thousands of anxiety and academic suffering students this fall will find the support that they need.

Please check out the links above to hear JR talk about his projects, and to hear Hunt share his enthused participation in projects empowering kids in school.