Acadia Creative Placemaking Collective has been engaged in arts and community work in Acadia since 2024. The collective is made up of neighbours, artists and people who want to contribute to building our community.
Placemaking in the Community Garden
Colours of Community - 2026
Inspired by the ink and paint created out of the Marigold Project, Colours of Community is a botanical watercolour palette created from plants in the Acadia Community Garden. Plants include marigold, iris, raspberry, and apple bark. Materials were sustainably harvested or harvested from cuttings, prunings and divisions of plants in the garden. We then drew out the dye molecules in each plant, concentrated them, and dried and ground them. We mixed up a watercolour binder with gum arabic, honey, and cloves, and ground the pigment into watercolour. We created a limited edition palette, featuring some of the colours that make our community so vibrant. The names of the colours were chosen to reflect the beauty and strength of our community: magical marigold, resolute raspberry, amiable apple, inclusive iris & iron, imaginative iris. This palette was a collaboration between ACPC members Sharon Fortowsky and Skye Louis.
Garden Imagery - 2025-present
In 2025/2026, four members of ACPC - Waleska Cueto, Anne Azucena, Jay Laya, and Skye Louis - developed placemaking imagery for the Acadia Community Garden. The resulting design was created for painting on surfaces such as container gardens, walls, and tables. This work was funded by a Calgary Arts Development artist grant.
Long Table Harvest Gathering | Summer 2025
This very special gathering invited gardeners, artists and other neighbours to gather at the long table in the garden, celebrating community and cocreation. Community members came together and volunteered to repair the wooden table, and hand print and sew a custom tablecloth for the long table in the garden. The cloth was hand printed using inks made from garden plants including marigold and dandelion. Food was served on handmade plates designed with impressions of garden plants. We shared tea, garden harvest, and sweets from local bakeries and restaurants.
Acadia Drawing Club | Winter 2025 - present
The Acadia Drawing Club meets weekly to spend time together and hone our drawing skills. During the winter, the group meets in the community lounge at the ARC (Acadia Recreation Centre). In the summer, the group meets outdoors in the Acadia Community Garden. This group was started with support from the City of Calgary Community Social Work Neighbourhood Grants. We continue to meet, organized by Waleska Cueto and the enthusiastic volunteer work of Drawing Club members. It’s free to join this welcoming group of art lovers.
The Marigold Project | 2024-present
To begin the Marigold Project, we planted marigolds in the new dye garden bed at the Acadia Community Garden. We collected the spent blossoms, and asked gardeners from the Acadia Community Garden and Art Society and neighbourhood to also drop off petals and blooms. We used the petals to dye cloth and make ink and watercolour paint, and we saved the seeds. We created an “Acadia Community” seed mix, and handpainted the seed packages with marigold ink. We placed the finished seed packages into the local seed library for gardeners to plant the following spring, and shared them through workshops and other community spaces. We also used the marigold ink to screenprint drawings onto a special tablecloth for the long table in the garden.
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Topics included clay hand building, the soil-food web, botanical dyeing with garden plants, papermaking with garden plants, soil testing, botanical cyanotype, hot composting, and screenprinting with botanical inks. Workshops were offered in partnership with the Acadia Community Garden & Art Society, with financial support from City of Calgary Community Social Work Neighbourhood Grants.
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The roots of the Creative Placemaking Collective began with a small garden bed beside the shed in the Acadia Community Garden. Sharon and Skye, two local artists with an interest in deepening our relationship with plants and the garden, began growing several botanical dye plants. These included marigold, calendula, goldenrod, hollyhock, scabiosa, and sunflower. Skye experimented with dyeing fabric and Sharon experimented with papermaking in partnership with these plants. We also created charcoal pencils, watercolours, and crayons with plant materials.