Community Development in Action - Meet Flora!
CDLI is spotlighting Community Development in Action! Meet Flora!
CDLI has partnered with the City of Calgary Community Hubs Initiative to capture Community Development in Action. We recently spoke with community members about their experiences leading community projects through the Activate Greater Forest Lawn Grant.
Flora Johnson is an artist, a storyteller, and a teacher. She recently hosted an online arts & crafts workshop where she shared how to create Spirit Rattle Sticks. We chatted with Flora about her experience hosting this workshop and about her thoughts on community building.
What do you love about Greater Forest Lawn that you want the rest of Calgary to know about?
Greater Forest Lawn is a community of families. There’s some really hard working, good people here and if you get to know your neighbours they’re there for you, they’re helpful, there’s lots of sharing. It’s more real, friendlier. If you get involved with your community and get to know the people, it’s a lot of fun actually - lots of stuff to do.
One of Flora’s Handmade Rattles
Tell us a bit about yourself, your project, and what made you apply for the Hubs Activate grant?
I’m a retired B Pressure Welder and I’m an artist. I make a lot of things and I sell my art. So when I saw the opportunity for getting involved with the community, we were in a pandemic, and I came up with an idea - let’s make rattles. I realized when I did the research prior that almost every single culture has rattles so I tried to pick something that was fairly simple...where everybody, children, teenagers, adults, seniors, could all work on it.
Music speaks to people right? And it’s calming and the response I got from it, from one lady, how it impacted her, was phenomenal. She understood how you connect with yourself, your art and music, your culture. It was just really neat to be able to communicate and come together as a community.
What relationships/connections did you make through this project, and how did those connections help the project?
I can really tell you that I think it impacted everybody. I created friends off of this and then realized hey, they like doing that and we all have something in common...and we share events and also do Facebook, that was an important tool and still is, and I see their posts and we comment on each other’s stuff. And that’s how I learn what’s going on, and through the Alex Community Health Centre and through this grant, that’s how I met everybody.
How has being involved in community work through projects like yours helped develop your confidence and leadership skills? What knowledge & skills have you and others developed through this project?
Well I’m old. So, after a while, you get to my age, you start realizing what’s important. Sometimes, just getting involved is really, really important. I think this project taught me quite a bit because the younger generation is so savvy on computers and cameras. So it taught me a lot about that and now I’m getting good at Zoom and the camera and speakers, and so it taught me a lot. I feel a little bit more confident like, “Oh, I can do this.”
This wasn’t the first time that I’ve taught a class online, usually I teach classes in person, like paint night at the colleges and universities but we haven’t been able to do that anymore. Even if we have to do everything on Zoom, it’s okay, but I can tell you the difficulties of it - it took three of us to put all the kits together, I had to count and measure, so it was really time consuming for myself and my daughter and my husband. And then we had all these packages and had to load them and then meet everybody at a distance. It’s different. Whereas normally I would just bring all the supplies and then we’d be outside or in a boardroom or community room and we’d all work on the projects and I was able to help people hands on. So the downside of it is that you can’t really show them physically.
Usually it (making rattles) is a two day project. One day would be getting the material, cutting it, soaking it and then putting it in sand and letting it dry. Then the next day we take the sand out and put it all together.
Some people didn’t complete their project, it took some people a couple months but they kept going which was really neat, because I told them the stories that I learned when I was a child - the meaning of rattles in my culture. And when they shared with me some of their stories, I felt it in my heart. It was just beautiful.
Rattles Handmade by Flora and Her Family
“Beyond the action of teaching, it’s a connection and a sharing of yourself. The more we share, the more we learn from each other. I’m always learning and I learn from other people, even the children” ”
Given your experience, what is one step or action you recommend for others wanting to explore neighbourhood grant possibilities and engage in community work?
If a person wants to do the grant, I encourage them to really plan out their steps. Just do a practice run to get your stuff set up right, make sure you have a good plan. And you know, have fun. That’s the key right there - is to have fun with what you’re doing. Don’t stress because we’re all human and we make mistakes.
Not all grants are the same and I think if a person didn’t understand the grant, ask an expert, ask those questions.
Beyond the action of teaching, it's a connection and a sharing of yourself. The more we share, the more we learn from each other. I’m always learning and I learn from other people, even the children, I learn from.
In one word, what do you imagine for the future of your community?
Empowerment. Because that’s what we do for each other, right? We empower each other.