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Welcome to David LeRue, new CIRM member!

David LeRue is a at Concordia University, working on ways in which sites in the city heavily invested by citizens could benefit from community-based art education methods. We are lucky to welcome him at CIRM, as a regular member and to mark the occasion, we asked him a few questions about his research and Montréal.

You apply community-based art education methods to experiences in Montréal. Can you tell us more about what you are studying?

Sure! I am interested in how the principles of community-based art and art education can be developed and applied as methods for studying urban space, and how artmaking can reveal insights into the dynamics and relationships in space. My doctoral dissertation developed a participatory classroom method called community-based research creation where participants made artworks over the course of an eight-week class. The class took place in Pointe-Saint-Charles, and balanced skill building and reflection on the past, present, and future of the neighborhood which I captured through observations and interviews. I was interested in how artmaking could stand on its own as a longform testimony, inspired by the longform testimony of oral history interviews. Unlike an interview, however, creating an artwork often takes many weeks and iterations which necessitates more prolonged engagement than a 30–90-minute interview.

The work I am planning as a CIRM member was developed through a planned postdoctoral fellowship that would have studied the applicability of participatory arts-based methods to applied interdisciplinary contexts, looking at how artmaking could enhance social sustainability. Participation often occurs through the public planning meeting, while sustainability in practice seems to focus on the economic and environmental over the social. If used properly, I found artmaking can be an incredible venue to envision places as they are and imagine what more just futures might look like. In this project, I wanted to develop findings in my doctoral dissertation into something more applied in an interdisciplinary context. Using participatory workshops in the city that engage sites of public interest (discussed below), I want to study how participatory artmaking can meaningfully inform perspectives of space.

Presently, my startup funds are presently being adapted to study place-based fieldwork for artist-teachers, looking for connections between personal artmaking and curriculum development. I have a background as a painter, and one component of my dissertation involved personal plein air landscape painting that was conducted alongside my research that informed some of the thinking and lessons I brought into my classrooms.

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You are planning to analyze two sites that are a kind of new incarnation of the potential for citizen participation in Montréal: the and . Why these sites, in particular?

I narrowed in on these sites because they represent urban democracy in action through relatively open-ended, bottom-up participation. At Bâtiment 7, some have observed that there is animosity between the adjacent neighborhoods, and when I was an active member, public engagement was often a struggle. Nevertheless, many neighbors were patrons of the bar and grocery store and generally supportive of the project. Despite my direct involvement during my Ph.D., Bâtiment 7 was more of a background character in my research that was discussed but not directly addressed. But I was curious about perceptions of the project, and in the coming research want to consider how a site like this impacts a neighborhood. I admit I am not as versed in the day-to-day dynamics of the Champ des possibles, but I have narrowed in on it due to its relatively high profile as an activist victory and have followed its development through the years.

In activist and some academic circles, there is an assumption that sites like Bâtiment 7 and the Champ des possibles provide a direct way be involved in the city, and that more projects like this would lead to more citizen action that would lead to more citizen needs being met. Certainly Pointe-Saint-Charles has seen numerous citizen victories over the years as evidenced by high rates of social housing and numerous social solidarity organizations. But many of these sites have missions that directly provide services, whereas both Bâtiment 7 and the Champ des possibles have open-ended missions that are focused on general empowerment. I want to study who is engaging with these sites, and what do the broader publics think of them. Do they foster civic engagement, and if so, to what ends?

Another component is the institutional sustainability of these sites, which rely on thousands of underpaid or volunteer hours each year to keep the doors open. As one of my mentors observed, these sites often get lots of attention in their formation, but that enthusiasm often wanes once the project is off the ground. What happens when the sites are won, and these projects move from ‘winning’ the spaces to maintaining them in practice? This is where frameworks of social sustainability come into play. Though sustainability was all the rage for a while in education and urban studies, it seemed like two of the three prongs—economic and environmental—are prioritized over social sustainability. In a country like Canada where real estate is rising much faster than incomes (median house prices are in the mid $700,000’s), there are several green and financially sustainable developments that are too expensive, too small, and otherwise unsuitable for most families. What would socially sustainable development look like? While I am not optimistic that community engaged artmaking can put a dent in 40 years of housing cost increases, I do hope that it can help articulate what a city would look like if developments prioritized residents myriad needs.

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Why is it relevant and important to develop community-based art education methods to understand urban changes?

Answering this question requires a roundabout response. In my initial doctoral project, I had been planning an oral history and arts-based research study of the developments on the Peel Basin, which are federally held former industrial lands at the edge of downtown and Pointe-Saint-Charles that in 2019 were facing two competing proposals. On one side, Billionaire Stephen Bronfman wanted to extend the high-end shopping, condominiums, and office space that had risen from Griffintown. The jewel of this development was a baseball stadium that would house a revived Montréal Expos baseball franchise. The other was by community activist organization , who proposed building thousands of units of public housing, a high school (which was overlooked in the redevelopment of Griffintown), a trade school, and rent-controlled retail space. I planned to conduct oral history interviews gathering perceptions of the developments the history of the space, and what they would like to see in a future development. I would then represent these views by making landscape paintings reflecting the past, present, and future of the city. Oral testimony gives us one way of understanding how space and memory converge, and I wanted to see how the multiple and possibly contradictory views of this space could be represented visually.

I paused this project when the pandemic hit, and to pass the time I began teaching online to adults at the , a community art school in the Pointe. I drew on my research to develop classes that integrated landscape drawing and theory to the city. I based the class on Kevin Lynch’s framework of , which holds that cities develop cohesively understood images based on the individually held images of citizens. Projects asked participants to reflect on and represent their own image of the city visually. The class was initially more focused on the technical aspects of drawing, but there was ample interest in curiosity in the conceptual components. Impressed by the depth of engagement, I was inspired to develop a final project. These projects equally exceeded my wildest expectations, with participants making insightful drawings, paintings, sound works, and even .

While research was the furthest thing from my mind at the start of them, these classes showed me that participants in the community classroom could represent their own views of the city without the need for me to do it for them. This insight completely upended my initial project, which led me to theorize this experience into the community-based research-creation method mentioned earlier. When I ran a similar class for my doctoral study, I found equally compelling—but different—projects that explored concepts in the city. The unpredictability of artmaking makes it an exciting addition to inductive, community-based study.

I think the reason community art education is effective for urban settings is because changes in place are usually aesthetic in form. In a neighborhood like Griffintown, it is easy to visualize the changes with both before and after photos, and the way that past spatial uses are preserved through façades and other aesthetic markers. In post-industrial spaces, there are layers of elements that are built up (and destroyed) over time. People change, meanings change, industries change, but the built environment lags. The elements of the city seem remarkably effective at jogging memories and stoking discourse, especially since one cannot help but experience the built environment if they live within it. Some authors have written at length about community art education as empowering social change, but I find it to be a bit more subtle and reflective rather than an effective tool for direct action.

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You are involved in the community, notably as a teacher at the Pointe Saint-Charles Art School. How does your community involvement shape your research program?

The community classroom is a magical place that has pushed my growth as a teacher. In formal education settings, (university, college, k-11) there is something else that hangs over the classroom—the class may be mandatory and thus not someone’s preferred subject, there may be institutional demands on grading, a class may be tied to certain outcomes, and the class may be mandatory, meaning that engagement is tied to the degree requirements. I love teaching University courses, but I always feel these other demands hovering over classrooms. When I began teaching regularly in community, it felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders and the classroom could truly be about discussion and making. It is for these reasons I found the community classroom was an exciting space for research: With no directed outcomes and grades, the class can instead be directed by the passions of the teacher and the students.

Engagement in community classes is voluntary and interest-based, with participants joining classes because of an interest in the material and staying because they find it worth their time. Students can and do stop showing up if a class is not meeting their expectations, and as a teacher I feel I must be at the top of my game. Part of my work in the faculty of Art Education is working with pre-service teachers who are staging at community sites, and one of the things I consistently point out that participants are making the decision to spend their free time with you when they could be doing anything else. This is a tremendous responsibility, but also a tremendous opportunity to push boundaries and try new things. Many of my lessons have become more inventive, experiential, and useful, but I could only experiment like this because I had the trust of my students, and the freedom community classrooms provide. In university and other formal settings, I find the conventions lead to different kinds of responses from students and expectations around what a classroom is. And while I do work to bring the same passion to formal settings, I also feel like I could try less and retain classroom engagement (not that I advocate for this!).

This engagement is also critical for the purposes of research. The class I taught for my doctoral dissertation met for eight weeks for three hours each time (with an optional three-hour session each week), which means each participant was participating for at least 24 hours over the course of the study. I had 20 adults thinking through and with my research questions, combining for nearly 480 hours engagement and reflection. This is a rare and privileged opportunity for any researcher to have this kind of time, but I do not feel like I could have retained this engagement without the course content being worthwhile in some way (and indeed, some decided early on it was not for them). It is a tremendous opportunity, but this comes with equally tremendous responsibility.

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You are also a painter, how does painting Montréal give you a better understanding of the city?

Painting was my way in to thinking about cities. In my undergrad and my MFA, I was interested in landscape theory, and how perceptions of place and space change over time. I was painting cities, but I was also painting other built spaces such as stadiums and built interiors. With these projects, I was interested in how spatial meanings change over time, and projects dealt with the ideology of built interiors such as condominiums, stadiums and sport, and urban renewal through construction sites.

In my more recent projects, I have taken to plein air painting outdoors, which ties more directly to my research. In my dissertation, I made dozens of small paintings from tiny mint tins (inspired by the Instagram artist ) around the Pointe, which informed both my thinking about the space and some of the projects in the classroom study. I have not thought this out extensively yet, but I am presently working on a project thinking through what artmaking such as plein air painting offers to spatial forms of study.

The best place to see my work is Instagram now, . I admit I have not given as much care to keeping my paintings online during grad school but hope to have a working website again soon! I love the turns that my career has taken, but I have dreams of once again painting more regularly.

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A perfect day in Montréal?

Breakfast at Jacquie and France in Verdun, followed by a walk along the river to the Rapids Park and Bird sanctuary. Later in the day, I would take the metro to my studio in Mile End to paint, taking a break with a friend in a park with the requisite amount peanuts and cheese to make a picnic. If the day had four more hours, maybe I would go out to the Botanical Gardens…

In truth, I don’t really think I could have a bad day unless it is snowing. What I love about Montréal is that there are always inexpensive things to do.

3 must-see symbols?

As much as I could use my degree(s) to state a full-fledged critique of ruin-gazing, I still have a soft spot for unkept and informal areas of the city. Urban renewal is necessary, but spaces and places where the space is disordered always provides ample visual interest and appeals to my sensibilities as a landscape painter.

Beside my studio building in Mile End, both beside and alongside the train tracks (on both sides of the fence…) that is always a delight to visit. I would argue the garden does not really have a dimension, as his sculptures can be found all through the neighborhood.

Silo #5 is perhaps one of Montréal’s most inordinate architectures. It is on some of the most prime real estate in a central, water-adjacent location, and yet it stands as a decaying accidental monument to Montréal’s industrial past. It is not enough just to see it—I think it is most effective to come across it organically. It is huge and menacing, a wonder that it was ever built in the first place. One of my favourite responses to the space is the , which turned the silo into an instrument.

The on Rue Sebastopol is a must-see for anyone interested at looking at the city. It is one of the most stunning views of the skyline, the rail yard, and the industrial / post-industrial elements that are still adjacent to the city core. It is extra special to see it at night, sunset, and sunrise. When I worked more often at the art school (which is located around the corner), I would often walk over and have a coffee between classes and draw.

Favorite neighbourhood?

I love Verdun, but I also enjoy neighborhoods along the Lachine Canal. I appreciate them both because they both have ample lounging space along waterways.

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Selected bibliography in art education and participatory art-based research.

• Lawton, P. H., Walker, M. A., & Green, M. (2019). Teachers College Press.

This book is a bit more project focused (and America-centric), but provides a nice introduction to conducting projects in community and conducting participatory arts-based research.

• Loveless, N. (2019). Duke University Press.

A great crash course in research-creation, the Canadian title for arts-based research. Loveless talks about applied approaches to merging dual loves of artmaking and research, and provides some of the philosophical underpinnings of research-creation.

• Leavy, P. (2022). Guilford Publications.

More of a methods book (and not one that I recommend necessarily reading cover to cover), but aspects of this have proven useful in laying out and considering participatory arts-based research, especially when combining other methods.

• McFee, J. K., & Degge, R. M. (1980).

Art educator June King McFee was active in the 60’s – 90’s for urging art teachers to use the spaces and places that students are familiar with to develop meaningful curriculum to students. This was informative to developing my approaches to the city.

• Wolcott, H. F. (2005). Altamira Press.

This book is largely based on ethnographic fieldwork, but as an artist I find myself returning to it because of Wolcott equating what it means to create art, and what it means to do ethnography in the field. I have certainly taken the art part much more literally than he intended, but it has proven generative and taking a more liberated approach to my research about place and space.

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