Feature writing: Art in the Fraser Valley

One of the things that invariably gets overlooked in society is the importance of art. Yes, it’s important in its capacity to reach a vast number of people on an emotional and intellectual level, it’s important insofar as it represents aesthetic exploration, and yes it’s important because it’s the real and tangible result of someone’s accumulated experiences. There’s nothing more exhilarating than to walk up to any work of art and consider that this came out of someone else.

Above all, however, art is important because it creates community. It enables dialogue. At least, that was what I found as a result of my exploration into the community of artists at UFV and the city of Abbotsford. What started as an inquiry into how students could go about displaying their work at the in-house gallery at UFV turned into a larger piece which detailed the journeys of student artists and the resources available to them, which was published as a feature in The Cascade.

On a more personal note, the writing of this feature broke new ground for me as a writer working in arts journalism. I’d written articles before and done research for them, but I hadn’t yet pulled together a series of sources on a single topic and coalesced them into an engaging, straightforward read. Though challenging, the process of writing the feature, (like all mountains climbed) served only to further stoke my appetite for long-form community journalism in the field of art. As a result, I’m looking forward to diving into topics of interest with more detail in the future.

Click here to read Art in the Fraser Valley online at The Cascade

Let me know what you think! Are there accessible galleries in your community? Were or are there resources like these available to you in post-secondary institutions?