Young asylum seekers showcase art

"I’m always amazed at how quickly people dismiss the arts,” says Steve Norton, a pastor and film critic at Connect City Ministries, which is part of Mennonite Church Eastern Canada.

He joined young artists from families seeking asylum for the Resonate Art Exhibition at The Don on Danforth in Toronto on June 23.

A group of more than 40 gathered to view paintings, print photography, collages, film and musical performances. The art came out of a program run by Connect City at the Radisson Hotel Toronto East, a facility that has housed hundreds of asylum seekers since 2018. During the six-month program at the hotel, young people between 12 and 16 years of age gathered between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Saturdays to make art.

Connect City develops young leaders to serve the poor and forgotten as Jesus did. This has resulted in the birthing of unique expressions of church.

Connect City obtained government funding for the program. Colin McCartney, co-founder and director of Connect City, says the organization is used to doing things on very tight budgets. “But wow! When you get a government grant, it’s like we have money to actually do some amazing stuff,” he says.

“We proposed to do an arts program to empower the kids to share their voice, their experiences,” says McCartney, as he described the work involved in obtaining the government grant.

Connect City wanted to create a program that would recognize the voices and inherent value of people who come to Canada seeking refuge, especially the young people. “They’re important to us,” he adds. “That’s why [the program] is called Resonate.”

The extra money made it possible for the organizers to hire professional artists to teach the youth. It also made it possible to take the participants on field trips to the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Ed Mirvish Theatre for a live theatrical performance of Aladdin.

Norton, who has worked with youth for more than 30 years, says the particular group that was part of the program was the best he has ever worked with. “It was just phenomenal.”

Between 15 and 20 youths participate on a typical Saturday. Some had to drop out of the program as housing became available to their families and they moved out of the hotel, often with little notice.

Despite the transitory nature of the lives of many of these youth, Norton says the program was full every Saturday since it began in January. Connect City staff modified the program so that it would run on a monthly basis instead of a six-month period. Funding for the program runs out in early fall.

“We didn’t want kids to feel like they had to over-commit,” says Norton. Even if kids could only participate for one or two months, they got a “complete package.”

The exhibit included two short films that the young people wrote, filmed, edited and acted in. Both films—Clean up with Lazy Brother and Enough is Enough— drew laughter and applause from the audience at The Don.

When Connect City first introduced Resonate to the youth at the Radisson, Josiah Cheltenham went knocking door to door to tell families about the new initiative. He also met regularly with Norton and other staff to plan the arts program.

Cheltenham, 20, directs Connect City’s Unity Youth program. Two years ago, he arrived in Canada and began living at the Radisson with his mother.

They’d left Barbados so that his mother could escape domestic violence.

“When I first came to Canada, I was suffering from a little depression. I was trying to find an outlet,” says Cheltenham.

He began to work for Connect City as a volunteer in the summer of 2022. Once he obtained the necessary paperwork to gain employment in Canada, Connect City invited him to work full-time as a program director.

“I believe that because of my experience with the shelter [hotel], I have a unique sense of sight in terms of what the kids want and how they feel,” he says.

Cheltenham noticed that resources were lacking at the Radisson. Moreover, people who have been working to help asylum seekers for a long time suffer from exhaustion, especially when they’re not seeing desired results.

He took it upon himself to ensure Unity Youth would be a program where kids felt they could be themselves and “really be free.”

During the exhibit, Cheltenham rallied the program participants to perform a couple of songs they’d created themselves.

“They feel comfortable and excited to share their story with other people,” says Norton of the youth and their art exhibit. He says art is too easily dismissed as mere entertainment, when it is empowerment.

“You can’t put a price tag on that."