To kick-off a series of events organized throughout March to celebrate International Women's Day, city staff unveiled a temporary art installation in St. Albert Place on March 1.
The installation, which will adorn the walls of city hall until March 31, explores local women's experiences of food insecurity, how St. Albert's Food Bank is overwhelmingly used by women, and the barriers to independence many women in the community face.
“We wanted to move beyond the the, 'Hey, women are so resilient, women are strong,' and really look at the barriers women, especially diverse women, face,” said Leanne MacMillan, a community development coordinator with the City.
“Art sometimes can bypass the brain and go straight to the heart, so we were trying to look for something that wasn't preachy, that wasn't going to tell people what to do, but let people look at it and explore it and do their own thinking around it,” she said.
MacMillan explained that herself and Suzan Krecsy, the executive director of the St. Albert Food Bank, provided the artist behind the piece, Nadia Dzyakava, with examples of various reasons why local women are the leading demographic to access the food bank, as well as quotes of lived experiences of multiple local women.
“Currently, 89 per cent of the clients we serve are women,” Krecsy said in an email, adding that poverty, experiences of intimate partner violence, and lack of child support are some of the main factors behind the statistic.
“If they have fled a violent situation they are generally not going to see any help from their abuser so they have to start over,” she said. “Some women have not worked outside the home and are then challenged to find a job for starters and then finding one that pays enough to cover all the bills.”
“It’s exhausting to be constantly worried about how the rent will be paid and the kids fed and the whole weight of those responsibilities are on their shoulders alone.”
Lauren Seal, St. Albert's poet laureate, also read a commemorative original poem during the unveiling event.
In an interview on Feb. 27, Seal told The Gazette that when she went to write the poem, words felt inadequate.
“I took that feeling and I wrote a poem (that) ended up being about how just using words and providing these women and really anyone in such a situation where the food bank is one of their last hopes (with just words) is so inadequate,” Seal said.
“Words coming from people who could help them will never be enough, and will never do enough.”
MacMillan said she hopes St. Albertans will take the time see the installation and try to understand the complexity of the situation that many local women are living through.
“We really want people who don't have these kinds of life experiences to walk in someone elses' shoes, to really try to understand what it'd be like for these things to be happening, and then we want people to hear a call of action,” she said.
“It's going to take all of us, men, women, non-binary folks, to change these systemic injustices.”
To see more coverage of International Women's Day, see pages 24 to 27.
