Creative Drop-In Spaces

The Creative Drop-In Spaces program was a casual, drop-in art program took place outside the Prairie Harm Reduction Drop-In Centre and Safe Consumption Site in Saskatoon. Piloted in Feburary 2023, in partnership with St. Paul’s Hospital Foundation Healing Arts program, Prairie Harm Reduction (PHR), and Saskatoon Community Youth Arts Programming (SCYAP), we explored the potential of art as a harm reduction tool for health and healing. The pilot project was also solely funded using individual monthly donations from Common Weal Champions: community members from across Saskatchewan.

With the help of our two contracted lead artists, Terri Belisle and Candice Grosenick, we brought a wagon of art supplies from St. Paul’s Hospital to the PHR drop-in centre, where we provided creative mentorship to people accessing other services at the drop-in centre. Marlessa Wesolowski, the resident artist at St. Paul’s Hospital, provided valuable mentorship and support throughout the program. These sessions fostered creativity in various artistic disciplines like poetry, creative writing, beading, crafting, drawing, and painting.

Starting in 2024, interdisciplinary artists, Kamisha Alexson and Dash Reimer, began to work with community on the program; Common Weal Community Arts provided art supplies and creative mentorship to community members accessing services and fostering creativity in various art forms, like poetry, hip-hop, collage, zine-making, drawing, and painting. The artists distributed art kits and spent time listening, learning, and connecting with the community: the response has been overwhelmingly positive. The workshops culminated in the creation of a collaborative memorial star blanket on August 31, 2024, as part of International Overdose Awareness Day. As part of a community street fair organized by Prairie Harm Reduction, community members were given diamonds to decorate to honour loved ones lost to opioid poisoning. The event raised awareness and advocated for additional resources to support our neighbours who are living with addiction on the streets. Alexson and Reimer arranged these diamonds to create the star blanket, spanning four 36’’ x 36’’ canvases. We discovered early in the process that some diamonds would need to be quartered to accommodate the demand, a heart-breaking reality for the Pleasant Hill community after years of toxic drug supply and rampant homelessness. The finished artwork was permanently installed inside the Drop-In Centre in October 2024 and is titled Return to the Stars. Local elder, George Laliberte, shared wisdom and blessings at the installation ceremony; Alexson drummed, sang, and spoke about the multi-generational impact overdose trauma has had on her family and our community; Reimer, the current Youth Poet Laureate of Saskatchewan, shared a poem by Mary Oliver about the heavy weight of grief, highlighting the need for mutual care and compassion.

Our goal with Creative Drop-In Spaces is to remove barriers to participation by bringing programming to a place that already serves as a busy and essential community hub.  We endeavour to meet the community where they are and support them in pursuing and participating in artistic programming. This has meant embracing flexibility and adaptability in the timing and structuring of our workshops, and anticipating and responding to challenges like overdoses/administering naloxone, internal community conflict, inclement weather, and open drug use. Through upcoming evaluation and community consultation, we will determine the next shape/season of the program, ensuring that community agency dictates our direction.

Creative Drop-In Spaces concluded in the summer of 2025, after expanding its scope to host workshops not only at the Prairie Harm Reduction Drop-In Centre, but also at Kii Kinaahk Village—a supportive housing community that operates using a harm reduction model for individuals with complex needs, living with addiction and chronic homelessness. Residents and staff worked with the artists to create 3D butterflies to honour loved ones who have passed from opioid poisoning, and to make multimedia self-portraits. The population living at Kii Kinaahk Village are often older than community members who participate in programming at the Prairie Harm Reduction Drop-In Centre, giving us the opportunity to engage with new folks, many who have been living with addiction their whole lives. 

We learned a lot over the past year of workshops. For example, producing workshops outside the PHR Drop-In Centre can be challenging; an open air environment makes it hard for the artists to manage the space and fully engage with community participants. We also noticed that the self-portrait exercise was being interpreted by community members differently than the artists assumed they would: many folks wanted their photo taken, especially in groups, which suggests to us that community members want an opportunity to be seen. This engagement is encouraging us to look into bringing a professional photographer to the drop-in space to consensually document a population that is often encouraged to be silent and remain hidden.

Community members responded to the workshops with gratitude, saying that more programs like this are needed for unhoused community members. Many people wanted to talk while working on their butterflies, sharing stories and memories, and processing their feelings with the artists while creating.