Stopgaps and Gems is a community arts project created together with a group of recently arrived in Canada youth to explore improvisation in everyday life, especially as it pertains to adapting and thriving in a new country where unexpected situations are constant. After a number of story sharing sessions, a series of amulets were collaboratively designed into order to capture the group’s shared-knowledge and resilience. These amulets were then given by the youth to passersby in downtown Guelph as a way to share/swap stories and as a strategy for opening new possibilities for engaging with the public realm.

A collaborative paper, written with Dr. Elizabeth Jackson about this project can be found here.

DodoLab gratefully acknowledges project funding and support from the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation and in-kind support from Immigrant Services Guelph-Wellington.