On Wednesday, July 10, a group of youngsters from the Lac La Biche area learned the basics of candle making while connecting with their parents and guardians during ‘The Art of Conversation’ event, which was held at McArthur Place from 7-8:30 p.m.
The participants first picked colourful jars from a table set up inside the McArthur Place community hall. Once these jars had hot wax poured into them, wicks and then scents were added. Following this, the candles were put inside of a fridge to harden.
During the evening, there was also food and activities designed to light a spark between kids and the adults who had accompanied them for the evening. Later, once the candles had hardened, they were decorated.
Tialandis Guinard of Lac La Biche County FCSS led the workshop.
According to Christine Martin, a community outreach worker with Lac La Biche County FCSS, the Art of Conversation-which is a program for youth aged 10-18 and the adult persons in their lives-is a partnership between FCSS and Success Families-Successful Kids, which is part of the Mental Health Capacity Building Project with Northern Lights Public Schools.
The aim of the program, she explained, is to get youth and a special person in their life together to do some type of artwork together, while at the same time learning about how to keep a connection with each other as the child gets older.
“Sometimes communication and connection become more challenging as the young person starts to gain their own identity and interests, so it’s important for parents/caregivers to keep those lines of communication open,” Martin told Lakeland This Week. “This is a good place to learn and practise the skills of healthy connection while actually creating a piece of artwork while you’re at it.”
Martin continued by saying that The Art of Conversation has been held every summer since 2021. She added that the program was originally developed as a response to the pandemic and the fact that parents had been reporting that they realized with their kids being at home all the time, they didn’t really have the skills to community effectively with them.
“We realized that it would be a tough sell to get kids and parents to come in for a workshop on “communication skills” so we thought we would add the art piece to make it more appealing to everyone,” she said.
The Art of Conversation program runs for three weeks (July 10, 17, and 24), and features a different theme each week. While the July 10 session focused on candle making with Tialandis Guinard, there will be watercolour painting workshop with local teacher and artist Andrew Swainson on July 17 and Indigenous artwork with Sabrina Cardinal on July 24.