Journey to Hope’s adult chapter and their youth chapter brought the community together in Crescent Park on June 11th to appreciate art, support local organizations, and promote awareness and prevention of suicide.  

Journey to Hope’s motto is to raise hope through suicide prevention and awareness.  

The local students in the youth chapter did just that by bringing their creative skills to life in the Crescent Park amphitheater.  

“For me, it means I can help other people who are struggling, who are not mentally stable enough to be on their own and being there to support them openly and get more people aware of what’s actually happening to our youth,” says Brooke Adkins, a 12th-grade student at Peacock Collegiate and member of Journey to Hope’s youth chapter.  

She feels that this event is a great way to connect to the community, “This is just another way of getting us out there (with) more people getting connected and getting involved, getting to buy our art and support what we’re doing,” she says,  

Students from Riverview Collegiate, Central Collegiate, and Peacock Collegiate came together to create unique art pieces like paintings, sculptures, and home decorations to sell at the festival. There was also a Silent Auction Art Sale of a collection generously donated by the Gibbs family. 

The event also invited people to get creative themselves with rock painting and button making which was sponsored and supported by Moose Jaw Pride and Journey to Hope member Cole Ramsey. 

There was also a Quilt Raffle for a quilt named ‘Autumn Leaved’ created and donated to Journey to Hope by Joyce Aitkens. 

As well as an open mic that featured songs and poetry readings by Journey to Hope youth and a local artist named Greg. 

In total, the students sold $630.95 worth of art and all of the proceeds from the students' art pieces and the art from the Gibbs family went back to Journey to Hope. The home decorations that were made by students from Central Collegiate raised $173 that will go towards Square One Community. 

However, the main event of the festival was the unveiling of a student-made mural that was sponsored and funded by Project 104 and the Moose Jaw Police Service.  

“This is a real collaboration between Journey to Hope and the youth because (the mural is) very much in memory of anyone who’s died by suicide. We’ve invited people to share names of people that they’ve lost by suicide and so it’s very much a memorial and an inspiration and a work of art and heart,” says Della Ferguson, Chair of Journey 2 Hope.  

The mural is a mosaic in the shape of a butterfly, matching the Journey2Hope logo. The body of the butterfly is a colon which represents a famous quote from Amy Bleuel being ‘A semicolon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence, but chose not to. The author is you and the sentence is your life’.  

The butterfly’s wing is made up of mosaic pieces made by the students with inspirational quotes on each piece.  

Police Chief Rick Bourassa attended the festival for the unveiling and told Discover Moose Jaw that the mural is also a part of an 8-year-long project to tackle unwanted graffiti around the city.  

“From a police perspective we were looking at graffiti removal and graffiti prevention and from a school’s perspective they were looking at giving students opportunities to be creative,” says Bourassa, “We were able to bring together a plan to have the students be very creative and develop art work that would then be put up around the city where there have been graffiti issues.” 

Bourassa adds that since these murals have started going up around the city, no new graffiti has appeared in those areas.  

The mosaic mural that was unveiled at the festival will be going up in Crescent Park in July.