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St. Lawrence
Unity Project
BY MAXIME BOST-BROWN ’17
S
T. LAWRENCE UNIVERSITYSTUDENTS, STAFF, AND FACULTY,
as well as the larger Canton
community, participated in The Unity Project, a public art project installed on the
Creasy Commons from September 30 to October 11. The installation was
constructed by an open call to everyone, inviting them to tie strings of yarn to
numerous poles marking characteristics with which each individual identified.
The exercise prompted encounters with those that had a common “thread” and initiated
dialog among participants as well as served as a visual representation of the ties that bind
us as a community. The Unity Project is a way to visually represent the interconnections
between students, faculty, staff and the community that otherwise may go unnoticed.
Rian Falcon ’18, a global studies major and gender and sexuality studies minor,
from Baltimore, Maryland, was one of several student activists who worked with
St. Lawrence University’s Chaplain’s Office and the Office of Volunteer Services,
to bring the project to campus.
“This is just a first step, not to change perspectives, but to get you to see a new one,”
she pointed out. “It gets students talking about things they wouldn’t normally talk
about in the classroom.”
The Unity Project is a national interactive art project launched in response to the
negative rhetoric in American politics.
(www.unityproject.net) The hope is to raise
consciousness of the labels given to groups of people and how those labels limit
interconnectedness as a society.
and
the