School Name

West Vancouver Community Days
Saturday, June 2

Collingwood is participating in West Vancouver Community Days this year with an education booth.  We are looking for Parent/Student volunteers to BEE a part of our community! Sign up here.

The overall goal of the “Bee a Part of Your Community” project was to undertake a collaborative art project that would foster a connection between the students at Collingwood School and the North Shore community through art!

The theme we chose to unify the project is bees, because of the nature of some bees (though not all!) to work together towards a common goal. It is also a wonderful opportunity to facilitate education regarding declining bee populations, the serious impact this has on our environment and on our food production, and the importance of conservation efforts. 

Each student in the primary grades at Collingwood School painted a base colour of either yellow (honeybees) or blue (mason bees) on one small pebble. They were then embellished with bee facts and jokes, and also questions asked by children in the Kindergarten class during their inquiry into bees.

At the school’s annual Spring Fair on April 28, 2018, the pebbles were decorated further by fairgoers, (including people from 24 various other schools and neighbourhoods), to transform the coloured pebbles into bees just by using black paint and a little imagination!

 When they were complete, all of the little bees were delivered to their current locations, so that people can interact with them, and also, so that participants would be able to visit them and take pride and ownership in this shared effort. 

 We would like to acknowledge and give a huge thank you to Taren Urquhart, passionate bee educator and the Arts and Events Coordinator at the West Vancouver Library, for her significant contributions to this project. Taren contributed a great deal of her personal time and many ideas to help to enrich and enhance this project and we are grateful to have had her support.

 You can now visit the bees in garden spaces at the West Vancouver Community Centre, the Ferry Building Art Gallery, and also a few by the Mason Bee House outside the Youth Department of the West Vancouver Library.