Using community art to heal social polarization and combat misinformation in rural Northern Ontario.
When was the last time you actually spoke to a neighbor instead of just doomscrolling their spicy political takes?
Living in the North means our small town energy is our greatest strength and our biggest liability. Lately, it feels like we’re all vibrating on different frequencies, fueled by whatever garbage the algorithm fed us at 2:00 AM. In places like Thunder Bay or Dryden, the distance between people isn’t just measured in kilometers of muskeg; it’s measured in the absolute walls we’ve built around our opinions. We’re losing the plot because we’ve forgotten how to see the human across the table. When the local Facebook group becomes a war zone, the actual community—the real-life, breathing version—starts to crumble.
This is where the arts actually do the heavy lifting, and no, I don’t mean some high-concept installation that nobody understands. I’m talking about the raw, gritty work of making things together in a room. Whether it’s a community mural, a zine-making workshop, or a tiny music fest, art forces us to exist in a shared reality. You can’t easily dehumanize someone when you’re both struggling to get the proportions of a sketch right or trying to harmonize a difficult bridge. It creates a third space where the goal isn’t to win an argument, but to build something that didn’t exist ten minutes ago.
In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), there’s this concept called cognitive defusion. It’s basically learning to see a thought as just a thought, not an absolute truth. When we bring people together for a creative project, we’re practicing a social version of that. We stop seeing our neighbor as that person with the bad memes and start seeing them as the person who actually knows how to use a palette knife. It breaks the spell of the misinformation loop because you’re dealing with the messy, tangible evidence of a person’s existence right in front of you.
Building a healthy arts sector in rural Ontario isn’t just about funding; it’s about resilience and radical kindness. We have to be willing to sit in the discomfort of disagreement while we hold the same paintbrush. It’s okay if things feel a bit crunchy at first. That tension is just the sound of the social fabric trying to knit itself back together. If we want to survive the polarization that is cooking our brains, we have to invest in these small, local interventions that prioritize presence over performance.
Try this: next time you’re at a community event, find one person you’ve canceled in your head and ask them a genuine question about what they’re making. Don’t look for an opening to debate. Just look for the human. It sounds basic, but in a world where everyone is shouting into the void, showing up for a shared creative moment is a revolutionary act of sanity. We need the arts to remind us that we’re still here, still neighbors, and still capable of creating something beautiful out of the chaos.
Exploring the arts in Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario
With activities rooted in our Winnipeg, Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario hubs, we’re exploring arts, culture, and recreation programming that brings our communities together. From creative workshops and local exhibitions to youth activities and cultural events, we support rural artists, strengthen community connection, and celebrate the creative spirit.
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