During the summer 2024 semester, students participating in the Montreal Summer Culture program designed and completed a mural with artist HAKS180 as part of a Heisse-funded student experience project.
Within the context of the core 202/302 split level class “Creative Communities in Montreal”, the students first explored the city and worked to identify elements that represent both Montreal and Champlain’s existence within it. Students were then tasked with finding images that would demonstrate to any person who walked into the campus a unique connection to Montreal.
As they explored the sights and sounds of the city, they found historic images from old Montreal, iconic symbols from expo ’67 and creations from public art exhibits that all create an understanding of what it means to be a Montrealer (no matter how long you have lived here).
Mason Crochetiere, Game Design ’26, described the experience: “I think it’s really fascinating because it’s our story. Not Montreal’s story, not Champlain’s story – it is defined by the experiences that we had in the city and not anyone else. The pink guys are a clear example, showing the time-based attraction that we saw while we were there, but our focus on Chinatown or the Biosphere shows what we think is special about Montreal. My pointed takeaway here is just that art is informed by personal perspectives and interpretations of everything that surrounds us.”
HAKS180 (also known as Hans Schmitter) an artist who is originally from Vermont and now lives in Montreal, has a unique perspective of what it means to move here from there, how that can be challenging as well as exciting; and how every person will experience this differently.
Once the students proposed their ideas, HAKS gathered the information and designed a wall that represented the thoughts and experiences that had been identified.
In HAKS’s words, “I think this type of mural project is valuable to students in several ways. First, it has them engage in their environment in a different way than they normally would, delving into the details of a place’s present and history in a way that many people who live there may not even do. Second, this may be the only mural [or the first of many] that these students work on. However, it gives the participants a quick glimpse of how their efforts in working together in small teams [in both research and production phases], when added with similar work by members of the other teams, can create a final work, beyond the sum of its individual parts. With the final result being something they can step back, look at and see where their individual input is a valued piece of the puzzle. In this case a beautiful mural, but the same process could be seen in the development of a piece of software or the designing of a new product….”
This is truly a great learning experience; students learned from the place they were in, as well as from the diverse set of professionals around them. There were a variety of guests, including artists Gene Pendon, Erika Doyon, and Pierre Michel Jean Louis, and site visits to studios such as Press Start Youth Arcade Coop, Junior restaurant, and Artease Tattoo Studio throughout the semester. The students in the Montreal Summer 2024 had a profound learning experience that they will take with them long after they leave college, and we hope it will always be a part of what made Champlain such an important part of their lives.
In a final reflection of the Montreal Summer 2024 program, Computer Networking & Cybersecurity ’26 student Nydia Lane stated, “Exploring the city of Montreal over the course of the month and creating a mural, designed and painted with peers, capturing the experience was an invaluable experience that provided me with a broadened point-of-view of the culture embedded within the city. The presence of the mural in the classroom will serve as a reminder of these experiences and inspire those who pass by it to look deeper into the parts of the city that reflect the communities living within it”.
