It’s easy to come to university and get sucked into a scheduled pattern. With lots of moments in between classes devoted to stress and making to-do lists, maybe it is important to take a step back and find inspiration.

Rediscovering passion between coffee-induced assignment pukes and flash card frenzies and finding muse between all-nighters and essay crams might help some of that rigidity subside. Taking time out of your day to do something small might be all it takes to get the brain fog lessened and the energy restored.

I’m talking about what the Have Some Fun Campaign is promoting – going out and doing something that is less for the “thinky brain” and more for the heart. I know sometimes it’s easy to forget about that big old valentine organ during homework sensory overload, but I’m pretty sure it still counts for something. For me, as a first year student in the Bachelor of Media Studies, I find my ease and a sense of meaning with exploring art. To me, poetry, theatre, music, visual art, and film are not only mediums I use to express myself, but they also provide a great opportunity to talk to others, reflect and understand how other people view the world. While punching out papers like a robot can be fun for a while, gaining perspective on what’s happening on campus and seeing the way other people are pursuing art has motivated me to stay on track.

To me, it is key to go out and do something, and to go and do something in the arts because art is survival. Art is a process that shifts any ugly day into a creation that can be manipulated. And at UBC, there is plenty of opportunity to experience art, though that doesn’t always seem clear and if it does it doesn’t necessarily feel like there is a lot of time for it. But underneath those rainy days and people walking back and forth to class, there is more than commuting back and forth, or being herded like a zombie to a lecture, or eating food at the cafeteria and talking to the same people. There are these magical doors that lead to the Belkin Art Gallery where you will see some performance art that will make you chuckle then wonder; the plays that are put on by the BFA students at Freddie Wood Theatre in the evening, which you can catch after class; or hop over to MOA and exploring the depths of the museum; or listen to some free tunes every Thursday at the Alumni Centre. These magical doors lead to a different feeling on campus, a different part of campus and a unique opportunity to explore beyond any mendacity that it’s so easy to become trapped in. When I actively go out and find these gems throughout the campus that might seem hidden - I do feel like I am a part of something bigger. Maybe changing the way I think from doing, answering, writing, punctuating time, to actually feeling a little bit more alive and ready to take on the world has given my small lungs some more inventiveness to breathe in.

Recently, I’ve been involved at my job, as a work learn student for the Arts & Culture District in a project where we have created a little video exploring all the ways a person can experience art on campus. I wrote this poem for the background of the video- talking a little bit more about why going out to do art, all of it’s worth, and spending the time ready to experience something greater than ourselves.

Here it is:

The Arts Kind of Why

It’s time to get out and do something- and why not do something that is all about art? Art is the best way to spend our days. Not only does it challenge us, perplex us, but gives us something to believe. During this time, we are looking for people to get out onto the campus and explore their own beliefs and ideas.

When asked to speak of the Arts kind of why?

I think of footprints walking towards the fireside of canvas explosion!

And other foot prints strolling towards the apple-pie undignified idea

That creation is cosmetic or quiet at best.

Or maybe some fill their soles with ideas that the arts’ intrinsic nature is a characteristic of the conquest of a new nomenclature, a new language that is firefly phenomenal

But while I think of toes brushing soil and walking into a new earth direction

Some see it as fruity fruitless.

Or just a choose less! kind of domain

But while I walk, I see here perhaps what we gain, is more than pennies of thoughts but instead electric shots of priceless pride!

In finding truth where beauty often hides.

If finding realness, in what makes us feel alive.

In finding the times that spark our future footprints, so we can fill our feet with the bodies of artists.

When asked to speak of art’s what

I say we are much more than

Our venues

Or our walls

We breathe in and out of the spines that keep our form

We launch arrows and swords, when others see stoic words and paint brushes

And sometimes when our footprints are a little closed off, we don’t see crutches- we see like most, that pain is what gives us art, art is what gives us life, but I think that it’s both

We make art with MOA’s history

And any quietness is a rest in a mystery, a spot as important as a noise in the symphony

We are The Chan Centre’s magic breath

Life is an act that moves through the parts we forget and Freddie Wood remains always playing

Old Aud’s way of swaying back from our steps and into the dominoes of creation we have left

This Gallery is butter cake simplicity, admired with only a touch of an artist, who has been so loud; our brains fizzle into tranquility and awe

Notes and scores behind close doors of our soul

Brushes painting on the canvas of our minds

And walking up the tailgate staircase into a space where we

Are challenged to rethink the world, redraw our fingers and reimagine our campus

Do something!! Learn how to spend some of your time on campus, by checking out the UBC ARTS & CULTURE CALENDAR!