Gumboot :: Projects

The Gun Sculpture Project

The central focus of the ihuman 2000 Peace Initiative is The Gun Sculpture.

This prison cell sized creation is a walk-in anti-violence statement that is constructed of several thousand guns, landmines, grenades and shrapnel. The weapons have been donated from a variety of sources and many of them have been personally gathered , from Canada and abroad, by the artists, Sandra Bromley and Wallis Kendal of Edmonton. The project has had support from the RCMP Forensic laboratory, Department of National Defense, the Canadian Navy, and police forces in Montreal, Victoria, Vancouver and Calgary. The purpose of The Gun Sculpture is to stimulate discussion on violence, victims, and the desire for peace, at home and around the world. After Edmonton the sculpture will stand in the Canada Pavilion at Expo 2000 in Hannover, Germany in June.

The ihuman 2000 Peace Initiative also encompasses an arts mentoring program for teens for whom the sculpture has been a catalyst for their own creativity. Many of them are youth who have experienced or perpetrated violence themselves. This group are writing and illustrating a book entitled The Red Tear which contains their expressions of concern about the violence in their own lives and communities and their vision of how to stop violence. This book will be distributed in schools and encourage young people to contribute their own efforts to promote peace.

Gumboot Productions has a unique opportunity to create a long form documentary about this powerful peace initiative with its the many links to individuals and communities. We are seeking financing to film further material with Sandra Bromley, Wallis Kendal and The Gun Sculpture, particularly the opening at the Worlds Fair in Hannover and the reactions from international visitors. We also need to acquire archival material to illustrate the conflicts with which the weapons were involved. We want to research and develop more material with the teen group whose project is also developing internationally.

"This project has the potential to make visible, in a concrete and powerful way the efforts being undertaken by Canada and other countries around the world, to reduce the illegal proliferation of firearms and to promote a culture of peace.’

-The Honourable Lloyd Axworthy, Minister of Foreign Affairs

visit The Gun Sculpture web site : www.ihuman.org

Status:

- Production completed with the opening of The Gun Sculpture at The Canadian Pavillion in Hannover, Germany for Expo 2000

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