It’s only a few days until a stretch of Vancouver’s East Hastings Street will be animated and illuminated by Traces: Projecting Neighbourhood Stories. The latest community art project from Media Undefined, Traces is inspired by the Strathcona and Downtown Eastside neighbourhoods, their people, and their stories. The project will be unveiled in a series of outdoor screenings on the evenings of July 24 and 25.

For the past several months, teams of artist mentors and youth interns have been interviewing merchants, seniors, and longtime residents in the neighbourhood and turning their stories into works of video, animation, and shadow puppetry. Participants have been struck by their common interests, including the role of food in the neighbourhood (which boasts a number of thriving community gardens), and the relationship between people and architecture. That latter relationship will be a central focus for the project’s shadow puppetry play, which will animate buildings through the stories of people who live there. The multi-lingual video component of the event will zero in on stories of people from the four corners of Hastings and Jackson. The stop motion animation piece features the story of a neighbourhood resident and his dog’s neighbourhood wanderings to reflect the type of conversations and interactions artists and youth have been having through the project.

Venues for the event, all located along the East Hastings corridor, are the storefront window at the Patricia Hotel, the empty lot at the corner of Hastings Street and Jackson Avenue, and outside the Chapel Arts Centre on Dunlevy Street. The work will also be presented at Woodland Park as part of the Powell Street Festival on August 1. And in September 2009, Traces will travel to community gathering places throughout the neighbourhood including schools, libraries, and community centres.

Traces is being developed by Media Undefined’s Jaimie Robson in partnership with the Strathcona Community Centre. Robson and mentoring artists Tamara Unroe, Madoka Hara, Diana Leung, along with Alicia Horner and Hoi Bing Mo, are working with a team of youth interns collecting stories from  longtime residents of the neighbourhood. Paul Bennett is producing a short documentary about the project. Youth interns for the project are Alicia Anderson, Lisa Cao, Jane Chow, Jessica Coccimiglio, Leticia Coutinho, Ernst Klaussen, Faber Neifer, Robin Prince, Geoffrey E A Vincent, and Patrick White, and Maggie Winston. For more detailed information on the project, visit www.mediaundefined.ca.