Different perspectives on student art. Dutch use war scenes to work from while Burlington students use local landmarks.

By Pepper Parr

BURLINGTON, ON  March 21, 2012  Three or four weeks ago there was a sudden unexplainable burst of traffic from Brazil of all places to the Our Burlington web site.  At one point there were over 350 hits to the web site from Brazil.  They’d get to the Home page and leave.

We get traffic from more than 20 countries but usually nothing more than two, maybe three except for those bandits from Ukraine – they are always prowling.

Some of the art work from Burlington public schools and our twin school in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, on display at city hall.

Then we noticed there was an increasing number from Holland and it climbed and they were drilling down into the web site and we began to watch carefully and took a second look at our anti-virus and hacking software defences.  We got just a little nervous after five days of consistent growth in traffic from Holland while other countries were stable in terms of traffic.  Why were those wooden shoes walking across our screen?

When I leave a Council or a committee meeting, I usually have a word or two with Bob, the security guy at reception.  Monday evening there were a bunch of partitions on wheels scattered about the atrium that could be rolled around with what looked like art from elementary school students on the panels. “The ones with the red borders are from school kids in Holland, they are part of something being done by the Mundialization Committee” explain Bob.

A quick email to the security people – you can stand down fellows, there is nothing wrong with the traffic from Holland, it’s legitimate but it is sure playing havoc with our day to day, hour by hour analytics.  School children were given an assignment that had to do with Burlington, Ontario and if you want to know anything about Burlington, Our Burlington is the place to go.

The Dutch students took an interesting approach - half of each piece is a photograph the other half was drawn in by the students..

The traffic was the result of the student art exchange that had students from John T. Tuck Public School in Burlington and the Heuvellaan Public School students in Apeldoorn.  The Apeldoorn works explore war monuments while the local art is inspired by Burlington landmarks.

The student art exchange is one of many events organized by the city’s Mundialization Citizen committee to celebrate Burlington’s twinning relationship with the cities of Apeldoorn, The Netherlands and Itabashi, Japan.

This is the first of several art exhibitions planned this year. The next exhibition will be held in May and will feature art from four Burlington elementary schools and six Dutch schools.  In June, there will be an elementary art exhibition that will also feature art from Japanese elementary schools.

 

 

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