Leslie Fournier – Streets Alive!

You’ve been very involved in the Streets Alive project. Can you start us off with the Festival of Banners?

The Festival of Banners came to be I’d say primarily because I’m a toy store owner in a downtown, looking out at the Main Street wondering how to bring more people downtown, and I noticed that there were no street pole banners.

A few towns, especially in western Canada, had used hand-painted banners on their street poles, so those ideas were spinning and I just thought, “why not. why don’t we try something like that?” I just thought, “oh here’s an idea that I’ll pass over to the arts community because they’ll know how to do it.” But no one in particular wanted to organize it or fundraise it, and I realized pretty early on that if this was going to happen I had to bring it to life, or get the ball rolling.

So that was the Festival of Banners, and then Streets Alive grew from that?

Exactly. Because there was great enthusiasm around the banners and this addition of art on the street, my brain went to, “okay, well what can we do next, what can be bigger and better?” So again, you start researching and I came across Toronto’s Moose in the City. That was sort of the first thing that popped up, so then my brain was going to public art sculpture, and as much as I loved the moose, I wanted to do something that reflected Orillia.

That was in 2010, and it was the 50th anniversary of the Mariposa Folk Festival, so the answer sort of came to me. The community is celebrating this festival, it’s their 50th anniversary, what could work that reflects that? And guitars just made sense. So the first sculptural project with Streets Alive was Guitars on Parade, and it kind of went from there.