We recently connected with Shane Watt and have shared our conversation below.

Shane, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

One of my favorite projects is a ongoing collaboration with Alex Megelas called Paper Places. It’s a series of cross-generational workshops and discussions which consider the ways mapmaking as an art form can be used to further reflections on our interaction with the commons.

Paper Places sessions have been held in a variety of contexts, including with students from schools throughout Montreal through a collaboration with the Social Equity and Diversity Education office (SEDE) at McGill, at art coop Le Milieu and at the Redpath Museum as part of its Science Outreach Program.
As well, we have presented Paper Places at a number of conferences and festivals.

It was initially designed to introduce youth to mapmaking as a means of interpreting public spaces and the commons. I’ve found the experience of introducing daily art practices to the public through the workshops inspiring, and feel it has encouraged the participants to use artistic creation in order to recognize and explore physical locales in the world from a different perspective. The workshop also encouraged participants to integrate art as part of a daily process of creativity and consider the extent to which it furthers self-reflection. Eventually, we expanded our design towards an adult demographic and then, later, through intergenerational exchanges.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As a visual artist, My career has been to a large degree defined by the making of my semi-fictitious maps. My maps have been described as holding an”…aesthetic that does bear some resemblance to traditional map-making, but upon close inspection the usual indicators of place and perspective are often undermined, overturned or imaginatively redesigned.

Beginning with a series of wall-sized, hand-drawn maps that I distributed to various friends, I began exhibiting as an artist in the early 2000’s. Since then my work has been exhibited internationally including in Montreal, Lagos, London, Miami and in New York City at the Pratt Gallery. I also produced a series of outdoor murals in Fort Lauderdale with Rolling Stock Gallery and in Barcelona at Jiwar Art Center

My work has appeared in several publications including El Pais, Muzzle Magazine and The Guardian which described my map Shutterbug as “a ‘mash-up map’, inspired by a long-distance relationship… including features from Montesquiou in south-west France, Athens, Washington DC and Philadelphia”.

As a singer, a bass player and a guitarist, I began my career as a musician within the burgeoning independent music scene in 1990s British Columbia Canada.

I moved to Montreal, Quebec in 1995 and since then I have recorded and performed in a number of musical projects including Cooper Thomson, Biffy Perdu, Krista Muir, Lederhosen Lucil, the High Dials, S.W.A.L.L., Graffiti People, XOR and Ironic Butterfly. I also record solo albums under my own name.

As a sound engineer and producer I was involved with Grenadine Records before co-founding my own imprints: RudeSolo Records and totallyrealprobablynotfake Records. I have worked as the head engineer/producer at Marsonic Studios for over a decade and have produced, recorded and mastered a number of albums including: Krista Muir, A Montreal Paul, REPO and Pachyderm, a band founded by Reverend and the Makers’ former guitarist Tom Jarvis.

I have conducted workshops and facilitated arts-based mentoring in a number of contexts. I co-lead Paper Places, a series of workshops on map-making and the collective urban imaginary. I have presented this project and other topics in both academic and community spaces, including at the Articule Montreal artist-run center as part of Concordia University’s 2017 season of University of the Streets Café. As well at McGill University’s “2018 Art as an Agent of Social Change Symposium” and at the 2020 HTMlles Festival.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I think in order to contribute to a thriving creative ecosystem one might consider the role of art and art practice in the context of everyday life. To find ways to incorporate the arts into the day-to-day activities of people and have a discussion about how it can serve a purpose in the larger context of community and society. Consider that art can act as a repository of our collective memory, it is often a vehicle for social change and it can also give voice to the politically or socially disenfranchised. The widest access to art is necessary to create a complete picture of the world around us and can nurture a society that values art more and thus sees the importance of supporting artists..

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Human expression, our ability to do something that creates change in others and in ourselves is really the only point. Perhaps I want to simply remind others that the act of creating is for all people and that it’s a part of being human.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://totallyrealprobablynotfake.com/shane-watt/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shanewattmaps/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shanewattmaps
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanewatt/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/shanewatt