As the famous Canadian media theorist, Marshall McLuhan, suggests "the medium is the message". While we most often apply this quote to communications or technology, I like to think of its application to the design of everything from city streets to textiles. I often wonder about the assumptions buried within various systems we have designed to develop, educate, work and live.

Everything we interact with has been in the hands, the thoughts, the dreams of someone. Some person, some team, some group has thought sometimes for minutes, hours, days and maybe years. Their challenge. How to make this "thing" functional, durable, environmentally conscious, pleasing, interesting, and relevant? And hopefully thought inspiring?

We, as a society, are on a streak of consuming content based on totally imagined, impossible-to-relate-to worlds. Indeed, this is us, a human race that's fully accepting of bug-eyed, slimy aliens. And yet... a story that involves a different culture or a different skin colour is simply a little too..."out there?"

Twelve-year-old Chanie Wenjack was robbed of his culture, his innocence, his life. DAREarts is dreaming of a time when these children can live a life full of possibility and hope.