Millennium Project

The personal experience of poverty, violence, homelessness, addiction, discrimination, and illiteracy can be debilitating, particularly to youth. A photo-therapy program in Surrey is applying these youth's experiences as inspiration to create powerful messages of hope and to mobilize positive change, not only for themselves, but for the world.

Drawing from their experience on the street, local at-risk youth participating in a Surrey-based recovery program have been creating photographs in response to the United Nations eight Millennium Goals for making a better world.

Over 200 photographs, created by 19 youth photographers using newly learned digital photography skills, were on exhibit for one day only as an event at Surrey Art Gallery on Monday, May 29, 2006.

During this exhibit, the public voted on images that best motivated action to fulfil the UN's Millennium goals. The selected photos were presented at the World Urban Forum in Vancouver (June 19 to 23, 2006). Eight were enlarged into banners for exhibition at Canada Place. Another eight were made into postcard-sized images and given to the 5000 conference delegates coming from all over the world. The selected Millennium Project photographs were also exhibited at Surrey Art Gallery from June 2006 throughout the summer.

Image credit: Installation image of the one-day exhibit Millennium Project in Surrey Art Centre's Studio Theatre.