New mural at Laurentian University highlights inclusion

New Pride mural at Laurentian University Laurentian University has a new original art mural painted in its Pride office that focuses on inclusion for all students

A pop of colour, a variety of symbols and a big message is now painted on a wall in the Laurentian University Pride office.

“The main thing is the heart -- that was the focal point,” said artist and Laurentian student Sam Barry.

“Everybody has a heart and that was essentially what I wanted to transmit through using a biological heart. In the heart there’s the globe and I wanted it to represent how we all have a heart, we all live on this planet and we’re united through that.”

Barry said his goal was to encourage people to look at it for a long period of time by including so many different components.

"I put details like the Black Lives Matter logo, I put a medicine wheel, I put the logo for two-spirited people, I also had the intersex flag on it and I used the colour of basically all the pride flags,” he said.

“So really what inspired me was the fact that I, being a minority, needed representation and I wanted, in my mural, to have as much representation as possible."

Laurentian Pride is a group already known for inclusion to the 2S LGBTQ Plus community, but Pride executive director, Ana Tremblay, said she's hoping the mural helps take it one step further.

“I think it’s really important for people to know that Pride Laurentian isn’t just for students who are part of the LGBTQ Plus community,” she said.

“Laurentian has a lot of diversity. We have international students, mature students, French, English students, everyone and we want everyone to know that they’re welcome and accepted here.”

The piece took weeks of planning and between 30-40 hours of painting. The goal is to turn the new office into a resource hub for all students.

'I know how it feels to be left out'

“I know how it feels to be left out of certain spaces," Barry said. "I just really wanted to make sure that my piece reflected that all identities are welcome.”

Right now, Laurentian students aren’t on campus, but are expected to return next week. Barry and Laurentian Pride have released pictures of the mural online and the response has been nothing but positive.

“I had a flood of people DM me, PM me, just message me asking me what it meant for me because they wanted to know the thought behind what I created,” said Barry.

“I had some people say it brought them to tears or it had reached them to a specific level that I didn’t think the piece that I had made would reach them.”

This isn’t the first mural that Barry has created. He collaborated on several during his high school years, but he said this one was a lot bigger and was designed to reach a bigger audience.

“It’s really important for me as a reconnecting Indigenous person, as a queer person, as a gender queer person, it was really important for me to just see myself and have other people see themselves in the artwork that I make," he said.

"It’s super important and I think everybody deserves to see themselves, especially at their school."

On top of the new mural and office space, Laurentian Pride is also gearing up for Pride Week at the end of March.