Quotidian things

In 2007, the Toronto art collective launched an outdoor art project called Grand Gestures. The project consisted of ten bronze plaques that look a lot like the Heritage Toronto plaques that commemorate our city’s history.

’s plaques commemorate quotidian, rather than historical, events. The group scoured YouTube for videos shot on Queen Street West, distilled the videos they chose into mini-narratives, bronzed them, then mounted them near where the videos were shot.

One of the collective’s artists, Jeremy Bailey, got the idea for the project when he was kept up late one night by the noise from bars near his home on Queen West: “It’s loud,” he said, “but it’s how someone remembers a neighbourhood: by the people, not when a building was built.” In reviewing the project, Torontoist said that “What makes the plaques so brilliant is how, by marking prosaic events in such an overstated manner, they become infinitely more interesting.”

Those same “prosaic events” are what makes a narrative piece of writing powerful. A good writer has to be in the habit of, first, noticing them, and, second, writing them down. And that means that a writer is always at work: at school, on the subway, at home, at the mall, she or he is gathering material.

Write a word description of a prosaic event you observe here at school. -- use both narrative and dialogue -- use third person -- write in the past tense -- refer to the characters involved using pronouns — no names (while those characters would be surprised to see their words and actions noticed and engraved, they should not be ashamed by your description — this isn’t an opportunity to make fun of our fellow Lyons)

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