When we think of community art we think of mosaics and murals. But what else is there? That's a question Roewan Crowe is putting forward through Art Building Community, a symposium she's curated with the aim of creating dialogue about the kinds of community art one can create.

Presented by Mentoring Artists for Women's Art and the University of Winnipeg's Institute for Women's and Gender Studies, where Crowe is academic director, it takes place at U of W and locations around the city this weekend, including launches of new artwork and panel discussions by local artists and curators. Covering topics from Naming a Socially Engaged Practice to Curating Community, the weekend promises to be a thought-provoking one.

"I'm really interested in seeing the range of socially engaged practices in the community," says Crowe.

In part, Crowe's inspiration for the event came from a conference she attended in Dublin, called Feminism Contesting Globalization. Out shopping afterwards, and very aware of being in "consuming mode," she was thinking about the power of corporate culture to gather a community when something interrupted the crowd. "It was a busker, who was miming," Crowe says. "He had completely interrupted that consumptive community to gather us around to watch his art."

The symposium's nine artists create community art in different ways, each engaging people who've not been involved in art before. For instance, in Home Sweet Home, Pat Aylesworth launches a series of re-upholstered sofas into the inner city. Each has words imprinted on it that address ideas about homelessness, displacement and gentrification. Another artwork, Untitled Community, addresses urban renewal. Liz Garlicki has had her poem about community sandblasted into a concrete sidewalk slab in Winnipeg's North End.

"I wanted their work to somehow intervene into the community and I wanted them to interpret that for themselves," says Crowe, who stresses the power art can have in looking critically at issues of poverty, globalization, socio-economics, and racial and gender inequalities. "These are young women who are interested in changing things. They're already doing that."

For more information or to register for the symposium, go to www.mawa.ca or call 489-1417. Tickets for Saturday night's performance by Lorri Millan and Shawna Dempsey, Unruly, are separate and by donation. The art is free.