{"id":228253,"date":"2025-06-25T08:08:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T12:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/?p=228253"},"modified":"2025-07-16T09:12:56","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T13:12:56","slug":"bringing-communities-together-one-stitch-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/healthy-tomorrows\/bringing-communities-together-one-stitch-at-a-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Bringing communities together, one stitch at a time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In celebration of June being both National Indigenous History Month and Pride Month, The Ottawa Hospital hosted a beading workshop for Indigenous and 2SLGBTQIA+ staff and their allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Check out the photo essay below to learn more:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Two
\u201cI find beading really meditative\u201d: The workshop was led by Kaytlyn Nadjiwon<\/a>, a popular Ottawa-based beadwork artist of Ojibwe (her maternal grandfather is from Neyaashiinigmiing) and Italian descent who is also part of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. Kaytlyn learned how to bead in 2018 from a friend who is Algonquin and found herself \u201cimmediately obsessed\u201d with the practice. Today, Kaytlyn teaches classes on beadwork and sells her own creations online and at art markets around the city under the moniker Soft But Sturdy Beadwork<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
\u201cBeading isn\u2019t about perfection; it\u2019s about the process\u201d: Staff members from across The Ottawa Hospital attended the workshop, filling the boardroom at the General Campus with conversation and laughter. Kaytlyn walked the group through each step of the process, from threading their needles to stitching string after string of colourful beads \u2013 tautly, not tightly! \u2013 onto the patterns she\u2019d provided.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"A
\u201c<\/strong>Being new to something brings people together\u201d: Participants got to know each other throughout the two-hour workshop, helping their neighbours with knotted threads and bonding over pricked fingertips. Having facilitated and attended many beading workshops herself, Kaytlyn finds them a great way to build community and make friends because \u201cthe walls come down\u201d when you\u2019re learning something new as a group.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Two
\u201c<\/strong>People are more open to listening when their hands are busy\u201d: Kaytlyn completed her first piece of beadwork \u2013 a monarch butterfly \u2013 while sitting at her late mother\u2019s bedside at the Civic Campus in 2019. She shared this meaningful story at the workshop, as did other participants who spoke candidly about their complex experiences as Indigenous people and members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"A
\u201cCreativity looks different for everyone\u201d: When the workshop ended, each participant received a free take-home kit containing all the materials needed to complete their patterns and turn them into keychains. Organized as a collaboration between The Ottawa Hospital\u2019s Indigenous Employee Network and Pride Community@TOH, both groups look forward to holding more joint events like this in the future to help further strengthen the ties between their communities.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In celebration of June being both National Indigenous History Month and Pride Month, The Ottawa Hospital hosted a beading workshop for Indigenous and 2SLGBTQIA+ staff and their allies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":228264,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[433,374],"class_list":["post-228253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-healthy-tomorrows","tag-celebrate-our-staff","tag-wellness"],"acf":[],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}