Sisi and Michelle dance the waltz

Over the past three weeks, Sisi Chen joined us as part of her internship with Jumblies Theatre. As well as spending time with us, Sisi worked with our sister organizations the Community Arts Guild, Arts4All and visited MABELLEarts to sit by the bonfire and celebrate the recent parade. While at PARC, Sisi has helped us build our canoe, make books, helped us with some desktop design, web design and taught us ballroom dance.

We will miss her when Sisi returns to Kingston to complete her undergraduate degree in teaching.

Noah described how he brought together his experiences as a community artist with that of a children’s educator in his work there. He was honest and frank about the challenges of having flying into a remote community and completing a community arts project over a very short amount of time (and spending a part of that time looking throughout the community for bins of art materials). Noah talked also about struggling with the reality of himself as someone from the South who has come to the community on several occasions only to leave again.

“This is part of our country” Noah reminded the audience.

John Rogers is from what used to be called Frobisher Bay, in the Southeast corner of Baffin Island but has not visited for many years. John enjoyed hearing stories from his part of the world but was bothered by many of the changes in the way of life of those living in the far north.

Noah’s trip was coordinated by Solo Chicken Productions, led by Lisa Anne Ross, who has coordinated the Nunavik Theatre Arts Program in Northern Quebec for nine years, working in schools in remote inuit villages to develop community arts projects.

Noah describing his work in the Far North

When I look over the urban landscape, it is hard not to feel helmed in at every corner. While I see exciting, inspiring endeavors that open up possibilities in the way we eat, we live, move around the city and get the other things we need, I also seem these same gestures being limited by bureaucracies, fear and laziness.

What if we all started over? What if we had the opportunity to move all of Toronto directly upwards into the sky? This is the questions raised by Upper Toronto. And they are coming to Parkdale on February 7 and are being hosted by Making Room and the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre at 1499 Queen St. W.

Join the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre
and Small Wooden Shoe in
Imagining Toronto’s better future.

What kind of city would you want to live in, if we could make a city from scratch?

Upper Toronto starts with a terrible idea. We want to build a new city in the sky above the current Toronto.

It’s a terrible idea that allows us to ask what would happen if, knowing what we now know, we could start fresh.

We are meeting with people from all across Toronto to ask them about the city that they live in now. What do you love about it? What do you hate about it? What would you change?

Spend an evening with other people from your community and help us dream of a better city for everyone.

WHAT TO EXPECT
Expect a quick introduction to the ideas that drive Upper Toronto. Expect guided brainstorming and playful design work. Expect time to think about city planning with a freedom and depth rarely permitted to even the experts. Expect to laugh. Expect to examine your own ideas about what’s most important in city life.
By opening this process to people across Toronto we hope to learn about your civic dreams and imaginations while giving you an experience of civic engagement and the challenges of planning.

WHO WE ARE
Small Wooden Shoe is an award winning arts company that uses current and effective consultation practices, mixed with our own innovative and idiosyncratic performance style. We bring experience with conferences, unconferences, keynote presentations, debating workshops, online collaboration, and 10 years of events in which groups come together to make the world a more interesting and engaged place. We are bent on proving that good ideas are entertaining and that pleasure and thinking require each other.

Laura and Mona work on the "show boat"

After some time for introductions and meditation, we all went down to the lake to bring back sticks for the showboat. While collecting sticks, we came across a rose coloured memory bike that told a story about that place. This led to other stories about the area. Things I had not known before. We also hatched some ideas for future projects. What a wonderful morning! Stay tuned here for a report from the students themselves.

Mona and high school students by the lake

Josh's bench made out of scrap wood, inner tubes and logs found by the lake

Meeting in a small hallway in the basement of PARC, we found ourselves in the strangest location yet! But after a brief check-in and introductions to new people, we quickly made the space our own. With material that we found at the Value Village, goods we foraged from around Parkdale and a wood donated by Joshua, we had much to work from.

We broke into three teams and before long, we had the basic form of benches that all had their own personality. Angela and Alice worked on their “boob chair”, my group worked on our “nest” while Joshua’s team built an industrial arm chair, complete with wooden appendages and rubber tubes that were transformed into the most comfortable seat.

Because the food bank was taking place next door, we had lots of people walking by and admiring our work in progress, a number of whom who stopped by to lend a hand.

Thanks to all who helped out today, it was a really great time. I look forward to seeing how the chairs take shape next week.

Josh reached into his bag and pulled out two wigs, a large scarf and a few glasses. “These are the rules” he told us. “You need always to keep on your disguise. You need to try to stay focused on the task at hand. And you need to have fun.” From the chatter in the cab, it was clear that the last rule was not going to be a problem, but the first two …

We stopped at the Value Village. Just a few days before Halloween, the store was filled with customers searching for costumes, but people walking in with costumes? Not so much. But as promised, we kept on our disguises. We went to the corner of the store where we did a quick check-in and a fast meditation as usual, despite the noise and the bright lights.

We then began to look for material for our seats. The week before, we were asked to describe how it felt to be held and comforted – and now we were looking for materials that fit that description. While we did our best to attend to the task at hand, much fun was also had!

The greatest gift that day, for me, was to enjoy the last few warm days of summer with some of my Parkdale friends in a place that felt so far away from the concrete noise of Parkdale while only being a short walk away.

A few hours later, we took a leisurely walk back to PARC looking forward to next week’s adventure.

Our Health and Wholeness project came to an exciting close at the end of June with the mounting of seven large-scale images of members in postures of meditation around Parkdale, we call “Portraits of Silence”.

Another aspect of the project is “Sparks that Fly” a series of five lightboxes mounted in the basement of PARC (Parkdale Activity Recreatiion Centre) across from the Sorauren Food Bank. While the Portraits reflect an attitude of inner peace and wholeness, the lightboxes downstairs reflect the outer manifestations of hunger and satisfaction.

We celebrated with a launch that took place in the basement of PARC with more than 75 people attending. We also attracted media attention from CBC’s “Here and Now”, the Neighbourhood Arts Network Newsletter, and Inside Toronto.