Creative Spaces & Places
March 17th, 2010
An unprecedented collaborative report mapping the concentration of artists in Canadian cities was released last month. The study was a result of the collective effort of the cultural departments of the cities of Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. Published by Hill Strategies, and based on data from the 2006 census, the report paints a fascinating picture into the make-up of Canada’s artistic and creative communities.
Each city has its own trends in the way its artistic and creative communities have located. Vancouver had the highest overall percent of artists at 2.3% but has its artistic community spread widely throughout the city. Toronto has by far the largest artistic community; it is home to one in six Canadian artists. Toronto has also seen its artistic neighbourhoods shift slightly since to 2001 to different areas of concentration. Montreal has perhaps the most densely located artistic community and is home to three of the country’s top five artistic employment postal codes. The Montreal neighbourhood of the H2T postal code (northward from avenue du Mont-Royal to avenue Van Horne between St-Denis and Jeanne-Mance) is the most artistic in Canada with artists accounting for 7.8% of its workers, ten times the national average. Ottawa and Calgary have artist concentrations closer to the national average, interestingly they also both have the largest income gaps between artists and the rest of the workforce and the largest percent of female artists. Maps of these trends are shown below.
October 30th, 2009
It was another fruitful day at the Creative Places and Spaces: Collaborative City Conference, today in the light-filled MaRS building. Beginning with Welcoming & Opening Remarks by Ilse Treurnicht, CEO MaRS, Joseph L. Rotman, Chair, Canada Council for the Arts and Simon Brault, Vice-Chair, Canada Council for the Arts, we heard about the difference between invention and innovation
Brault asked, “How do you make it real, how do you come to the point where those ideas are transforming the society, reshaping the cities in which we live?” He answered himself by saying that it “means a lot of collaboration, a lot of involvement, you need time, you need to be persuasive.” He added, with relation to challenges of coming from a family of many children, similar to Ken Robinson and Charles Landry, “if you don’t collaborate, you die, you don’t go anywhere.”
The first Video Spotlight of the day was by Luigi Ferrara, director at the School of Design at George Brown College, entitled The Transformation of Montreal. He explained that the transformation in Montreal was possible because of a collaboration between arts groups and all levels of government. His key ideas were that “when you’re not rich you have to make sure things will last,” and that “artists don’t ask where they come from, but what they want to do together.”
Robin Cardozo, CEO of the Ontario Trillium Foundation, said that “opposing collaboration these days is like opposing motherhood and apple pie,” but spoke about key ideas to keep in mind. “It only works when it makes sense. Forced collaborations, marriage of convenience, shotgun weddings, almost never work.” He asked delegates to look beyond their own backyard for collaboration partners, as the outcomes are usually the most interesting.
October 29th, 2009
The Creative Places and Spaces: Collaborative City Conference started with a bang…or rather an om! As delegates filled the round tables in the beautiful Carlu Concert Hall, the stage was filled with lithe, lean bodies, contorting themselves into planks, trees and warriors. Along with rhythmic music and singing, the yoga enthusiasts were soon surrounded by break dancers, tap dancers and an acrobat hanging upside down from a rope. No, we are not at a Cirque du Soleil rehearsal, but rather one of the world’s leading dialogues on creativity.
This year’s conference has the theme of the Collaborative City and promises to be a thought-provoking and inspiring few days. As Matt Galloway, host of CBC Radio One 99.1 FM’s “Here and Now” and the MC for the morning session stated, we are going to “hear a lot about how ideas and collaboration can inspire change. Leadership is going to play a large part in that dialogue.” On that note, he introduced Mayor David Miller, to give the first welcoming remarks of the day. Miller spoke about the need to collaborate not only within our own city, but also between cities, with the example of Toronto’s twinning with Frankfurt and their current project to collaborate in the film and television industry. Miller also touched on the idea of asking the experts to help write and develop reports and strategies, rather then asking for their opinions after the fact, which he says they did with Toronto’s Agenda for Prosperity, noting it was unanimously passed by Council, a rare thing for the City of Toronto. Tim Jones, CEO of Artscape, the organizers, said, quite pertinently, “we have a lot to learn from one another…there are tools and there are methodologies, but most important, we need to raise our game as a city.”
July 15th, 2009
Editor: Spacing is pleased to showcase films from the NFB’s online screening room. The NFB will be occasionally posting films here that explore our public spaces, Canadian or international cities …
July 4th, 2009
Just as Richard Florida finally thought he was comfortably settled in Toronto, the city which embraced him with open arms upon his arrival has become increasingly hostile to his theories. Foremost among …
March 26th, 2009
Having grown up in the “city of lakes“, I find Toronto’s waterfront to be a welcoming refuge from the dry air and cement that characterizes the rest of the city. Of particular interest is The Toronto Music Garden, located on the south side of Queen’s Quay West, in between Lower Spadina Ave and Dan Leckie Way. During the summer it is a haven for butterflies and other insects, and is surprisingly quiet given its juxtaposition between the island airport and the Gardiner Expressway.
January 23rd, 2009
Editor’s Note: Fred Sztabinski is a Spacing contributor and former project coordinator of TCAT who recently relocated to Amsterdam, Netherlands. He will write occasional blog posts for Spacing comparing Toronto and European urban landscape issues.
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AMSTERDAM – Working from home, it’s often nice to go out and do a bit of work “off-site,” just to mix things up and, at the very least, remind yourself that there are other people out there. For me in Toronto, a café was the go-to place for this. But in Amsterdam it’s not as easy to find a place where you can order a latté and just sit for a while reading or on your laptop. Those types of places do exist here, but they’re not as common as in North America or other European countries, and en route to finding one you probably want to avoid what’s actually called a café (a restaurant/bar) and a coffeeshop.
I’ve recently discovered Amsterdam’s new Central Library (or Openbare Bibliotheek) and it truly is a great place to visit, for work or otherwise. The building is architecturally striking and the spaces very creative. This got me thinking that, as the Toronto Reference Library (or possibly the future Jane Jacobs Reference Library) is set to undergo a major revitalization, I really hope we might see some of what Amsterdam’s got in its showpiece library.
Opened in 2007 and touted as the largest public library in Europe, it is centrally located within a short walking distance of Central Station. The building was designed by famed Dutch architect Jo Coenen and is just one of a number of modern buildings filling up reclaimed land along the former docklands of Amsterdam’s waterfront. Coenen is also responsible for the master plan of KNSM Island (look out for a future post on this fully planned modern island development).
January 19th, 2009
More info on the closing of David Mirvish Books in an email from Eleanor Johnston, the store’s manager:
“I think the most succinct answer to the question of the bookstore closing is that there are not enough booksales for the …
January 15th, 2009
Whenever I visit my dad in South Florida, we go to the Aventura Mall. It’s a long story, but basically my dad loves shopping. Love might be too weak a word, …
November 19th, 2008
Spacing contributor Laura Boudreau is blogging the Creative Places + Spaces Regional Forum at the Artscape Wychwood Barns. Follow her posts on Tuesday and Wednesday to learn more about innovative city-building at the Barns and beyond.
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