Creative City: Block by Block
Creative City: Block by Block seeks to connect every Toronto neighbourhood with the transformative power of artistic activity, while building capacity for artists and arts organizations.
Toronto Arts Foundation, through its partnership with Toronto Arts Council, has a unique vantage point with regard to the impact of art on community life, on neighbourhood revitalization and on city building.
TAC annually reviews the ambitions, the successes and the challenges of over 600 creative arts organizations and projects, both large and small. Through this adjudication process, as well as through on-going community consultations and symposiums, the Foundation has garnered specific and anecdotal evidence of how arts programs have made lasting impacts on neighbourhoods and on the people who live in them, while also discovering that many neighbourhoods have little or no access to professional art activity.
Creative City: Block by Block, was born out of a desire to connect more of Toronto’s neighbourhoods with the transformational value of art.
By acting as convener and catalyst, the Foundation is collaborating with arts organizations, social service agencies, city departments, non-governmental agencies and other organizations who share the vision of creating successful neighbourhoods through the arts and who understand the importance of increasing opportunities for people to enjoy the arts in all regions of Toronto.
By fostering creativity at the local level and enhancing the quality of life in Toronto’s diverse neighbourhoods, Toronto becomes a truly creative city.
By working with partners with shared values, the Foundation will:
- Provide incentive grants to artists and arts organizations with activities in high needs neighbourhoods. By providing new money to artists, neighbourhoods in Toronto in which little or no professional arts will have new opportunities. These grants will be vetted through the highly respected adjudication system of the TAC, insuring accountability, reliability, and artistic excellence.
- Build capacity for arts organizations, connectivity to community members and awareness of arts through the Neighbourhood Arts Network, symposiums, forums and other activities. The Neighbourhood Arts Network, in addition to creating an array of services and support for artists, facilitates networking between individuals, libraries, community and health centres, business improvement associations and many others, enabling community members to easily connect with professional artists.
- With community partners, work to create sustainable arts hubs in high needs areas in Toronto. Arts Hubs can become as essential to a successful neighbourhood as a school, library or a bank. Arts Hubs link people who live in their neighbourhood to professional art organizations and artists who work in a variety of artistic mediums, professional and non-professional, neighbourhood-based, and from outside of the community. For more information on the value of arts hubs and the forms they can take, click here.
- Research, map and evaluate the progress and impact of the arts in Toronto. Toronto Arts Foundation is working in partnership with the City of Toronto, city planners, foundations and academic institutions to analyze the impact of arts funding, map arts programming activities and determine the most effective policy and funding opportunities. By monitoring outcomes of arts investment, the Foundation can increase the efficacy of arts reporting and advocacy. Part of this evaluation is the Metcalf Arts Policy Fellowship, a two year fellowship to explore the connections between arts policy and practice, inspired by the need to foster new thinking about the future of the arts sector. For more information on the Metcalf Arts Policy Fellowship, click here.
Block by Block Accomplishments to date:
- Increased funding for community-engaged art projects and arts for youth through the Friends of the Foundation
- Victoria Village Cultural Space Feasibility Study
- Creation and Launch of the Neighbourhood Arts Network, including website, networking and professional development workshops
- Best Buzz: A audio slide show and executive summary profiling the best practices of five arts hubs in Toronto
- Community Consultations on the creation of the Neighbourhood Arts Network and Report
- TAF Symposium 2006: Creators and Communities: An artist-led symposium on imagining neighbourhood change
- Moving Forward: A Report on Creators and Communities Symposium;
- Presentations and discussions with community-engaged artists – Liz Lerman, Marvin Jarman, Paula Jardin;
- TAF Symposium 2008: Arts at the Hub: A symposium on making art locally (presented by partners Toronto Arts Council Foundation and Art Starts Neighbourhood Centre
- Community Arts: A Snapshot of the Moment; a descriptive report on selection community artists and arts organizations in Toronto and their programming partners
- Created for display at the Symposium, available for future use:
- Focus Group discussion around the future plans of program and needs of community artists (which indicated a need for infrastructure & space)
- Relationships, Relevance and Responsiveness: A Report on the Art at the Hub Symposium March 2008
- Creative City to its Bones: A Discussion Paper
- Innovative funding partnerships in 2006 and 2007 with the Department of Canadian Heritage and the United Way of Greater Toronto, resulting in increased funding for artists and access to art for Torontonians.