Reimagining the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts

2008

Introduction on a sunny September weekend, parks in downtown Toronto's Queen West and Parkdale neighbourhoods became rowdy spaces for people in their mid 20s and early 30s to play tag, capture the flag and red rover. The Time out/Game on intervention invited 'participants and viewers to celebrate the spirit of the playground in and outside the park, while challenging our notion of playful space and submission to the rules of the game' (Balzer, 2007). Curated by Toronto artists and playwrights, these games were part of a broad range of interventions in the Play/Grounds participatory performance series that were part of the Queen West Art Crawl, a neighbourhood arts festival in Toronto's downtown Queen West neighbourhood. Some other performance interventions in this series included interactive, site-specific plays in the nearby boutique hotel and Toronto artist Jon Sasaki's installation in the local Salvation Army store, where the windows were taped shut and the space was filled with black light. The space was 'black enough for bewilderment, but just enough for your eyes to adjust so you could find your crocheted toaster covers' (Operation Centaur Rodeo, 2007) and the shoppers were given individual flashlights to shop that day. Funded by the local Parkdale Liberty Economic Development Corporation (PLEDC), the Parkdale Business Improvement Areas and Artscape, a non-profit organization that promotes affordable housing for artists as well as 'culture-led regeneration … stewarding creative communities, and playing a catalytic role in the revitalization of some of Toronto's most creative communities' (Artscape, 2008), the events animated the streets and brought people together in interactive performances that revealed complex layers, histories and narratives about the two neighbourhoods.

International Journal of Cultural Property, 2017

Urban redevelopment projects increasingly draw on culture as a tool for rejuvenating city spaces but, in doing so, can overemphasize the economic or exchange-value potential of a cultural space to the detriment of what was initially meaningful about a space-that which carries great cultural community wealth, use-value, or embodies a group's intangible cultural heritage. Development and preservation interests illustrate this tension in terms of how cultural heritageboth tangible and intangible-is managed in the city. This article will turn to Toronto's "Music City" strategy that is being deployed as part of a culturefocused urban redevelopment trend and Creative City planning initiative in order to examine how the modern urban intangible merits of city spaces are valuated and dealt with in light of the comparatively weak regard accorded to intangibility within the available heritage protection legal frameworks of Canada, Ontario, and, specifically, Toronto. The currently underdeveloped recognition for intangibility in the heritage protection equation not only fails to equally valuate non-dominant, unconventional, or alternative iterations of culture but also falls behind the key guiding documents in international law for the safeguarding and recognition of intangible cultural heritage as well as in accounting for intangibility in determining heritage value. Without diligent inclusive strategies to account for, and consult, the diverse spectrum of groups, cultures, and cultural spaces affected by urban heritage and cultural city planning

2021

Interim report from Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded research project 'Sustaining Social Distancing and Reimagining City Life'. The report explores the value and importance of performance and the arts to city pandemic preparedness and response processes to identify 5 key challenges facing emergency planning professionals. Partly responding to calls for new approaches and ways of thinking from within emergency planning, we offer a series of 'invitations to innovate' in relation to the challenges identified, inviting conversations on questions of urban resilience, pandemic planning and response and cities’ social and aesthetic performances

Issues & Options Paper for Performing Arts Spaces (Indoor and Outdoor), 2020

Hawkridge Entertainment Services were engaged by Coffs Harbour City Council to undertake an Issues and Options Analysis for Performing Arts Spaces for the Coffs Harbour Local Government Area (LGA). The report addresses current concerns in relation to the lack of adequate performance spaces in the LGA and the options and requirements Council would need to consider in any future infrastructure provision. It also outlines a number of economic considerations for planning and operating performing arts facilities. A number of clear themes were developed for the interim analysis and subsequent research and consultation have further extrapolated the issues and options for performing arts in the Coffs Harbour region.

Performing City Resilience, 2021

Interim Report from Social Distancing and Reimagining City Life: Performative strategies and practices for response and recovery in and beyond lockdown. As part of our Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) research project 'Sustaining Social Distancing and Reimagining City Life', Stuart Andrews and I have published an interim report on our research findings: 'Performance as Pandemic Response: Invitations to Innovate'. The report can be found here: https://performingcityresilience.com/publications/ Looking at the value and importance of performance and the arts to city pandemic preparedness and response processes, the research builds on our wider Performing City Resilience research (particularly in New Orleans) to identify 5 key challenges facing emergency planning professionals. Partly responding to calls for new approaches and ways of thinking from within emergency planning, we offer a series of 'invitations to innovate' in relation to the challenges identified. We're inviting conversations on resilience, cities, emergency planning, and performance. A partner essay can be found in The Crisis Response Journal, 16:3. Found at: https://crisis-response.com/Publisher/Article.aspx?ID=617774

Changes in cultural consumption and in modes of governance are prompting performing arts centres (PACs) to take a more proactive role in urban life; they are reconfiguring their internal and external spaces to improve how they engage with their publics and adjacent urban spaces; and they are developing strategies to better manage their cultural and social impacts. This paper draws on qualitative research with Queensland Performing Arts Centre audiences and cites some specific initiatives to test the proposition that in reinventing themselves as multiple-use civic resources, performing arts centres are potentially significant sites of cosmopolitan citizenship. It argues that in addition to the PACs’ symbolic functions and the expertise they contribute to public life, they provide linked physical and social spaces that embody and promote the values of diversity and community cohesion.

2005

Cultural facilities as important elements of a sustainable city : the example of Toronto, Canada

2022

This research titled 'Performing Arts Industry: the economic and livelihood implications on artists and cultural impact on society due to COVID-19" funded by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) studies the impact of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown on Performing Arts Industry across the country. The lockdown which was declared to enable physical/social distancing in March 2020 had led to the closing down of a number of theaters and performing arts sites across the country. Our study aims to find out the impact of the pandemic on the livelihoods of performing artists. It also seeks to understand the ways in which artistic practices were affected and the alternatives used by performing artists. The biggest challenge for this study was to look at the performing arts sector as an industry. The nature of work and the difficulty in defining the product, which is of economic value and primarily defined by dynamics of exchange (Arjun Appadurai would call such a thing commodity), in the case of the performing arts creates theoretical issues in defining this sector. Nevertheless the same factor makes this study a one of a kind project. We have engaged with the performing artist as an artist-worker. Simultaneously we have looked at the industriousness of this sector by considering 'exchange' as the basis of commodity. Unfortunately since the performing arts were not deemed an essential commodity and were seen as unsafe in the light of the disease, this sector had largely ceased to function during the lockdown. Our findings suggest that many artists continue to be on the verge of starvation and some have shifted to alternative jobs to earn their livelihoods. Performing artists have also found different creative outputs, often through digital platforms, although mostly without pay. Some performing artists have fared better than others often based on the kind of art and artistic activities they pursue as well as other socio-demographic factors. The pandemic also exposes the precarious nature of the work in the performing arts sector and the lack of support systems for the performing artist-worker.

2017

Performance and performativity are inherent to urban life and design. The idea of a city as 'theatre of social action' according to Lewis Mumford has been contextualized through the roles of theatre and performance in urban life. The notion of theatre and performance here is more than metaphoric. In a parcel of Georgetown, Penang, the urban fabric provides historical spatial background as urban scenography; while in another sense, providing imagination of a performance through individuals' routine that embodies the community's collective values, desires, memories and aspirations. The deep-rooted existence of performing arts and cultural expression is now ploughed by the diminishing community that contributed to this scenario. This paper attempts to formulate strategies and tools of an urban catalyst that will revive the parcel into an area robust with business, religious and cultural activities that it once was. The potential of the site lies within its heritage cultural practices, heavily signified by its long-standing history of performance and artistic expressions in the urban parcel, which is now a host for the Penang Philharmonic Orchestra. Historical settings function as new imaginative performance spaces for citizens who assume the colliding and interchanging roles of both the performer and the audience. The new series of urban scenography become various nodes throughout the parcel, accommodating diverse typologies of 'urban stage' and 'micro theatres'. Subsequently, connectivity among these nodes is traversed by a network of 'corridors'. As such, this plexus of urban performance ultimately encourages a certain level of culturally charged resiliency and rebrands the parcel as a sustainable entity thriving on creative economy. This formula aims to be a catalyst to a chain of reaction in rejuvenating George Town through new programs of cultural contextualisation.

2015

This article explores the intersection of a revitalized independent music scene and competing urban visions in Toronto. After reviewing scholarly approaches to cultural scenes and their place in contemporary urban development, I examine how recording-industry changes in Canada impacted local musicians and contributed to an emerging “indie ethos.” From this, I consider the tensions between reluctantly intermingled municipal and grassroots urban visions, as well as divergent efforts to re-project the city's cultural identity. I argue that scene participants restructured their relationships with the city and advocate for more inclusive grassroots civic engagement that reaches beyond conventional scenic boundaries.

Frontiers in Psychology

IntroductionArts and cultural engagement activities have long been found to support wellbeing within the general population. In particular, community arts and cultural involvement during the COVID-19 pandemic have been an invaluable source of mental health and wellbeing support for many individuals across the globe. The initial move to remote engagement following the first United Kingdom lockdown demonstrated the importance of hybrid provisions, with isolated and vulnerable individuals finding online provisions important for wellbeing. With restrictions on movement and service access in the United Kingdom having gradually eased from March 2021, it is now important to explore how individuals navigated the ability to engage with either remote or in-person provisions. The current study aimed to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on arts and cultural engagement during periods of restrictions and initial easings on movement within the Liverpool City Region.MethodThe study consis...

In common with their international counterparts, Australia’s arts centres have been moving away from being venues for hire and are instead becoming producers and entrepreneurs; they are seeking to maintain standards of excellence while engaging larger and more diverse audiences; and they are doing all of this at a time when bricks and mortar cultural organisations are experiencing increased pressures brought about by changes in technology, patterns of cultural participation, and government expectations. These international trends can deliver economic, civic and artistic public benefits, yet they are also placing new emphasis on the arts centres’ capacities to provide cultural leadership. This paper asks whether large performing arts centres produce a public sphere, identifies features that distinguish their leadership role and the public spheres it creates, and considers ways of representing these features. It draws on research currently being conducted by myself and my colleagues at Griffith University, working in partnership with a consortium of Australian performing arts centres.

Dragan Klaic, a leading researcher on festivals in Europe, believes the new emerging purpose of festivals is that they increasingly… are not just artistic packages with appealing and valued content but instruments to re-examine the urban dynamics, … within the city space.…

2017

This thesis investigates the contribution of the arts to resilience within the context of Northern Ontario, a vast, sparsely populated geographical region dotted with isolated, remote, rural and smaller urban communities whose economies are based primarily on resource extraction. Industry restructuring, and other pressing issues related to globalization are forcing communities to rapidly adapt to survive. Resilience is commonly understood as a community’s capacity to resist adverse conditions, economic or otherwise, and an ability to adapt, transition and prosper through change while retaining its core values (Lewis and Lockhart, 2002). The arts have been hailed as economic drivers in the creative economy and many, primarily, urban centres are attempting to harness the arts in this regard; however, in the North there is limited understanding of the links between culture, community development and the economy. They are typically seen within traditional economic frameworks, i.e. tangi...