toronto

New Art Project Examines Humanity and Art-as-Experience

- Adam Clare

ZED.TO is an art project that is examining how people relate to one another while exploring the boundaries of art and theatre. It’s run by a small group called the Mission Business and looks like they’re going to create something downright nifty.

ZED.TO – an immersive biotech adventure from Trevor Haldenby on Vimeo.

This project is an exploration of format. We are curious about what happens when artists and strategic thinkers move outside of their own specific realms to collaborate in story making and story telling. Toronto is currently in a financial artistic crisis. Looking at the report on municipal per capita investment in the arts that just came out this week, Toronto is at the bottom of list of Canadian cities dollar investment in the arts. It’s not a secret that cities flourish when a government invests in culture. The return on investment is high when you invest in the arts. As a result of this lack of funding, the art we are creating is void of risk. The Mission Business, a new collective on the Toronto arts scene, is inevitably caught in a cycle that won’t allow us to gain from writing grants because our project doesn’t fit into any category box, and no one knows our work to be proven successfully. So we are expected to go round and round in a cycle that wants us to prove ourselves before we are supported by larger funding bodies, but we get caught because we can’t put anything up without that support. The problem here is the same as the art-making. No one wants to take a risk. For me, creating an experience that is inherently risky in format and content as well as collaboration, makes sense in a period where we are being forced to do what is considered safe. How are we expected to create change if we do the same thing over and over expecting different results? Isn’t that the definition of insanity?

To get their project running they are looking for financing through IndieGoGo, find out more at ZED.TO on IndieGogo

Board Game Jam 2012

- Adam Clare

Board Game Jam is happening in Toronto February 25-26! If you’ve ever wanted to make a game then this is a place to start!

Here’s a special challenge to Things Are Good readers: make a game that is designed to educate or empower people to make the world a better place. If you do, find me at the event and I’ll post all the good games later on!

Board Game Jam
Board Game Jam

At the same time, even while videogames seem to occupy the headlines, the world of board gaming is seeing a resurgence in some smaller part of our collective consciousness. All the hipsters know how to play Settlers of Catan, and Snakes & Lattes seems to be packed every single day. If you ask me, it’s part of some broader reconnection to real social interaction in so-called “meatspace,” but I’ll spare you the philosophizin’.

The point is that board games are both wonderfully accessible and quite deep. Everyone can intuitively understand the basics of what goes into making a board game. On a mechanical level, it’s simple arts and crafts. For people looking to be creative, that can be a great change from making a film or any kind of digital media, which require significant technical knowledge and a team of specialists. But making a board game can be lead you down a rabbit-hole into a world of rich creative exploration and sophisticated design. Like the best games of any sort, making a board game is both easy to learn, and tough to master.

Board Game Jam is a low-barrier way to enter the world of gamemaking, and have fun doing it.

Check out Board Game Jam!

One Millionth Tower

- Adam Clare

One Millionth Tower is a new interactive documentary on the hyper-local level focusing on Kipling Ave. in Toronto. It’s a logical follow up to Out my Window (we’ve looked at it before) and explores how participatory urban design can change our highrise urban landscape.

The highrise re-imagined.

One Millionth Tower re-imagines a universal thread of our global urban fabric — the dilapidated highrise neighbourhood. More than one billion of us live in vertical homes, most of which are falling into disrepair. Highrise residents, together with architects, re-envision their vertical neighbourhood, and animators and web programmers bring their sketches to life in this documentary for the contemporary web browser.

The result of this unique collaboration is a lush visual story unfolding in a 3D virtual environment. Visitors explore how participatory urban design can transform spaces, places and minds.

Thanks to @katciz

Using Food to Better the World

- Adam Clare

The West End Food Co-op in Toronto is looking to incorporate food production and consumption into bettering their local neighbourhood.

The West End Food Co-op has 500 members so far, including 20 farmers. Dinner expects another 1,500 to sign up by the end of next year. (Membership costs only $5.) Until their first general meeting, there won’t be an operating plan. But, they have some basic ideas of how it will work:

• The kitchen will be used as a mini processing plant for farmers’ excess product, so vegetable farmers can drop off extra bushels of tomatoes and the co-op cooks will stew them into pasta sauce, label them and sell them in the store, for example.

Twice a week, the kitchen will be used for community programming, teaching Parkdale groups how to cook and preserve. In exchange for a break in the rent, the Community Health Centre upstairs expects to hold workshops here.

The prices in the co-op will be more expensive than No Frills, to ensure the farmers make enough to remain on the farm. Since Parkdale is a poorer part of town, the co-op will distribute “co-op bucks” to its community partners, like the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre. The Parkdale Community Health Centre plans to fundraise to buy “co-op bucks” for its clients.

The members will decide what to do with any profit the co-op makes, whether to invest in a new freezer or pay for another community program.

Read the full article.

UforChange: Culture for a Better World

- Adam Clare

UforChange is all about using art and culture to make the world a better place! They focus on St. Jamestown in Toronto and have had great success engaging their community through participating in art projects that make the neighbourhood more welcoming and a great place to be.

UFORCHANGE: Creative Culture,Better World from Mad Ruk Entertainment on Vimeo.

At the core of the program is a unique methodology: an exploration of arts and life skills that is both participant guided and founded in experiential learning. UforChange provides a six month, structured and intensive arts, culture and life skills program for youth, followed by another 9 months of participant selected projects, fully facilitated by staff and volunteers. Our methodology has demonstrated proven results for youth by helping them to make friends, build skills, find confidence, formulate and follow through on a plan for their future, all while developing a stronger sense of community, belonging and pride.

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