Torontoist » youth

Getting to Know St. James Town

UforChange is an arts training program, a pilot project aimed at supporting youth in St. James Town. The vertical neighbourhood—it consists of 19 apartment towers—is the most densely populated in the country, and is many new immigrants’ first home in Canada. (It’s been estimated that more than 85 per cent of St. James Town’s elementary [...]

Young Women Becoming Their Own Storytellers by Writing AMY

Most of the cast of Check Out, this year’s production of the AMY Project. One by one, the 12 girls sitting on the edge of the stage introduce themselves: Shannon, Tharnya, Shellie, Ana Maria, Grace, Lola, Mercedes, Noelle-Najnaah, Nicola, Alia, Emma, and Sukey. “And we are AMY.” Sometimes it’s easy to assume that youth automatically [...]

Paradise City

Photo by Katherine Verendia. If you’ve been looking at the upcoming shows listed on the Toronto Centre for the Arts’ website, you might have been perplexed to hear that Axl Rose was going to be tying on his bandana one more time for a three-night engagement at the North York theatre. But it’s not actually [...]

Kickin’ It New School

Art Starts/School of Rap students work on their upcoming release: Visionists In a basement studio at the corner of Oakwood and Amherst, a small group of hip-hop hopefuls has been meeting for the past ten weeks. Under the tutelage of urban music veteran Dan-e-o (best known, perhaps, for his 1995 single, “Dear Hip Hop”), these [...]

IM Here 4 U

Photo by John-Morgan. Coming out of the closet is difficult at any age. The challenge becomes exponentially higher as a youth, when you’re unsure of your place in the world, still dependent financially and emotionally on adults, and fearful of the potentially fickle judgments of peers and friends. Luckily, there’s Youth Line, a Toronto-based service [...]

Let It Rain Men!

Being a high school student in Rexdale’s Jamestown community comes with its share of obstacles: at the time of this post, 55% don’t finish high school, and 44% of families are single-parent households with an average income of $22,000. Many are new to Canada, and strange labour laws can put immigrants with medical degrees in [...]