Attention basement dwellers: on Wednesday, February 6, OCAD is hosting a free presentation by SWEAT, a collaboration of game designers, programmers, and artists dedicated to bringing socially aware video games to the general public. SWEAT has already produced games like Crosser, a Frogger-esque game about illegal crossing at the US/Mexico border, and is currently developing Juan & the Beanstalk, a game about the societal effects of illegal drug production in Colombia. The presentation will......

Toronto has been called a city of neighbourhoods: The Beach, Yorkville, Chinatown, Little Italy, Greektown, The Annex; all have their defining characteristics that make them appealing to locals as well as visitors. And when it comes down to it, most of these areas are well-defined by the intersection of two major streets. Photo by sono salvo from Flickr. Baldwin Street, a lush strip that runs between Spadina Avenue to the west and McCaul Street to......

There's an old cliché that says everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day. It follows, then, that everyone is goth on Halloween . If you’re going to be exploring your inner goth anyway, you may as well go hog wild and get your little black-clad tuchus down to the fourth edition of EBM Fest at The Reverb (651 Queen Street West) on October 28, where the folks who live Halloween every day will be......

Transformation AGO will soon be entering the final stages of its expansion project, estimated to finish sometime in mid-2008. But before the AGO closes its doors in order to begin reinstalling over 5,000 pieces of art into 110 galleries, they will be offering free admission to the public for its closing weekend this October 6 and 7. This will be your final opportunity to view the four exhibitions that have been on display since......

OCAD's events calender may be gently filling up in anticipation of Nuit Blanche awesomeness, but before we can think of drowning our bodies in caffeine and submitting them to a twelve-hour period of sleeplessness (Torontoist will have our Nuit Blanche preview posts coming on Tuesday, incidentally), you may want to take some time to welcome OCAD's visitor. This week, Ann Hamilton has been invited as an artist in residence through the Nomadic Residents program,......

Those Pedestrian Sundays folk are back this weekend (July 15), and this time they're taking over Baldwin Village. Nestled on the edge of Chinatown, the area was once the home of Jewish immigrants, American draft dodgers and a myriad of other international settlers to Toronto. It is now well known for its diverse restaurants—especially to the U of T students who live in inexpensive apartments nearby. Baldwin Street will be shut down from Henry......

Every Sunday, Frank Warren takes some of the anonymous secrets he receives by the hundreds and posts them to his website, PostSecret. Warren receives them as postcards, each one artistically suited to the secret it contains; what was originally conceived as a one-time art project has not only given way a website with over a million hits per week, but three books compiling PostSecret's submissions into different themes: PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives, My......

Three years ago, Frank Warren printed 3000 postcards inviting people to share a secret with him. Long since he stopped handing these first postcards out at subway stations and art galleries, he continues to receive secrets from around the world. Each week, Warren posts some of these on PostSecret, the largest advertisement-free blog on the internet. He has also published three books compiling some of these secrets: PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives, My Secret......

The Spadina Expressway was probably the most high-profile megaproject in Toronto that was never built, but it's also just one of many. For his OCAD thesis project, David Kopulos has detailed a host of construction projects that were planned for Toronto, but that never materialized—both the reviled (such as the Expressway) and the intriguing—on his website, Toronto Pending. Each entry explains what the proposed structure would have been and why it wasn't built, alongside......

You know, you get on in years and you start to think that everything has been done. Nothing can ever be new again. So jaded and hard to impress. Then suddenly, it dawned on us that not everyone thinks this way and if they did, their livelihoods would just fall to the wayside and hey, doling out french fries over a greasy counter doesn't sound so bad afterall. Those who most definitely do not......

As part of Toronto’s Live With Culture initiative, an all-night party to celebrate contemporary art is scheduled to start this year on September 30 at 7:00pm and end on October 1 at 7:00am. The event is called the Scotiabank Nuit Blanche and is modeled after an annual Parisian festival that began in October of 2002 and has already spread to other cities such as Brussels, Rome, and Madrid. Private and public buildings will be......

Hidden in the Village by the Grange food court, just across from gallery goers (AGO) and gallery makers (OCAD), lies Helena’s Magic Kitchen.  Helena’s offers Eastern European traditional dishes such as perogies (6/$3), goulash, and cabbage rolls, in addition to other fresh goodies including daily soups, quiches, crepes ($5), frittatas ($4) and more.  This secret spot of OCAD students is a fave with Torontoist too, especially with its veggie friendly appeal – choose from lentil......