The Scarborough Arts Council and The Centre for Creative Communications at Centennial College are doing something neat—they're recording podcasts about technology in front of a live studio audience. The lecture series being recorded is called OPEN SPACE, and the upcoming two-part event, entitled The Future is Now, features two smart and interesting people talking about digital culture, technology and society, and the effects of combing these things. On October 16 (that's tomorrow!) from noon until......

In a recent argument in favour of the heritage value of the Sam's sign, the billboards in Yonge-Dundas Square were compared to "banner ad slots on a Web page" due to their ephemeral nature. Well, the same could be said of our cultural institutions. The agenda of the June 25th meeting of City Council's Executive Committee [PDF] contains a report recommending that the naming rights of the Hummingbird Centre be resold [PDF]: The financial......

"I’m going to Pakistan in November to share Q&A with young theatre artists during a festival celebrating Punjabi culture. I arrive on November 17. Look for more posts then." —Darren O’Donnell Thus begins Darren's account of his time spent presenting his interactive theatre work in rural Pakistan and in Mumbai, India. Video Show for the People of Pakistan and India is a collection of footage from his journey, and will be shown at The Centre......

If laughter is the best medicine, then Albert Nerenberg wants to take you to med school. The documentary filmmaker who has brought about such films as Stupidity and Escape To Canada has recently turned his camera lens towards laughter. And now, after all his research, he is teaching Advanced Laughter Workshops to show people how to laugh. He started out his research going to Laughter Yoga classes, which suggests that most of us are amateur......

TO. Hogtown. The Queen City of Canada. The Centre of the Universe. Centennial City. All names applied to Toronto over the years. Centennial city? That was the nickname tossed around when Toronto celebrated its 100th birthday in 1934. To commemorate the event, a Centennial Committee was put together by city council, whose lasting work was Jesse Edgar Middleton’s book Toronto’s 100 Years. The book includes a variety of sketches of the city’s first century, as......

It's 1:42 a.m. You're finally finished replying to e-mails.You settle down to continue that novel that you've been writing for, what, six, seven years now? But now you have a headache. The faucet is dripping and you can't concentrate. You eye the "To File" pile of papers on your desk and figure it wont hurt to make the stack smaller. By the time you're finished, it's pushing 3 a.m. and you didn't write a single......

One of the complaints of the Toronto arts scene is that it's far too downtown-centric. Yet interestingly many of its artists, and many many Torontonians actually come from and some still live in the suburbs. Couple this with the gentrification happening all over downtown Toronto and you can come to the conclusion that sooner or later artists will be priced out of their downtown live/work spaces and crappy basement apartments. This is what Brenda Goldstein,......

Those Wireless Toronto folks have struck again! The newest hotspot--which means free wifi--is in the Junction, at the Axis Gallery and Grill, a place with a great patio and a warm neighbourhood-y feel (3048 Dundas St. West). Link to info on the wireless toronto blog. (in case you forgot, Wireless Toronto is an all-volunteer group dedicated to spreading free wireless internet across this great city of ours, and using that internet to enable community......