Results tagged “torontopublicspacecommittee”

Late last night the City's proposed new billboard bylaw and tax [PDF] cleared a major hurdle, unanimously passing through the Planning and Growth Management Committee on its way to a hearing before the full City Council. The meeting ran 'til about 11 p.m. and had to be moved from one of the regular committee meeting rooms to the main Council Chamber in order to accommodate fifty-plus deputants and scores of other observers. It was a pitched battle, one that has lasted through several years of debate, consultation, and resistance leading up to this moment. A tremendous victory for public space advocates, progressive councillors, and Mayor Miller, the bylaw will provide harmonized regulation of the billboard industry (the rules haven't been updated since amalgamation) and the tax will create the revenue needed to enforce those regulations.

WORDS: Pore over print of all genres at the twentieth annual The Word On The Street festival. In addition to the marketplace of books and magazines, this national celebration of literacy and the written word will feature tents and stages of readings, spoken-word performances, poetry slams, cooking demonstrations, publishing seminars, financial advice, musical performances, and children’s activities. Margaret Atwood will be in attendance to read from her latest novel, The Year of the Flood. To throw out a few more names, Elizabeth May, Dionne Brand, Camilla Gibb, Nino Ricci, and Jane Urquhart will also be participating in readings and panel discussions. Queen’s Park (780 University Avenue), Sunday 11 a.m.–6 p.m., FREE.

       

Last Sunday, Torontoist trekked to Woodbine Beach for a sandcastle-building extravaganza hosted by Art Attack!, the arts themed division of the Toronto Public Space Committee. The event was free, and open to anyone who wanted to participate. Liam O’Doherty, the event's organizer, told us that the purpose of the event was "to bring strangers together" and "have as much fun as possible."

We've been at City Hall a fair number of times, but it wasn't until this week that we had the rather delightful experience of being met by a beatboxing duo at the front door or rocking out to OutKast in the Council Chamber. The occasion for this upending of formality? A town hall meeting, hosted by a network of organizations known collectively as the Beautiful City Alliance. The coalition is working to convince city council to direct revenue from the billboard tax it plans to introduce this summer towards art in the public sphere and is stepping up its campaign efforts as the vote on that tax approaches. The town hall, attended by some two or three hundred artists and activists, as well as several city councillors, was part informational meeting and part pep rally, with a bit of spontaneous art production thrown in for good measure.

     

On Sunday afternoon, one of the coldest days of the year so far, the Art Attack wing of the Toronto Public Space Committee spent several hours turning a TTC shelter into a cozy igloo.

ART: Inject some colour into a drab November evening with a Toronto Public Space Committee Art Attack. Bring warm clothes and bright leaves and join in the creation of foliage-based installation art pieces, featuring wheat pasting and hanging leaf mobiles. In front of the University of Toronto Visual Studies building (1 Spadina Crescent), 7 p.m., FREE.

MEETING: The Toronto Public Space Committee holds its general meeting tonight to share information about the status of current campaigns for improving public spaces in Toronto. There will be cookies and treats served at the meeting. The second part of the evening moves the session to the local pub for an informal brainstorming social. Metro Hall (55 John Street, Room 303), 6:30 p.m., FREE.

NATURE: As part of the Junction Arts Festival, LEAF arborist Todd Irvine will be giving a guided tour of the Junction area and its various historic trees. The tour is presented by Toronto Tree Tours, in association with LEAF and the Toronto Public Space Committee. If you can't make it, it's worth checking out the Toronto Tree Tours website to see their premade, printable self-guided tree tours. Keele Street and Dundas Street West (on the northeast corner), 11 a.m., PWYC ($5 suggested).

These photos, of a garden constructed atop a bus shelter on Greenwood Avenue between Gerrard and Dundas, were recently uploaded to one of the Facebook groups of the Toronto Public Space Committee's Guerrilla Gardeners.

One year ago today, City Council's Executive Committee approved [PDF] the awarding of the street furniture contract—for the purposes of designing, building, owning, and maintaining bus shelters, garbage bins, ad pillars, and more for a period of twenty years in exchange for advertising rights—to Astral Media Outdoor, despite the fact that the company had absolutely no experience with "street furniture" and maintains dozens of illegal billboards in defiance of City Council.

Photo by Jonathan Goldsbie.

Last night a gaggle of H2O architects descended upon the quiet Leslieville intersection of Queen St. East and Jones in order to convert a barren streetcar shelter into a snow palace. Organized by the TPSC subcommittee "Art Attack," the event was designed to enhance the original reasons behind Toronto's boxed bus stops—being shelter—while replacing ad space with icy ingenuity.

On Friday night at 10:30, the Toronto Public Space Committee's Art Attack will "descend on the streets to re-imagine bus shelters as sensational structures of snow," converting the two ad-adorned boxes at Queen and Jones into something a little more whimsical.

SEPT. 28, 2006: Torontoist publishes "Two Peas In A Pod," a poorly considered article making fun of Eye and Now for both deeming Nuit Blanche significant enough to feature on their covers the same week.

Kincardine-born, Mississauga-bred, Toronto-based, and Berlin-bound, Joel Gibb is the musical and managerial head of The Hidden Cameras, the fantastic and always well-populated music collective whose members have included Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy), Reg Vermue (Gentlemen Reg), Laura Barrett, Maggie MacDonald (Republic of Safety), Dave Meslin (founder of the Toronto Public Space Committee), Bob Wiseman, Steve Kado (founder of Blocks Recording Club, member of Barcelona Pavilion and Ninja High School), Ohad Benchetrit (Do Make Say Think), Don Kerr (The Rheostatics), and many, many others.

They're in cabs, ATMs, and the Entertainment District, and they're about to be in all TTC vehicles. By next June, every one of the TTC's 1.5 million daily riders will be photographed multiple times over their journey.

Sunday afternoon is the Toronto Public Space Committee's third annual Human River Walk, a trek along the course of the buried Garrison Creek, from Christie Pits to Fort York in a parade of blue, symbolically bringing the river back above ground for one beautiful afternoon. Along the route, there will be music, performances, and stories about the history of the creek, the neighbourhoods, the trees, and Toronto's stormy relationship with its water. But, above all, it is a parade and much fun for the whole family—really!

Tomorrow night, scores of arts collectives and community groups will be putting on impressive exhibits, performances, and workshops as part of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche. The Toronto Public Space Committee thought it would be neat to do something, too, but guess which word in the event title made the TPSC uncomfortable.

When Monkey Warfare premiered at TIFF last year, Torontoist's Mathew Kumar gave it a less-than-positive review. (Its director and star were none too pleased.) When it opened at the Royal in December, however, I commented, "I personally love Monkey Warfare....I've been urging everyone I know to see it; the film fills me with a glee that makes me want to shout its title from the rooftops....On a number of levels, the film is an ode to my dual passions of film and public space advocacy in Toronto; I feel like it's a movie made for me and my friends....While I would stop short of calling it the film of my life, Monkey Warfare succeeds at being something that few films I have ever seen actually manage to be: anthemic."

Toronto is a city of trees. From centuries-old native oaks in our parks to imported Norway maples planted on lawns, Toronto’s greenery may not always be evident, but it is an integral part of the city’s life and history. Local Enhancement and Appreciation of Forests (LEAF) and the Toronto Public Space Committee (TPSC) have come together to create a series of tree tours that explore the urban canopy. Toronto Tree Tours offers guided walks as well as providing the maps required for self-guided tours. This week, Torontoist checked out the Dovercourt Park and Neighbourhood tour.

When it premiered at TIFF last year, Radiant City, ostensibly a documentary about urban sprawl, stirred up a bit of controversy. Its portrayal of the soul-rotting effects of the suburban environment on one aggressively average family was met with a variety of bemused reactions, some positive, others less so. (End of Suburbia this wasn't.) Torontoist's Mathew Kumar, for example, savaged it in his spoiler-happy review. But three months later a panel of "filmmakers, festival programmers, journalists, and industry professionals" decreed it one of the ten best Canadian films of the year. And when it opened in New York last May, even the hard-to-please Village Voice seemed to like it, deeming it "enlightening and disturbingly funny."

When the Information and Privacy Commissioner for Ontario published its guidelines for the use of video surveillance cameras in public places back in October 2001 [.PDF], it summarized that institutions considering their use "must balance the benefits of video surveillance to the public against an individual’s right to be free of unwarranted intrusion into his or her life. Pervasive, routine and random surveillance of ordinary, lawful public activities interferes with an individual’s privacy."

"Oh my God, my blow-up doll has been brutally murdered!" shrieked the young woman from the southeast corner of John and Richmond as she clutched her fake-blood-soaked inflatable companion. "My only friend, and someone brutally shot her! The horror! Why hasn't the police security camera done anything about it?!"

From mid-September through year-end, all City Community Centres will be closed on Mondays. Skating rinks won't open until January. Fewer potholes will be repaired. Snow won't be cleared unless there is at least 15 cm of it (the current minimum is 8 cm). New materials from Public Health will only be available in English.

On the west side of Dufferin Street, just south of Bloor, is a Wal-Mart. It is (currently) the only one in the former City of Toronto.

Lynsey Kissane, the project coordinator of Evergreen at the Brick Works, sent Torontoist the above photo, telling us "I have seen this truck-vertisement around a lot and don't think the blatant irony would be lost on anyone."

Torontoist has been saying for years that City Council provides better bang for your buck than any other piece of live entertainment in this city. At absolutely no cost (unless you count, you know, taxes), you can attend this extravaganza that combines the spectacle and epic scale of a mega-musical with the manic energy of a really good Fringe show.

The Toronto Public Space Committee last night Art Attacked every single Astral pillar in the city. Photos are here and here, with more to come.

On Monday and Tuesday nights, the Toronto Public Space Committee will be holding its third Art Attack event. The first, in 2002, had people meet up at the Tranzac to make art and then tape it over outdoor advertisements in the Annex. Last summer, the art-making took place at the Gladstone Hotel and the ad-jamming occurred mostly in the West Queen West area (with one excursion to King and Strachan to hit the Monster Bin at that corner).

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