The Spur Festival, a fledgling arts and ideas celebration, hopes to get people rallying behind the issues. “We didn’t want to just have a festival for festivals’ sake,” says Helen Walsh, one of the co-founders. “We wanted to do something that would spur people into action, and spur thought into action.”
The Toronto edition of the Spur Festival is the first of three stops on an inaugural cross-country tour. Here, the festival’s theme will be “The Bottom Line,” a phrase that’s supposed to evoke the intersection of art, politics, and the economy. The second stop on the circuit is Winnipeg, where the festival runs from April 26-28 on the theme of “Unnatural Histories.” Then there will be a two-month respite before Spur heads off to Vancouver for its final installment, where the theme will be the environment.
Spur Toronto events will take place at York University, the Toronto Reference Library’s Appel Salon, Isabel Bader Theatre, the Gardiner Museum, Yorkville Public Library, and the OISE auditorium. The opening discussion, The Future of the Book (April 11, 7 p.m.), hosted by Paul Holdengräber at Toronto Reference Library’s Appel Salon, will be free of charge. According to Walsh, it’s a must-see.
“It’s going to be a real debate,” she says. “Paul Holdengräber is a real-book traditionalist. He runs New York Public Library and he’s a pretty big convener. He’s really strong-willed and opinionated. He argues for the book as a core, and that we should never get too far away from it.” Joining Holdengräber on stage will be Hugh McGuire, who founded a website that helps people digitally record and release public-domain audio books.
“Like journalism, the publishing world is undergoing a massive transformation and the centre doesn’t hold,” says Walsh. “So, what is next? I think it will be quite testy.”
The festival will be produced by Diaspora Dialogues (of which Walsh is president) and the Literary Review of Canada (where Walsh is a publisher). It’s being presented by the Ideas Institute.
Other events of note include walking tours. Ins Choi—author of the Soulpepper’s smash-hit play, Kim’s Convenience—is leading one, called All the World’s a Stage: Bloor Street West (April 13, 10 a.m., $30). Choi will guide people through the neighbourhood where he grew up and share stories of his upbringing. All the World’s a Stage: Yorkville (April 14, 10 a.m., $30), led by historian and culture critic Stuart Henderson, takes festival goers through the posh downtown neighbourhood while acquainting them with the vastly different Yorkville of the ’60s. Theatre buffs with a political bent might be interested in checking out The Theatre of Politics (April 14, 2 p.m., $25), a talk where playwrights Hannah Moscovitch, Guillermo Verdecchia, and Michael Healey will discuss the role of political theatre.
Each edition of the Spur Festival will have a public fellow who will gather feedback and collect insights on the issues discussed under the festival’s theme. The fellows will also release summary reports after the festivals conclude, so the producers can take a look at what impact they had, and determine what improvements to make for next year. Walsh is already contemplating some suggestions for future years, like doing streeter videos, or interviews with audience members.
“If there’s a good idea people rally support, and we’re amazed with how much support we’ve got for this,” Walsh says.