Engaging the Public: TRCA Mobile Art Exhibit
October 18, 2017
By Sarah Niedoba
Reprinted with permission of the publisher of NRU Publishing Inc. Original article first appeared in Novae Res Urbis – GTHA Edition, Vol. 20, No. 39, Wednesday, October 4, 2017.
Last year, Toronto and Region Conservation released its Living City Report Card, a progress report on environmental sustainability in the region, focusing on six themes—carbon, air quality, water, waste, land use, and biodiversity.
Now, TRCA is creating a mobile public art exhibition in an attempt to engage the public in the report’s findings.
The Living City art exhibit will feature six art pieces—one for each of the report’s themes—and will be hosted at the Evergreen Brick Works from November 23 until the end of 2017. According to TRCA project manager Angela Wallace, the exhibit is intended to get the public excited about the report’s findings.
“At TRCA, we’re really good at putting together reports, but the problem is that the reports end up sitting on a shelf and they don’t get a lot of attention,” Wallace told NRU.
TRCA partnered with Evergreen and Crazy Dames—a community engagement collaborative run by urban planner Sara Udow and artist Jennie Suddick—to create the exhibit. Wallace says that each art piece will be accompanied by an informative plaque, summarizing the report’s findings and directing readers to where they can find it online.
“What we’re trying to do is reach people who might not otherwise engage with this information,” Wallace says. “They can engage with the artwork, which will have more of an emotional impact than the report might have on its own, and then they can read about the findings of the report, and may be inspired to read the actual report itself.”
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Each artist is partnered with environmental experts—Wallace herself is partnered with the 1:1 Collaborative, which is creating an art installation inspired by the report’s findings on stormwater.
1:1 Collaborative
“What they’ve decided at this point is that they want to create an installation that focuses on sound,” Wallace says. “So they spoke with me about the importance of stormwater management, and they’re thinking about creating an installation where you can hear how water sounds when it’s being absorbed into grass, and how it sounds when it’s hitting impermeable materials. These sounds will be able to be heard at different locations throughout the Brick Works.”
According to Udow, Crazy Dames wanted to pair artists with environmental experts to ensure that the artists had an understanding of the topic they were representing, and the experts saw their subject matter through an artistic lens.
“By partnering artists with environmental experts, we wanted to create interdisciplinary discussions, where hopefully the artists will shape the way the experts think about their own work, while gaining an understanding of the theme that they’re covering,” Udow told NRU. “It’s supposed to be a mutually beneficial partnership.”
After the Brickworks, the exhibit will travel to different locations across the GTHA, starting in January with TRCA’s headquarters. TRCA hopes to partner with municipalities, which could host the exhibit in their civic centres.
“What we’re really trying to do with this exhibit is bring it to people who might not otherwise engage with local sustainability efforts,” Wallace says. “So we’re excited to see what kind of partnerships we can create, and where this project will end up going.”
- Artist Paul Chartrand is partnered with Partners in Project Green waste management coordinator Catherine Leighton on the waste theme
- Artist Lisa Vanin is partnered with the Royal Ontario Museum’s Centre of Discovery in Biodiversity managing director Dave Ireland on the biodiversity theme.
- Artist Gustavo Cerquera Benjumea is partnered with City of Toronto air quality project manager Christopher Morgan and Clean Air Partnership deputy director Kevin Behan on the air quality theme.
- Artist Cat Bluemke is partnered with The Atmospheric Fund policy adviser Ian Klesmer on the carbon theme.
- Artist Cole Swanson is partnered with Neptis Foundation project strategies director Phinjo Gombu and TRCA planning and development associate director Quentin Hanchard on the land use theme.
The art pieces will be revealed at the exhibit’s launch November 23.