The Newmindspace Pillow Fight is quickly becoming a tradition in Toronto, bringing hundreds of cushy-weapon wielding combatants to Nathan Phillips Square for an afternoon of mayhem. This year saw an amazing turnout given the inclement weather earlier in the day, and we were there right in the thick of the action to capture every bit of it. Watch as Rebecca, Ryan and I nearly destroy one of our cameras making this very fun video.
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Newmindspace
Music by Final Fantasy
Playing live at Danforth Music Hall August 27th - Tickets at Rotate This and Soundscapes
The Toronto Tree Tours aim to tell compelling stories about the urban forest, connect people to the trees in their neighbourhood, and to teach and encourage people to care for our city’s most valuable resource. I took part in the most recent Green Roof & Tree Tour put on by the Local Enhancement & Appreciation of Forests (LEAF) in association with the Toronto Public Space Committee (TPSC). It was led by arborist Todd Irvine to a couple sites in Toronto, 401 Richmond St and 215 Spadina Ave, both of which host spectacular green roofs.
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Toronto Tree Tours
LEAF
TPSC
Music by Mojib
Cut&Paste is a digital design tournament, putting designers head to head in a battle of creative digital arts. Their goal is to promote the idea that design is a tangible, real thing and to promote the people and who make all the magic happen. Each contender is given a few minutes, a theme, a set of tools including a digital camera, Wacom tablet and a suite of software including Illustrator and Photoshop. A live audience looks on as the designs are created before their eyes. The Toronto chapter of Cut&Paste happened this year at the FITC festival of design and technology and saw a couple of Toronto’s finest, Justin Broadbent and Alex Kurina take on New York’s Guillo Echevarria and Edward Ubiera. Look for me in one of the designs as I happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time with my camera.
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Cut&Paste
FITC
Music by Bitstream Dream (via the Podsafe Music Network)
Metronauts is an evolution of last year’s Transit Camp - a community of enthusiastic, open-minded people who care about the future of their city and the role transportation has in their lives. This was my first unconference and I was really inspired by the free-flow of ideas and open-mindedness most people showed. Metronauts will continue to hold events around the Greater Toronto Area with officials from Metrolinx there to hear ideas and contribute to the conversation. This is a pretty brief look at just a couple sessions out of the dozens held at Metronauts. Full-length, unedited video will be available soon at the Metronauts site.
Update: This irony is not lost on us that this video was released mere hours before the TTC strike. If it wasn’t clear before, it is now; Toronto’s transit system is in dire need of innovation and fresh thinking.
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Metronauts
Metrolinx
Music by Kaimoku (via the Podsafe Music Network)
The Bax Bears World Tour is hitting Toronto, bringing the DIY (design-it-yourself) toy-like bears to our city, and enlisting a number of local artists to take on the task of creating unique designs based on the bears. I stopped in to talk to Rafi Ghanaghounian, the owner and curator of Keep Six Contemporary, the gallery hosting the bears, and got him to show me some of the very creative designs on display. The tour runs March 28 to April 6 at the Keep 6 Contemporary gallery (938 Bathurst Street). On Sunday April 6 they’ll have several panel discussions with some notable folks from Toronto’s illustration community, as well as the owners of the Queen West eclectic design shop, Magic Pony.
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Keep Six Contemporary Gallery
Bax Bears
blogTO: Bax Bears Invade Toronto
Music by Animal/Monster
The Toronto Ice Race is an annual event put on by owners The Bike Joint that’s usually held on Toronto Island, but has been recently moved to the vibrant community centre at Dufferin Grove. Racers outfit their typical bike tires with homemade studded tubes and hit the ice (usually with a few bruises to show for it). I swung by Dufferin Grove for the night to see what the event was all about, and to get the word from some of the very colourful characters who took part in the race.
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The Bike Joint
Friends of Dufferin Grove Park - The Unofficial Website of Dufferin Grove
Reuters’ Photo/Audio Coverage of the Race
Helmet cam from one of the racers (YouTube) (spot Adam shooting this episode for bonus points)
Music: Datarock (myspace)
