At one of Tanja’s recent freestyle photo shoots Ryan brought his first batch of Ninja Dolls in the hopes that they would elicit some sort of reaction amongst a few people. The last thing he expected was for a video to be shot, and the related title above also functions as a great summary to its content.
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.
Poster Child is a bitchin’ street artist and promoter of all things nifty that coat our city’s urban landscaping. We recently got in touch with Post and he let us know that he was up to something nifty. On May 2nd Rebecca and Ryan set up shop at Nathan Phillips Square, awaiting the drop. Gotta say that we hope the pieces he followed with in the days afterward fared better!
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.
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 theTTCstrike. If it wasn’t clear before, it is now; Toronto’s transit system is in dire need of innovation and fresh thinking.
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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About Us
Dear Toronto is a video podcast focusing on live music events, performance art, festivals, and all things that we hold near and dear to our hearts in the city of Toronto.
