“ArtReach is pleased to announce the 33 groups that were awarded funding for their art-based projects for youth. This $300,000 in funding is available thanks to ArtReach’s partnership with the Toronto Arts Council – click here for more info!

For project descriptions of previously funded groups, see ArtReach’s website.

Act Out Youth Theatre – Triple Threat Intensive Program $9,900
This 5-week artistic development program will be offering drama, vocal and dance training to 30 youth in communities across Scarborough. The project offers 3 days of programming a week and includes a trip to a professional theatre production. Participants work with a team of young mentors from the community for the development and presentation of a final showcase.

Alyssa Fearon – The Scarborough Project : You Are Here $3,650

You Are Here is an arts-education project for newcomer, first generation and Indigenous youth, living in Kingston-Galloway. Over a period of 10 weeks, participants aged 14-16 will learn the Indigenous history of Scarborough and be introduced to still and moving image production, editing, and narrative writing; explore themes of location and displacement; community-building; and identities. Participants will create arts pieces with the support of artist mentors.

Baby Steps Parenting – Turn the Page $10,000
Turn The Page is a 15-week set of interactive storytelling workshops for young mothers and their children in the Lawrence Heights neighbourhood. Participants will create a storybook for their child that will be published in a collective of short children’s stories. Participants will read their section of the book at an intimate event for friends and family.

Bay Mills Youth Council – access art $9,600
Access Art is a media arts program for youth from the Chester Le, Malvern, Galloway/Danzig and Bay Mills Blvd areas. Youth participants will attend knowledge and skill building opportunities together at a series of workshops, and will then work independently with the support of mentors to direct short films highlighting artists and positive stories from their communities, to be screened at a final event.

Blossom – Blossom $8,500
Blossom is a 25-week long, free holistic fashion program for 20-25 young Muslim women in the Mount Dennis and Dixon areas of Toronto. The program includes courses in fashion illustration, sewing, pattern drafting, jewlery making, marketing, branding, mentorship and fashion photography over a five month period.   The culmination of the program will be a photoshoot and a fashion show for their community.

Creative Spirits – Plate It Up $9,970
‘Plate It Up’ is an eight-month program that fuses ceramics and culinary arts for 12 youth (ages 13-18) in Kingston/Galloway-Orton Park. This program will provide participants with a meaningful art-based experience in clay while cultivating opportunities for creative expression and collaboration, culminating in a community exhibition where participants will serve dishes they made on the ceramic wares they created.

Dream House Collective, The – Dream House Arts Event Planning $10,000
The Dream House Arts Event Planning project will curate 4 events that involve music, art and fashion, and use them as training opportunities for youth to develop skills in arts event production and management. Mentors provide training in curation, stage setup and design, prop design, live sound setup, and more depending on the interests of the groups. The program gives increasingly more responsibility to participants with each consecutive event.

Encontrarte Youth Arts Initiative – Encontrarte $10,000
Encontrarte is a Latin American youth arts and dance project that promotes Hispanic culture in our community through dance and theatre. Over the course of 8 months, Hispanic youth (aged 13-24) will receive lessons in a variety of Latino dance forms, choreograph their own 16-count sequences which will all be performed at 6 performances at community events Toronto, at the International Youth Theatre Festival (pending acceptance), and in a final showcase.

Eritrean Youth Collective – The World of Work Project $10,000
The WoW project will explore an intergenerational ‘world of work’ of Eritrean parents and youth. This program will be offered to 5 participants in the Photo Stream and 5 participants in the storytelling stream. Youth will be offered skill development in their chosen art forms and create pieces that share the struggles, reality, hopes and perspectives of employment of their parents through their eyes, while simultaneously depicting their own personal dreams and aspirations. A multi-media website will showcase the final works.

Fright Film School – Fright Film School $9,900
Fright Film School will give 25 Hispanic youth in the West end of Toronto (Dufferin – Kipling) the chance to make a series of short horror films. Over the course of 4 months, participants will build skills in the areas of film, Super 8 film, digital video, writing, drawing (story boards), sound and music and produce films to be screened at the Revue Cinema.

GirlX – Redefining Leadership $4,600
GirlX is a 6-week pilot project that will provide young women aged 13-18 with skill-building and self-expression opportunities in the areas of creative writing/poetry and photography. Youth mentors will facilitate 2-3 hour workshops in spoken word, narrative writing and collective creation with a focus on enhancing participants’ life skills and knowledge of politics, media and themselves. The group will produce a magnum opus to be presented at a community event.

Jayu – The Hashtag Street Photography Project $10,000
The Hashtag Street Photography Project is collaboration between Jayu, Community Story Strategies, six Toronto-based photographers and the homeless population at Horizons for Youth, a youth shelter in Toronto. This 8-week project will empower youth to share their stories through the photography skills they will acquire from this project.

Joel Zola – Street Voices $10,000
Street Voices is a collective of youth artists that live in the shelter system. Street Voices is offering weekly workshops in creative writing, graphic design and videography training to youth, to support them to develop skills and transfer their experiences into creative outputs. The group will publish 3 magazines, each launched with their own event.

Justin Anderson – Champions $14,460
Champions is an after school martial arts program developed to help 16 young men and women that are facing frequent suspensions at school in the Malvern community, due to fighting and violence. Our aim is to create leaders with these youth and teach integrity, courage, and self-control while promoting anti-violence through Tae-Kwon-Do. Participants will demonstrate the sequences and skills developed in a final showcase.

Mandy Lam – Fly Free $8,150
Fly Free is a ONE week long camp teaching the art of Parkour TO 10 young women in the Rockcliffe-Symthe (Weston Mt. Dennis) neighbourhood. Held in a Parkour facility, workshops and discussions are added to technical development and choreography to build self-confidence and skills. The project will end in a final demonstration.

Mehdia & Maryam Hassan  – Visual Arts Workshop $5,000
This project is a series of visual arts workshops, which follows a successful summer pilot program. In partnership with St. James Town Community Corner (SJCC), community artists Mehdia and Mayam will offer workshops in print and ceramics to 12 youth, ages 13 and up. Activities include workshops, art lessons, field trips and working sessions for each participant to create a completed work.

Mel G. Campbell – Not Lost: A Grief Writing Project $10,000
Not Lost is a peer-led creative writing workshop for 10 youth aged 16-29 who have lost a loved one. Providing creative and empathetic support to those living with loss, it will prioritize folks facing intersectional barriers INCLUDING Black, Indigenous, and people of colour, queer and trans spectrum and sick/disabled youth.

Newcomer Girls Action Committee – ReShaped & ReImagined $10,000
The ReShaped & ReImagined project is a 16-week program for newcomer and racialized young women (12 – 19) who wish to express their creativity and skills through fashion entrepreneurship. 25 newcomer and/or racialized girls will be provided with group work and practical skills based training to modify vintage clothing, discuss issues at the intersection of fashion and politics and publicise their creations and thoughts via a fashion blog.

The Passion – The Passion $10,000
The Passion is a 3-month long youth-led urban arts program that aims to engage 20 youth (13-29) in York South-Weston through Spoken Word. Following a series of workshops, program participants and leaders will complete a 12-track CD of original spoken word material.  Participants will also have the chance to write artists bios and get professional photos for their portfolios. The album will be launched with an event.

Patrick de Belen – PSL Poetry is Our Second Language $10,000
Poetry Is Our Second Language (P.S.L.) is a 5-week workshop series that offers a critical curriculum and training in poetry writing and spoken word performance to young Filipino Canadians. The workshop will run twice for 5 youth in each session and will produce a published chapbook (a small poetry publication) and blog for the program.

The Untold Stories-Through My Lens program is a 12-week creative self-expression program for girls between the ages of 14-20. Using photography and story telling, the program will provide girls in the Rexdale community with a supportive space to develop balance, resilience and purpose, expressing these themes through their photos, which will be displayed in a public exhibition.

R.I.S.E. Edutainment – The Excel Program $15,000
The Excel Program will work with 8 youth from across the GTA to develop skills in live vocal performance, artistic development, and arts focused professional business practice through mentorship and supported participation in R.IS.E. This project will also invest in R.I.S.E’s organizational capacity through the training of 3 professional artists in workshop facilitation training from the NIA Centre. RISE staff will be also be mentored on project coordination from City of Toronto Staff and evaluation from a professional evaluator.

Ryan Dela Cruz – UBUNTU Dance Program $5,000
UBUNTU is a 6-month dance program for 9 Scarborough Youth facilitated by Krump and Hip Hop group Bucc N Flvr. The program will be documented in a film addressing the process and life experiences of youth participants, AND the project will culminate in a series of community performances.

Say Word Media – Say Word Media Issue 5 $10,000
This project would bring together 5 alumni of the Say Word program, to facilitate media arts workshops/programming to other youth interested in journalism, creative writing, photography and graphic design in Scarborough’s underserved neighbourhoods. The group will work together to create another issue of the Say Word Magazine, to be distributed as Scarborough’s only for-youth, by-youth magazine for the community.

SoundCheck – Play Our Sound $10,000
The “Play our Sound” project is a ONE-year beginner-intermediate level musical instruction and mentorship program for racialized youth ages 15-24 in the Weston Mount Dennis community. The program uses music to teach youth new skills (on one of four instruments) and provides meaningful leadership opportunities to youth within the community. Unique focus is placed on developing bands and providing meaningful performance opportunities.

SPEAKout Poetry & Ink Veins – the Poetry Collage $9,600
SPEAKout will provide 5 months of spoken word performance and writing workshop series for young women of diverse backgrounds, with a focus on creative writing, presentations skills, leadership development and confidence building. Participants will have the opportunity to put what they learn into practice at 3 bi-monthly open mic events.

SpeakSudan – Young African Men Theatre Program $15,000
YAMTAP is a pilot project that will provide an opportunity for Black Identifying (African, Afrodiasporic, Black Canadian, Caribbean, Latino) young men aged 16-25 to participate in a 16-week theatre program during which youth to write, create, produce and stage a theatre production under the guidance of artist mentors from the community. Gaining valuable skills in play writing, stage management, set design, event planning, performance, acting, lighting, graphic design, and more. The program will engage 15 youth and 20 mentors in it’s 32 session duration. The program will culminate in a performance of the original material developed. The program presents a platform for telling black stories told by black bodies.

Spoke N’ Heard – The K.N.O.W.N. Program $10,000
“The K.N.O.W.N. Project” is a Toronto based creative arts and life-skills program that provides intensive training to youth ages 14–25. Participants will develop skills through 20 workshops in spoken word, emceeing and acting, lead by mentors from the Spoke N’ Heard network. Participants will be supported to audition for community arts showcases, events, open mics and tours. The program will be documented and turned into a mini-documentary.

Stolen From Africa – Saving OurSelves (SOS) $10,000
Saving OurSelves (SOS) is a series of multi-media and cross-cultural arts development retreats for 45 youth marginalized by mainstream education. Emerging youth artists will collaborate with professional youth artists to produce mixed media productions.

Stud Magazine (TSM) – The Stud Magazine $15,000
The Stud Magazine is a dynamic and comprehensive look into the topics, issues and the lifestyles of non-gender conforming females. This magazine will shift thoughts and cause individuals to see gender differently. This project will provide writing workshops for youth, publish 2 online issues of the magazine and offer panel discussions to raise awareness of the initiative and issues it addresses.

Toronto Emerging ARTivists – Enviro ARTivism Installations $10,000
The Toronto Emerging ARTivists WILL increase the membership of the group by 10 young people and working together, will install 3 eco-art installations within Thorncliffe/Flemingdon Park. The project will include a series of pop-bottle planter and stencilled moss art installations as well as an environmentally themed mural.

Nasma Ahmed – Unravel $10,000
Unravel is a free film intensive program for 8-10 young women of colour, black women and indigenous women residing in East Scarborough. The project will include intensive media literacy training, introduction to film production/roles, screenwriting and creative story telling. This project will be executed in a 7-month period and the final product will be a small film showcase including parents and friends.

Zahra Agjee – The Truth and Dare Project $10,000
This project provides a series of photo-based, mixed media workshops for young Muslim women. The workshops are an opportunity to explore identity, strengthen confidence, and build skills in photo based mixed media.Participants are mentored by experienced arts educators and their work will be exhibited during the Contact Photography Festival of Toronto. The workshop series will be offered in a number of locations in the Greater Toronto Area including Lawrence Heights, Malvern and Thorncliff Park.”

-from ArtReach’s newsletter, Oct 16 and website
Read ArtReach’s profile in ArtBridges’ Community-engaged Arts Directory & Map