photo by AFCY

“Arts for Children and Youth (AFCY) is introducing a new Emerging Youth Arts Educators Residency Program that will feature youth visual artists inside the Toronto Island ferries on Lake Ontario.  AFCY’s emerging youth artist Stephanie Spafford will set up a pop-up visual studio as a means to generate artwork and to converse with diverse public audiences right on the ferry.

Come see the emerging art star of AFCY in action! On the ferries you will see our youth artist throughout the week of May 1 – 7, 2012, from 11 am – 2 pm each day. This event just happens to coincide with National Youth Arts Week.

“AFCY is the first community arts organization to have been granted such a privilege, and we are thrilled to be partnering with City of Toronto – Waterfront Parks. ­­The impetus of the project is to provide opportunities for our city’s up and coming artists to produce art in innovative and unexpected urban places – to AFCY, Lake Ontario is a wonderful wide-open studio that can provide young artists with lots of inspiration. For the first time ever, youth will make art directly on the water, while the ferries are traveling. Here the youth artists will be able to engage with the passengers, gain fresh understandings about this unique urban area, and be part of the existing cultural activity”, says Julie Frost, AFCY’s executive and artistic director.

The program’s intention is to generate new cultural intersections, where youth and diverse Toronto audiences can merge, interact, learn and participate in exchanges of knowledge, culture and story.

Frost’s vision to infuse art in unexpected areas of Toronto was received very well by the Waterfront Parks staff. With this new program young artists get the opportunity to infiltrate Toronto’s harbour with artful activities.  The islands have a wonderful history with many of Toronto’s artists living there. Harbour residents maintain that they live in a very unique culture. With this program, we hope to celebrate and capture this uniqueness in the artwork that is generated.

“This is our second program that engages city commuters: AFCY also operates the Youth X Press mural program in partnership with the TTC.  In this program, youth design and create original public murals on discarded bus-side panels that are then mounted onto the sides of TTC buses and travel across Toronto,” says Frost.

Stephanie Spafford is a member of AFCY’s Youth Advisory Council and has been serving the council since 2007. She also sits on our Big Bam Boom Volunteer Youth Committee – a group of dynamic AFCY outh artists who collectively design and operate our annual youth-led Big Bam Boom Youth Arts Festival at Harbourfront. Spafford is a visual and performing artist. She is a recent fine arts graduate of York University. Stephanie has performed as a vocalist at venues across Toronto including the former Paramount Theatre, the Underground, the Royal Conservatory of Music, the Canadian Opera Company and the Harbourfront Centre. Stephanie has been affiliated with AFCY since the age of 13.

About AFCY
AFCY is a registered charitable organization. We ally with high priority communities and empower marginalized children and youth by engaging them in hands-on, community and school-based arts education programs that respect existing cultural and community activity, resulting in participatory action and social awareness. To learn more about us, please visit www.afcy.ca. You can email us at info@afcy.ca or call us at 416-929-9314.”

-posted with permission from Shehreen Ladha, AFCY

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