2021 Year of Public Art Primes Plan for Citywide Improvement

Urbantoronto.ca
February 11, 2020
Isaac Khouzam

Toronto is already home to over 1,500 works of public art. With its recently announced Year of Public Art initiative, the City hopes to grow this number, and encourage an even more vibrant culture of public art in Toronto.

On November 18, 2019, Mayor John Tory declared 2021 the Year of Public Art. The announcement marks the first step in the City’s Public Art Strategy for 2020-2030, which provides a twenty-one point roadmap for renewed investment in the City’s Public Art infrastructure.

The Year of Public Art initiative, sponsored by the City in partnership with the Toronto Arts Council, is a symbolic and practical kick-start to this process, promising to deliver major pieces of public art while providing grants to support the work of local artists.

The City of Toronto already has public art built into its planning apparatus. More than 200 pieces of public artwork have been created through the Percent for Public Art Program, which requires one percent of construction costs in development and infrastructure projects to be dedicated to public art. The City also benefits from private donations and public commissions as part of its Public Art and Monuments Collection. Overseen by the Economic Development and Culture Division of the City of Toronto, these methods have resulted in over 300 public works of art.

Garden of Future Follies, Hadley+Maxwell, Corktown, Public Art, Toronto
The Garden of Future Follies, by Hadley+Maxwell, image by Stefan Novakovic

The third pillar of the City's public art strategy is StreetARToronto. Started in 2012, the initiative supports local street artists, with the aim of beautifying the urban environment while also combatting illegal graffiti. Its diverse offering of programs include the Concrete Barrier Art Program and the Monumental Program, which allows artists to create large scale work on the sides of buildings.

StART has already resulted in almost a thousand murals across the city, and will be expanding its scope heading into the Year of Public Art. As part of this effort, the City has announced that guided street-art walks will soon be available. For now, an interactive map lets enthusiasts plan DIY tours.

"StreetARToronto is a city-wide festival of street and graffiti art that transforms Toronto’s streetscapes, celebrates diversity, strengthens the sense of belonging and inclusion, and reinforces our city’s reputation as a global centre of innovation and creativity,” said Councillor James Pasternak, Chair of the Infrastructure and Environment Committee.

1 St. Clair East, StreetARToronto, Year of Public Art, Toronto

Looking west along St. Clair to a new mural at 1 St. Clair E., a result of the StreetARToronto program, image courtesy of kg&a

A showcase chronicling many of the program’s successes is running until April 19th at the Market Gallery at St. Lawrence Market.

The Year of Public Art will also see the popular Nuit Blanche art festival expand to North York (2020) and Etobicoke (2021), after the success of a similar expansion into Scarborough in 2018. This process will be aided by the Animating Toronto Streets grant--which will fund publicly accessible works of art both during Nuit Blanche (2020) and throughout the Year of Public Art (2021)--and the Open Door program for transformative works of art.

Ephemeral Artifacts, Nuit Blanche, Toronto, Anandam Dancetheatre, Brandy Leary
Ephemeral Artifacts, part of Nuit Blanche's expansion into Scarborough, image by Omer Yukseker via City of Toronto

Another highlight of the year-long plan is the promise of major City-commissioned works, to be realized with the help of some of the city’s key cultural institutions.

The City is optimistic that its Year of Public Art will be a positive launch to the ten year plan, leaving a legacy which will stretch far beyond 2021. As put by Mayor Tory:

“The call for the Year of Public Art for 2021 will better connect the public to the art, create more opportunities for the public to engage with art and, at the same time, provide greater opportunities for artists to use Toronto as their canvas to create challenging, ground-breaking works of public art. Our commitment to artists and the entire arts sector, can help us continue to make Toronto the vibrant and beautiful city that it is.”