Making Room Community Arts is an organization in long-term residence at the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre in Toronto. They create celebrations and ceremonies, both big and small, out of the ground of everyday life. Their goal is to return art to its rightful place in everyday life “as a bridge between our inner and exterior worlds.” Making Room unites the community and the environment we live in, including artists and non artists, in a collaborative art-making.

What I like most about Making Room is the fact that they consider art something that is as vital as food, shelter, and transportation. They find that art is refused to those that need it the most. This is the reason they work together to try and find a solution to provide to those in need. They feel that there is an artist inside everybody and that everybody has potential to create, and the way to access that potential is through collaboration; they just need to be aware of the potential and the process it takes to use it.

On their website, you can find a list of Mandates that the participants adhere to and the activities that they participate in:

Mandate:

• To ask fundamental questions through the creation of compelling art (artistic vision)
• To explore contemplative and community arts practices (finding links)
• To bring diverse groups of people together (community building)
• To develop people’s skills and abilities through training and education opportunities (artist and member development)

Activities:

• Regular arts drop-ins and art-meditation sessions leading to annual large-scale celebration
• Celebrations of seasonal and life cycle markers, creation of new rituals
• internships, workshops, seminars, conferences
• Forming long-term and transformative partnerships and collaborations
• Renovating and occupying of indoors and outdoor spaces for our activities

Here is a super awesome project that they just finished. Not only did they involve and educate the community in a unique way, but some beautiful images came out of it too!