Public art with purpose: Toronto’s art strategy takes inclusivity to the streets

The Purpose

In 2019, Toronto City Council renewed its commitment to public art by adopting a new ten-year Public Art Strategy (2020-2030). The Strategy has been designed to better represent all the populations of the city, especially its Indigenous history and multicultural present. The strategy benefitted from an arts-led, broad consultation process that involved more than 400 community members and stakeholders.

The Challenge

Toronto has more than 1,500 works of public art, which have been integral to community development, civic engagement, and urban design. Yet, despite the strengths of the collection, issues exist with gaps in representation, geographic distribution of the works, and its accessibility to the public, including the need for better interpretation.

Through ArtworxTO, the City has provided more than CAD $4.5 million in funding to 1,400 artists to produce more than 350 new murals, installations and exhibitions in 2021 and 2022, helping to develop a new generation of artists.

The Solution

The result was a vision for the future of a city committed to public art, accessible to all, with artworks that reinforce neighbourhood character, embrace excellence in design, and advance the careers of local artists.

The City launched the strategy with ArtworxTO: Toronto’s Year of Public Art, a year-long celebration which began in September 2021 and runs to October 2022. The event promotes the existing collection, while also working to address gaps – from the under-representation of some communities to the uneven geographic spread of public art across the city. Through ArtworxTO, the City has provided more than CAD $4.5 million in funding to 1,400 artists to produce more than 350 new murals, installations and exhibitions in 2021 and 2022, helping to develop a new generation of artists. 85% of funding for ArtworxTO has been put towards projects that promote equality and inclusion, in particular those focusing on Indigenous placemaking and confronting anti-Black racism. The spread of new art and activities is being rolled out across all 25 wards of the city. Given this reach, ArtworxTO will leave a legacy of more publicly-engaged art in the public realm, telling more and different stories, and opening up the public art commissioning process in a way that will create paying, enduring opportunities for a diverse range of artists in the city.

One especially innovative aspect is the ArtworxTO pilot Artist in Residence programme, which will embed creativity in City departments themselves. In 2022 Court Services, Urban Forestry, and Parks Development & Capital Projects will all host artists in residence. They will work alongside City staff to bring new ways of thinking, setting a precedent for the future on how the government can work collaboratively with artists. ArtworxTO also aims to extend the accessibility of public art, both in the sense of how public spaces around artworks are laid out, and in providing interactive maps and digital resources as a way of locating and learning more about each individual work.

The Impact

The City is also helping to share good practice with other cities through the ‘Public Art of Tomorrow’ Symposium held in partnership with the Gouvernement du Quebec, which hosted over 1,000 virtual participants from cities all over North America.

For Toronto itself, the new approach not only addresses the deficit of Indigenous cultural representation in the public realm, but will help with placemaking and environmental resiliency, while building a public art collection unlike any other in the world, reflecting an aesthetic that is unique the city.

Source: World Cities Culture Report 2022

Images Courtesy © Getty/Canva