BIG on Bloor Festival

A relay of 3 hour-long events of participation, performance, art, culture and ecology: AKIN Collective Colour AKIN’s colouring book. The book is a curated project of drawings made by Toronto artists and part of Akin’s mandate to support artists by fostering work spaces and opportunities. www.akincollective.com Bees On Bloor Toronto has elected to become the first Canadian BEE City in response to declining and endangered bee populations. BEE Aware, BEE Alive, hands-on BEE Friendly projects at the festival builds interest, informs and encourages support for garden habitats. • Learn bee facts and use a magnifying glass to examine bees, pollen and wax honey-comb patterns. • Create and wear garden and grass crowns made with live flowers. • Add chalk-drawing petals to Bees on Bloor stenciled sidewalk flowers. Botanicus Art Ensemble BEE with Botanicus Art Ensemble for their garden-inspired, theatrical extravaganza: arts activities culminate in a Bumble Bee Flash Mob at the BIG on Bloor Festival. Location: How We Live In City’s hive, along the south side of Bloor Street, just west of Dufferin Tennis Courts. Time: Sunday, July 24, from 2:00 – 5:00pm Botanicus Art Ensemble MacGregor Garden Club Bumblebee Workshops. Invitation to take part: create costumes – wings, ribbon sticks, antenna – and dance preparation workshops at the MacGregor Garden Club on Mondays July 4, 12, 18th at MacGregor Park from 6:00 – 9:00 pm. Culminating at the BIG on Bloor Festival, July 24, Bee at the Botanicus Art Ensemble hive by 3:15 sharp. Come dressed as a Bumblebee or a Flower. Join our Bumblebee Flash Mob performance hosted by Polly and the Pollinators. We perform at 4pm. Bees congregate at 3:15pm. We’re sticky on time! All ages are welcome. To RSVP or ask questions: botanics.art@gmail.com / www.botanicusart.com Civil Streets BIG / BIA / Civic Studies campaign for traffic calming. Colour in, glow-in-the-dark, SHARE BLOORDALE safety backpacks for - WALK, RIDE AND DRIVE, SAFE AND CIVIL STREET - and it’s yours to keep, free! Accompanying artist made example exhibition. www.bigonbloor.com Cloud Of Doubt Regarding belief: explore your thoughts. A list of wide-ranging statements are offered to viewers as a list, a poem, a minute out of time – and an opportunity to admit your own response to them. Agreement, indecision or dissent, are recorded in a representative mark and colour. Dyan Marie performs the list as poetry on the half hour. Above hangs the Cloud of Doubt, a sculpture embedded with blinking LED lights in a construction made from archival plastic water bottles. The Cloud will be paraded, rolled and passed hand-to-hand through the festival on its way to the How We Live In Cities site. EQUΔLΔTERΔL CITY DOCTORS (not actual doctors) is an interactive, satirical project which positions a collective of local artists as expert advisors on how to live in cities. Welcoming all queries from visiting participants, the members of EQUALATERAL will be on site to prescribe idiosyncratic and highly subjective advice on how best to navigate the everyday complexities of our shared urban landscape. Following a one-on-one consultation with a city doctor, participants will walk away with a personalized set of instructions for how to troubleshoot their urban quandaries and maximize the experience of living in the city. www.equalateral.ca Fungi Unveiled Based on a love of wild edible foraging and a mission to educate the public about the endless benefits mushrooms and fungi have in ecosystems and our everyday lives. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Arts The Malleable City – hands-on, family event. Gardens and city-scapes created in clay. Saturday, July 23, 1:00 to 4:00 www.gardinermuseum.on.ca Graven Feather Tiny Letter Press with hands-on opportunity to make garden related imagery and tree prints. We'll have our smallest antique printing press inked and ready to go. Using pre-set designs made from wood and metal type you will get to print on a variety of papers. Learn how to print like a pro and take home beautiful mini prints. www.gravenfeather.ca Insect Zoo A chorus of 1000 crickets are released to sing for the BIG on Bloor Festival audience: walk by the How We Live In Cities site on Saturday evening and listen. Build empathy for the large world of small creatures: notice local ants on the sidewalk, bees in the garden, streetlights attracting moths, question why did grasshoppers disappear from local parks. At the festival explore our tiny insect zoo: local insects captured and released the same day, others contributed as found dead. Dead bees are courtesy of The Bee Shop, live cricket from Earth Echoes Reptile Center. Inuit Art Rubbing Bill Huffman, Dorset Fine Arts, curates a series of original slate sculptures from which festival-goers can take inspiration to create their own prints from rubbing a variety of unusual surfaces. The artists represented are part of the Cape Dorset community, home to some of Canada’s most acclaimed Inuit artists. The studios are the oldest professional printmaking studios in Canada. www.dorsetfinearts.com Kvesche BE Interactive music experiments which utilize new technology, equipment and instruments, allowing for a communal creation of organized sound. Lead by alternative musicians based in Toronto from varying in different genres and skill sets. Mind Exchange Bring a book, take a free book. Special call for children’s books. Mark your page: make your marker with a How We Live In Cities original bookmarker stamp project. Recycling project with Marjolein Winterink, Contact winterink.m@gmail.com Mindful Arts Those living with mental illness generally struggle with isolation, stigmatization and access to community supports. Art can aid these struggles as a mode of deep connection that supports collaborative, non-verbal communication and growth. Organized by Eleanor Berenson co-founder of Mindful Arts, a yoga instructor, and an arts enthusiast. She will invite festival-goers to creatively, and mindfully communicate and connect with each other through art. Short Dances in Small Places A warm presentation of solo works showcasing Toronto artists. Several dancers present ideas, personal stories, movement exploration tasks through forms of improvised movement, choreography or physical theatre. With only limited room capacity for the audience members, we are able to create an intimate setting and challenge our artists to provide what the space needs through their personal explorations. Sip and Paint Never painted before? No Problem! Participate in the exploration in garden themed ecology project painting, guided by a friendly professional instructor. All materials free including bee nectar, a refreshing potion made of honey water and local flowers. www.sipandpaint.ca Textile Art Free Art Fridays Toronto places artwork on streets for any member of the public to enjoy and take home. During the festival you can make your own friendly textile art piece to wear or hang up at home using recycled, contributed and found materials. Learn about how the creative process reflects and advances personal health, while fostering a healthier environment. Project organized by Shyla Tibora. Toronto Wildlife Live Painting Watch the creation of a habitat for Toronto based animals, bees and flowers take form. Live painting by local artist, Christina Mazzulla using alternative canvases to create an engaging environment and presentation of art. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ This project is made possible by the generous support of CastlePoint Numa Greybrooke. Appreciation also goes to MP Julie Dzerowicz and the Federal Government’s Summer Student Program enabling HOW WE LIVE IN CITIES to hire Tony Lien and Michela Sutter and to the BIG organization festival team and to all our programmers, artists and others who contributed. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ How We Live In Cities is an civic studies organization that responds to urban situations with ecology, culture and art initiatives. BIG On Bloor Festival, now in its 9th year is recognized as one of Toronto’s best festival, hosting up to 100,000 people. On July 23/24, 2016, car-free Bloor Street between Lansdowne Avenue and Dufferin introduces How We Live In Cities, a fesival within a festival, located along the south side of Bloor Street, just west of Dufferin July 23, 1:00 to 7:00 and Sunday July 24, 12:00 to 6:00 For more information Contact How We Live In Cities HowWeLiveInCities@gmail.com Darren Leu, constantleu@gmail.com / 647-709-8337 Dyan Marie, dyan@dyanmarie.com / 647-973-2349 Join How We Live In Cities