Going Green: A new community centre for the arts

by Jesse Cnockaert                                                                               

The streetcar barns on Wychwood Avenue in the St. Clair and Bathurst neighbourhood have been abandoned for more than 20 years and it shows. A fence surrounds this repair facility that reads “No Trespassing.” Windows are boarded up, and the inside is decaying with chipping paint and bits of debris scattered across the floor. But all this is only what’s on the surface.

The Wychwood barns are considered Toronto heritage buildings. The facility consists of five attached brick buildings that were built between 1913 and 1921. The site is considered by many to be an excellent example of early 20th century industrial architecture. It served as a hub for the Toronto Civic Railway, and at its peak, served 10 city routes and 167 streetcars, but since the mid 1980s, the barns became largely unused.

In late 2004 and early 2005, a series of artistic photographers came to the barns to document their own interpretation. They found moss and small plants making their way across the concrete floor. They found exterior doors that seemed to glow softly as the sunlight poured in. They found dark shadows that crawled along the empty stretches of the maintenance bays. They found inspiration.

As part of a series of fundraising events, the photos were auctioned off in April 2005. This money is going to redevelop the barns, but it won’t be a streetcar repair facility anymore. It’s called the “Green/Arts Barns” project.

The idea is to transform the barns into a multi-tenant arts and environmental community centre. When the redevelopment is complete, the project has potential to offer some real advantages to artists and environmentalists in the area. It will offer up to 55,000 square feet for artistic exhibitions, community festivals and community meetings. Artists will be able to find work studios and rooms for rent. Also, as the project anchors artists into the community, it is hoped the new barns will make visual, literary and performing arts more accessible.

The driving force behind all this is Artscape, a non-profit organization whose mission is to build creative communities and support artists. It has been responsible for several major revitalization projects in Toronto before, including restorations at Liberty Village and The Distillery Historic District. Now, the city of Toronto has hired them to redevelop the Wychwood barns.

Artscape started by gathering input through neighbourhood polling, community meetings and open houses. With the feedback of residents from the community of St. Clair and Bathurst, they
constructed this vision for the Green/Arts Barns.

“It’s about creative community building. There are creative communities that happen inside of buildings that resonate outside to their very surrounding communities, and have an impact on much larger communities,” says Liz Khon, the Artscape director of communications.

The redevelopment project means four of the five barns will be preserved. The fifth one, which will be dismantled, is the most recent and therefore considered to be the least important historically.

One barn will become the Community Barn. It will provide space for a number of non-profit arts and environmental organizations. Among the arts groups already accepted are the Toronto School of Art, the Theatre District of Canada and the Storytellers School of Toronto.

The Green Barn will include a greenhouse, a community bake oven and a garden. The oldest barn will be converted into the Covered Street Barn, and will be meant to preserve a piece of Toronto’s urban transit history. This barn is where the community will be able to host year-round community events, exhibitions, festivals and other recreational activities.

The last barn will be the Studio Barn. It will include 15 artist work studios and 26 live/work units available for artists to lease.

“(The project) shows a spotlight on why that neighbourhood is unique and important and vibrant and should be acknowledged,” says Khon. “It celebrates creative people.”

The St. Clair and Bathurst neighbourhood has a significant artistic heritage. The area was founded in 1873 as an artists’ colony by Marmaduke Matthews, a well-known painter of western Canadian landscapes. Since his time, there has always been a strong artistic base in the neighbourhood.

Now, several renowned Canadian artists live in this community and have been strong supporters of the project. Among them is Vid Ingelevics, a multi-faceted artist who was one of the photographers who took part in the initial Barns photo documentary in 2004 and 2005.
Also living in the area are Edward Burtynsky, the founder of Toronto Image Works lab, and Barbara Astman, a photographer who has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions both in Canada and internationally since the early 1970s.

With the Studio Barn, Artscape hopes to attract a diverse crowd of visual artists, painters and even musicians. However, Artscape won’t be accepting applications for artists to move into the Studio Barn until about six months before the project is completed. The qualifications for becoming a tenant are still being worked out.

Images Festival is one of the non-profit organizations that will be moving into the Community Barn. This group seeks to promote film, video, new media and installation artwork for the public. They host events such as Festival Week in Toronto, a film festival event.

“We want to do what other tenants would be doing, activating the space around the buildings, inviting the community in and being a member in the new building,” says Shannon Cochrane, development director for Images Festival.

Cochrane says Images Festival would like to integrate itself into the community there, and not just take up office space. “One of the things we can do, well, we’re a film festival right?” Cochrane indicated that special outdoor screenings would be a definite possibility.

The ground-breaking for the Green Arts Barn is set for this summer and completion is expected by summer of 2007. The surrounding land will become a park designed by the Toronto Parks Department, and will be integrated into the finished barns.