Expanding the possibilities
of performance
SummerWorks Performance Festival
August 1-11, 2024
SUMMERWORKS PUBLIC WORKS AS PART OF ARTWORXTO
SummerWorks was thrilled to kick-off our 2022 programming with the announcement of a significantly expanded Public Works program including three large-scale works by Action Hero, Mia & Eric, Mark Reinhart and Switch Collective considering possibilities for the public realm, emphasizing making the artistic process public, and engaging the public in creation.
Accompanied by an unprecedented number of of additional public space performances and art interventions, these multidisciplinary, community-centred projects offered free and accessible activities across a myriad neighbourhoods, activating city-wide engagement and creating connections on the streets of Toronto, all as part of ArtworxTO: Toronto’s Year of Public Art 2021-2022.
We started our season in May with projects that invited audiences to engage with the artists and the city as a sneak peek into the expanded 2022 SummerWorks Festival programming.
Read the full Press Release HERE!Future Perfect
Mia + Eric and Action Hero’s Future Perfect: New By-laws for Civic Spaces is a hopeful, positive act of re-configuration, in which by-laws that regulate behaviours– including Toronto’s Parks and Streets Municipal Codes – are cut up word-by-word and meticulously rearranged into a set of playful possibilities for the future of public space. These rewritten bylaws will be appearing around the city starting in late spring.
You are invited to help with re-constructing Toronto’s new Future Perfect by-laws! Visit futureperfectbylaws.com to submit your own new rule, using cut-up words from the original text.
The artists of Future Perfect will be in Toronto and holding office hours in August, at the Bentway Studio. Step into their office and observe their process of rewriting Toronto’s Future Perfect by-laws, and join in the rewriting process!
Co-presented with SummerWorks & The Bentway as part of ArtworxTO: Toronto’s Year of Public Art 2021-2022.
Learn MoreSwitching Queen(s)
The Switch Collective emphasizes collaboration, improvisation, street-based performance, eldership, ancestry, and radical love. They aim to affirm and uplift the true histories of our neighbourhoods and communities, imagining decolonial and liberatory futures.
Kicking off SummerWorks 2022 Public Works programming this May, you can move through the city streets on an audio journey Switching Queen(s): Back Alley Galaxies originally commissioned and presented by b current, interrogating the challenges — stemming from colonialism, capitalism, gentrification — the area of Parkdale and its inhabitants face.
In August, join Switch for an in person multi-media performance experience Switching Queen(s)as they ask “What can we learn from histories of QTBIPOC, poor, sex worker, Mad/disabled resistance in Parkdale? How can art-making exist as an accomplice to radical organizing of the present moment? What seeds of survival and resilience, what liberatory futures are already taking root within us?”
Presented by SummerWorks as part of ArtworxTO: Toronto’s Year of Public Art 2021-2022.
Learn MoreHealth and Safety Notes
A city speaks through its people.
Colourful messages written in duct tape adorn the sides of public and private buildings throughout multiple Toronto neighbourhoods across the city. Created in collaboration with organizations and local residents, these temporary public art installations help us to remember, and be seen in our evolving pandemic reality. They communicate the fears, wonderings and hopes of communities, as our relationships to our surroundings and each other are continually shifting.
What started as a pandemic project, rooted in curiosity, and based in the Parkdale and Queen West neighbourhoods during our 2020 summer season, is now expanding into new neighbourhoods in all directions, from the waterfront, to Regent Park and connecting with communities in different languages.
Enjoy Health & Safety Notes in a neighbourhood near you. Join a first community consultation in June with artist Mark Reinhart and other residents of Toronto, as you develop a phrase for the next installation together. New installations will continue to pop up on city streets throughout the summer. Then, join us for a walking tour with the artist in August to experience the process behind the installations, the community connections they support, and the compassionate future they help imagine.
Presented by SummerWorks part of ArtworxTO: Toronto’s Year of Public Art 2021-2022.
Learn MoreABOUT PUBLIC WORKS STREAM
Our Public Works programming brings artists and audiences together to reimagine possibilities for the public realm. In 2022, we invited creators to consider: How does the landscape and infrastructure of the city inform how we move, connect, and communicate with one another? What is the role of the public in making, transforming, and reclaiming space? What else might be possible, and how can this be realized through performance?
EQUITY & DIVERSITY
Reece's Pieces 2.0 (SummerWorks 2019) Photo by Andrew Williamson
SummerWorks is committed to equality and diversity, both through our program of activities and as an employer. Our practices and procedures aim to reflect the varied needs, expectations, and cultures of all members of our community. We make every effort to ensure that no member of the community receives less favourable treatment in our recruitment process or when accessing our services on the grounds of gender identity, disability, race, religion or belief, age or sexual orientation.
ACCESSIBILITY
Ralitsa Rodriguez in Gender Reveal Party (SummerWorks 2019). Photo by Henry Chan.
SummerWorks is committed to continually increasing accessibility for our artists and audiences. This includes extending accessibility practices throughout the entirety of the artistic and administrative processes.
We strive to go beyond the bare minimum standard of accessibility practices in the performing arts and to support artists, programmers, and partner organizations in considering how access can be incorporated throughout all aspects of a production and throughout all stages from development to presentation. It is our expectation that the artists we work with will also strive to put accessibility practices at the forefront of the creative process and implementation of their work.