So… we were hacked in late-December and lost all of our followers on Instagram, and we are no longer using @summerworksTO 🙁 … however…

We’re back, and rebranded as @SummerWorksFun on ALL of our social media platforms!

Join us @SummerWorksFun: Instagram / TikTok / Facebook / Threads / Bluesky

Why fun? SummerWorks co-leadership ruminates on how ‘fun’ is an essential part of the Festival experience:

We wake up each morning. We stretch into action. We rise, we make coffee or tea, as we scroll our socials. We open our laptops and read our emails…

It’s inescapable these days; the world is so f*ed up right now.

It’s overwhelming, and sometimes, we’re just over it. ‘Keep calm and carry on’ they say…. At the same time, we’re tired and scared, and trying our best to support everyone and everything around us. 

+++

In the midst of this chaos, we at SummerWorks have been asking ourselves some deeply existential questions about our purpose — why do we do what we do, and what’s our role in all of this…

“What is a festival?”

And what is this festival in the context of all that is manifesting in the world around us?

Art transforms the story we live in.

At a personal level, it becomes a means of self-preservation – a way for artists to process deep thoughts and sensations, uncover a sense of connectivity and find solace, while attending to their well-being, in diverse ways.

In a broader sense, through art, humanity can better grapple with the immense political, societal, and cultural shifts of the moment. Art serves as a window into another realm, and as a mirror reflecting the world back upon us. Art is a reminder of our complex past and it’s a foretelling of the hope in our future.

As those in power attempt to remove our humanity and our dignity, art becomes a cathartic and reinvigorating act of defiance and self-determination. It inspires action, collaboration, and resistance.

+++

No single festival or company or arts and culture organization can solve this. 

All we can do, as a festival, is continue to bring people together, in community, to work through diversity and difference, in the context of creativity and artistry.

And through it all, we inevitably and collectively seek joy, find pleasure, uncover our beauty, and have fun.

The idea of ‘fun’ does not represent every artistic work or creative idea or way-of-working within the SummerWorks context; no single word can – though we propose that it serves as a gentle reminder, as an aspiration, and as an underlying yet ever-present part of what we do. 

Yours, in fun…

Michael & Morgan