The Sunset Park Gazette: Overcoming Overcrowded Schools was produced by The New School’s Design & Urban Ecologies students.

The Gazette was a culmination of detailed student research conducted in and around Sunset Park and concludes with four in depth design proposals. The research shown throughout the publication incorporates various methods including interviewing Sunset Park organization leaders and residents, attending community meetings and protests, participatory mapping exercises and close analysis of date sets and census records.

The Sunset Park Gazette was included in the exhibition “Places in Relation” at the Pompidou Center in Paris.

Caroline and Morgan Mavis designed a series of art parties for SickKids Hospital in Toronto. For each party, they transformed a lounge space in the hospital into a colourful, vibrant art studio where patients and their family members were invited to stop by, hang out and make art. Morgan and Caroline produced a series of animated instructional videos for patients who weren’t well enough to make it to the parties. They were given goodie bags with the appropriate art materials and our videos were broadcast on bedside TV screens so that everyone could join the party. The idea was to create a dynamic, cool art studio that felt nothing like a hospital.

Ultra Rare (2014) was an initiative though sought to energize a stretch of Toronto’s McCaul St. Ultra Rare included a collaborative mural, replanting flower boxes along the street, and reinventing an abandoned parking lot tollbooth (“The Small Space”); each aspect of this project required cooperation and support from a range of partners, including university administrators, building developers, property managers and private businesses. Ultra Rare models how civic stakeholders can empower artists to enhance public space and nurture community values in urban areas.

The Small Space was an abandoned parking tollbooth converted into a tiny gallery / pop up space that hosted performances and entrepreneurial projects by OCAD University students and alumni on a monthly basis. The idea for The Small Space came out of the rapid disappearance of studio and gallery spaces in the city due to a surge in development.

The Small Space launched Corey Moranis’s award winning jewellery designs and Kiera Boult’s infamous Truth Booth. The Small Space was also featured in Creative Time’s Art of The MOOC: Emerging Public Art & Experimental Education video presentation.

The Art Cart is a portable art studio I made to bring art supplies to patients and their families and loved ones in the palliative care floor of Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. The Art Cart was funded by the Ontario Arts Council Platform A grant.

The Good Bike Project was conceived by Caroline and Vanessa Nicholas as a simple color intervention on the street project that we hoped would beautify and energize the grim strip of Dundas Street West. The bike’s bold, graphic and current aesthetic was an instant hit with passersby; and when we were ticketed by the City, support for the bike poured in from locals and from people in far flung places including Brazil and Australia. The controversy spawned a public art project - where Vanessa and Caroline salvaged over 80 rusted bikes from the trash heap and spray painted them in neon colours to create a community map of Toronto. Each bike marked a site that embodied the spirit of community and creativity - both historic and contemporary - that inspired us in the first place.