The Bentway Announces Inaugural Community Incubation Program

The Bentway launches its inaugural Community Incubation Program to animate The Bentway's grounds, strengthen community ties, and to increase visibility to community organizations and interests. A variety of community organizations, artists, designers, urbanists, and environmentalists were invited to submit proposals for accessible, participatory, and responsive programming to engage local residents and visitors alike.

The Bentway's Community Incubation Program was designed to assist emerging individuals and organizations to incubate, innovative, and engage community programs. The Bentway's personality will be co-created with these surrounding communities and organizations. The Community Incubation Program is overseen by The Bentway's Community Advisory Committee, whose role it is to ensure that The Bentway remains relevant, inclusive, connected, and responsive to its local community.

The first four projects selected by the Community Advisory Committee jury honour The Bentway's' Fall curatorial theme, "If, But, What If?" and include:

• I/O Movement - This is Our Place
• Caterwaul Theatre - Bent Shadows
• Central Events - Central Talks
• Michelle Creates and Manic Media - The Bentway Variety Show

I/O Movement is a contemporary dance project specializing in site-specific performance. This is Our Place is a public dance residency and a call for artists to activate an urban core. Exploring the importance of civic art, five emerging dance artists will be assigned a portion of The Bentway, and over five rehearsal days will create a site-responsive performance. The culminating performance of This is Our Place will be an immersive participatory event.

Caterwaul Theatre produces innovative and immersive storytelling in puppetry, analog projection and stop-motion film. Bent Shadows is a shadow puppet narrative that responds to the history of Fort York and The Bentway through digital "bent vignettes" depicting the evolution of Toronto and the relationship of its natural history to Toronto's man-made industry.

Central is Toronto's urban issues conference series. Central will be presenting a series of talks at The Bentway delving into past, present, and future urban issues. Topics are meant to be evocative, exploring alternate histories, potential futures, and fanciful ideas like "what if Toronto continued affordable housing trends from the 1970s?"

The Bentway Variety Show, presented by Michelle Creates and Manic Media asks the question, "what if we lived in a city where we could talk freely about our mental health?" Through stand-up comedy, improv, sketch, buskers, and musical performances, The Bentway Variety Show will tackle the stigma surrounding mental health and wellness issues and encourage conversation and performances from the audience as well.

Each of the successful applicants has received financial and in-kind support from The Bentway, as well as capacity building workshops, supplementary marketing and promotion, and invaluable community connections.