HomeImpact Strategic Initiatives Targeted Enhanced Funding Recipients

Targeted Enhanced Funding Recipients

Strategic Allocation

TAC provided targeted funding to selected organizations that receive operating grants to support the continuation or expansion of their work with children, youth and/or culturally diverse communities in Toronto, specifically for activities taking place outside the downtown core. These grants are separate from their operating grants and are intended to support the costs of the intensive work involved in this kind of high-engagement work. In Year One, programming was delivered in 30 schools, and in 26 community centres and outdoor spaces, in partnerships that utilized existing resources while supporting community and local participation and expression. 70% of the activities took place in priority neighbourhoods, with programming spread across a total of 23 Wards and 12 out of Toronto’s 13 priority neighourhoods.


Targeted Enhanced Funding recipients (2014):

*2014 funds support initiatives that take place in 2014 and/or 2015

  • Acting Up Stage Theatre Company offers a free, month-long musical theatre training program for youth, ages 13-19. Participants take master classes, participate in workshops, and train with professional directors and musical directors over four weekends. In addition, each student gets the chance to work on two musical theatre numbers that they perform at a final showcase performance.
  • Aluna Theatre works in partnership with Casa Maiz to make theatre more accessible for Latino Canadian audiences through workshops and readings of both translated Canadian plays and Latin American works.
  • Art Gallery of York University offers workshops in spoken word poetry, dance and vocal music to students at Westview Centennial Secondary School through its Chronicles 2015 program.
  • Cahoots Theatre Projects runs two outreach projects in Scarborough, the Crossing Gibraltar theatre training program for young refugees and newcomers and the Women Writers Workshop drop-in program for adult women.
  • Canadian Children's Opera Company introduces children to the world of opera through OPERAtion KIDS program, an after-school program and in-school program. Each workshop includes an introduction to acting, singing, prop-making, costumes, writing scripts, creating sets and stage management.
  • Canadian Contemporary Dance Theatre provides children from neighbourhoods outside the downtown core with dance training, demonstrations, extended training scholarships, subsidized transportation, and free performance tickets through its SolarDance program.
  • Children's Peace Theatre provides programming for newcomer and refugee children, taking place in the Rockliffe-Smythe and Crescent Town neighbourhoods as part of its Culture Jam program. The workshops allow children to explore culture and identity through activities such as puppet-making, drum making, visual arts, performance and music.
  • COBA Collective of Black Artists runs a 12-week inter-generational program, Dancing Stories, in partnership with Malvern Family Resources Centre. Students work with an instructor and a drummer to create their own stories which are woven together and presented at the Malvern Multicultural Festival.
  • Diaspora Dialogues Charitable Society offers an Emerging Playwright-in-Residence program that nurtures emerging playwrights from diverse backgrounds in partnership with five Toronto theatre companies that have distinct mandates addressing a spectrum of diversity.
  • Drum Artz Canada conducts the Samba Youth Program for at-risk youth ages 14-18 in the Jane-Finch neighbourhood, delivering a series of educational world music and percussion workshops in three schools, followed by an afterschool program open to the community. The focus of the program is on drumming, visual arts, singing, dance and the history of various musical genres.
  • Gallery 44 will expand its Outreach and Lab 44 programs to provide increased opportunities to youth and diverse communities in neighbourhoods outside the downtown core. These programs use photography as a medium of creative self-expression to break down barriers to the arts and encourages youth to develop their creative voice and understand the power of the photographic image. The workshops are designed to meet the specific needs of each youth group involved, and are taught by qualified photographers who have a personal relationship with each community organization.
  • The Hannaford Street Silver Band Youth program gives young brass and percussion players, ages 10-24, the opportunity to participate in one of three brass ensembles: the Youth Band, for advanced high school and university/college students; the Community Band, for intermediate high school students; and the Junior Band, for beginners, ages 10-14.
  • Hot Docs Documentary Festival provides opportunities for students in classrooms outside the downtown core to see documentary films through its Docs for Schools program. In addition to screening current documentaries in schools, Hot Docs – in consultation with professional educators – prepares detailed educational packages that include lesson plans and links to the Ontario curriculum.
  • Inner City Angels engages artists to conduct residencies with TDSB and TCDSB inner suburb schools in the Kingston-Galloway, Jane-Finch, Centennial Park, Eatonville and Upper Beaches neighbourhoods.
  • Kaeja d'Dance works with the artists, residents and community organizers of neighbourhoods outside the downtown core to devise new ways of creating audience participatory works and animating under-utilized public spaces, through its Public Space Animation Initiative.
  • Le Théâtre français de Toronto provides opportunities for youth from outside the downtown core through its Les Zinspires program. First, a school competition and a selection of stories written in French by high school students. Then an intense weekend workshop at Théâtre français de Toronto with franco-ontarian professional authors and actors that concludes with a show at the Berkeley Street Theatre. The stories tackle subjects like high school, the teenage universe of heightened hormones, break-ups and make-ups, video games, and fantastical creatures that stand for experiences that cannot quite be confronted head on.
  • Mammalian Diving Reflex provides activities that bridge the divide between downtown and suburban youth through its School for Mammals. The mandate is to collaborate with Toronto’s young people to create artistic work for adults and youth, with a long-term vision toward youth capacity-building and strengthening of the youth-arts industry, while also acknowledging and rewarding youth for their contribution to the growth and success of the company by creating mentorship and employment opportunities for them.
  • Mariposa in the Schools engages performing artists to conduct extended artist visits with five TDSB and TCDSB inner suburb schools in the Crescent Town, Jamestown, Jane-Finch, and Don Valley East neighbourhoods.
  • Mayworks is supporting the youth-led NoManzland collective to provide scriptwriting and theatre workshops for youth from Jane-Finch as part of its 2014/15 activities.
  • Mural Routes Inc. provides its Step x Step: Faces of the Community introduction to mural arts program in Flemingdon Park and Malvern as part of its 2014/15 activities. The overall mission of the program is to provide learning and training opportunities for all ages, while improving communities through mural art.
  • New Adventures In Sound Art promotes the creation of new sound art works by youth through collaboration as an outcome to a series of workshops that teach an understanding of basic sound art, electronics, improvisation and composition. Hands-on workshops include assembling an electroacoustic instrument, making art with sound, making radio and finally the exploration of sound in space. Youth learn to create art entirely with Sound, Radio, Electronics, and/or Performance through exploration using technology.
  • Pleiades Theatre brings their Speak the Speech theatre workshops to schools and community centres in neighbourhoods outside the downtown core. The program is delivered in French or English and includes collective creation, clown, mask, stage combat and text work. Play Upon the Word is a parallel education program that provides drama classes for adults in ESL courses.
  • The Power Plant offers its Power Youth program to youth at St. Alban's Boys and Girls Club Humber and York Square locations, providing artists-in-residence programs offering free visual art studio workshops.
  • Regent Park School of Music offers an after-school steelpan and bucket drumming program at Malvern Family Resource Centre and an after-school steelpan program at Ryerson Community School in Alexandra Park.
  • Storytellers' School of Toronto will continue its Village Project in the Regent Park neighbourhood in 2014-2015, including weekly community workshops on the art of storytelling that culminate in youth presentations at your annual Storytelling Festival.
  • Theatre Columbus, resident theatre company at the Evergreen Brickworks, has devised a two-prong outreach program to engage communities who are not part of their audience. Working with Flemingdon Park Community Services, they have organized community bus trips to the winter show, where Flemingdon Park residents enjoy free transportation to and from the show plus complimentary tickets to the performance. Three separate day-long workshops in devised, site-specific theatre will also be offered for Flemingdon Park high school students. Partnering with community organizations who work for people with diminished mobility and capacity to participate in outdoor winter events, Theatre Columbus will tour the winter show to Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, Camp Oochigeas and sites of the Out of the Cold program, using a “suitcase” style performance.
  • Theatre Direct Canada will continue of The Firefly Project at the Fraser Mustard Early Learning Academy. This research project with pre-school children uses storytelling and story acting techniques: facilitators aid each child in telling their own story. The stories are enacted by their classmates, then illustrated and published as a book for the classroom.
  • Theatre Gargantua offers a comprehensive and hands-on youth mentorship program to schools located in underserved neighbourhoods outside the downtown core. RISK (Resources, Innovation, Skills & Knowledge) brings together youth with core members of the company to learn skills for creating original theatre and incorporating technology.
  • Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts offers its hipTIX program to provide discounted and free tickets to students to ensure that the arts remain accessible to all youth across the city, regardless of their social and economic background.
  • Toronto Dance Theatre is expanding its Studio Series to youth outside the downtown core, including lectures/demonstrations of TDT repertoire, contemporary movement workshops team-taught by company artists, discussions with the Artistic Director and movement workshops for non-dancers.
  • Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival is including screenings at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre and the Aga Khan Museum to reach new audiences for its annual festival held in November.
  • YYZ Artists' Outlet is engaging with emerging and newcomer artists with professional arts training who live/work outside the downtown core through a project called the YYZLAB. Through a series of facilitated seminars, studio visits and hands-on workshops, participants will have a chance to further their practice, make connections and develop a body of work for exhibition. YYZ is working with community partners East End Arts, North York Arts and Arts Etobicoke to reach participants and to promote the work of participants in their location through exhibitions or other public programs.