The main goal of the Jane Finch Environmental Justice Project is to develop new discourses of urban planning. This is a call for artists to think about the future of urban planning and to open up the possibility to imagine what environmental justice could look like for the Jane and Finch community. The Jane Finch community has a rich artistic culture, which will form a critical component for the project overall.
There are numerous environmental hazards embedded in the Jane Finch community, for instance brownfields, fuel storage facilities, perilous building conditions, and buried pipelines. From an urban planning perspective, residents experience problems such as barriers to public transit, negative health impacts, temperature extremes within residential towers, difficulty accessing quality affordable housing, and limited access to healthy, culturally-appropriate food. The Jane Finch Environmental Justice Project seeks to address these and other issues through collaborative urban planning at the community level, which is then linked to policy and decision-makers at the municipal level.
The main feature of the project is a one-week workshop (March 16 to 20) that will convene mobilized community members to explore environmental justice in the context of ongoing urban planning processes. Community members will collaboratively develop a planning report that profiles these issues and forwards recommendations to the City of Toronto Planning Department, as well as elected municipal representatives and decision makers.
Organizers invite submissions from individuals or groups that articulate core themes of the project. They are open to all artistic forms, including theatric, spoken work, music, visual arts or other installations. All projects must be original, but they can be delivered in any format (for instance, as a physical installation, by digital means, as a single or series of live enactments, etc.). Artists will work collaboratively with the project team to develop their work, with a hard deadline for completion on March 16.
Artistic projects will be featured throughout the workshop, in reports and other communications relating to the Jane Finch Environmental Justice Project. Submissions are due Jan. 30 and should be sent by e-mail to jfoster@yorku.ca.
Proposals should be one-page long and include the following:
- A brief outline of your proposed artistic project (what you will do and how you will do it).
- An explanation about how your proposed project responds to the goals of the Jane Finch Environmental Project .
- An overview of the materials used for your project
- A proposed budget for your project, to a maximum of $2500.