Arts Etobicoke: The Value of Creativity in a Crisis

“Art making has the ability to move people along their journey of grief and loss into a more balanced place of healing and hope. In the face of tragedy, the creative process can help re-calibrate a mourner’s life.”

~ The Chandler Gallery at Maud Morgan Arts

Art brings joy. It fosters community, supports our mental health, and helps us to process grief, loss and change. Art is cathartic, and the value of creative self-expression is only emphasized by crisis. 

No one knows this better than Heather, a dedicated team member at Arts Etobicoke. In happier times, this not-for-profit organization offered a roster of accessible, inclusive and diverse programming. Their art classes, workshops and community events served as a way for members of their West Toronto community to explore the arts through different mediums like drawing, dance and music, without having to expend a lot of resources. 

“Experiencing arts and culture comes with lots of barriers,” Heather explains. “There’s transit, costs (downtown programming tends to be expensive), and time to get there. So one of the things [Arts Etobicoke] wanted to do was provide these high-quality experiences in our own community, and celebrate the incredible professional artists we have right here.” 

But then the pandemic hit, and (like so many others) they had to shut their doors, with no clear way forward and a global crisis on their doorstep that necessitated creativity and connection more than ever before. 

Collective grief and mental health struggles were reaching unprecedented levels, and the community that Arts Etobicoke serves was particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of social distancing. Their programs had been especially popular with seniors, the population most vulnerable to both COVID-19 and isolation. Many of the long-standing participants who had relied on their programs to stay mentally sharp and socially connected reached out to Arts Etobicoke. They expressed a wish for the programming to continue in some way, so the organization put their creative heads together and decided that they would rise to the challenge by doubling down on what they had always done very well...building community through art. 

They created a series on YouTube called “Crafting in Quarantine” that offered video tutorials for DIY projects that could be done with readily-available household items like cornstarch and lamps. They made the videos easily accessible for seniors, and made a point to call them regularly to check in on how they were doing. They also ran programming for kids via Zoom, moving workshops outdoors throughout the summer so that kids could have a chance to connect with each other in person at a safe social distance. They delivered free art supplies to families living in high-density buildings that were hard to leave during the lockdowns so that kids would have everything they needed to be able to participate in online classes. 

In addition to adapting their tried-and-true programming, Arts Etobicoke also created brand-new online initiatives, some of which became wildly popular. One of these was an Instagram series where artists in the community give tours of their home studios, which has generated so much positive engagement that they plan to keep it up for the foreseeable future. 

Like almost all of us, Arts Etobicoke in 2021 doesn’t look the same as it did two years ago. It’s been buffeted and shaken up and forced to pivot--sometimes dramatically--but the changes have brought some surprising benefits. 

Before the lockdown they’d sometimes struggled to get kids and seniors together, but the pandemic has brought some unique opportunities for intergenerational programming. “Pre-COVID we’d tried [it] with little to moderate success, but now we’re finding that when someone signs up for one of our programs, everyone in the family ends up enjoying it,” Heather explains. “The participant might be sitting up front, but their grandma or sibling or mom will be in the background also doing the activity and having these really interesting intergenerational and intercultural exchanges that I think are really valuable.” The online model has also allowed Arts Etobicoke to expand their reach beyond the limits of physical geography, bringing new neighbourhoods and communities into the fold. They’ve been able to support the work of Etobicoke’s own home-grown artists by continuing to employ them throughout the lockdowns and bringing their work into more neighbourhoods.

Going forward, Heather imagines that many of the more positive changes COVID-19 has brought to Arts Etobicoke will become permanent, even after the pandemic is over. “We’re looking at a hybrid model of digital and in-person programming,” she explains, “but it’ll be heavily skewed towards in-person because for us that’s a priority. I think that people in general after isolation will be looking for safe and meaningful ways to engage.”  

If anything, the pandemic has thrown the value of organizations like Arts Etobicoke into stark relief, underscoring their urgency in an year when people need creative outlets more than ever. 

“In times of crisis people in the world turn to the arts,” Heather points out. “People will be looking to the arts to process the pandemic, to build trust and to build community post-isolation.”