The creative engagement of Toronto youth is what defines AFCY – we provide opportunities for under-resourced young people living in our city to participate in a plethora of meaningful cultural experiences and learnings. AFCY’s new Emerging Youth Arts Educators Residency Program is our latest initiative that supports the arts educational practices of our youth. It all starts this spring at the Royal Ontario Museum.  Through a partnership with the ROM’s Program Department, AFCY’s emerging youth arts educators will be featured during the museum’s Spring Family Weekends.  Youth will set up pop-up visual arts studios in galleries throughout the museum, as a means to generate artwork and converse with visitors. The program’s intention is to generate new cultural intersections, where youth and diverse Toronto audiences can merge, interact and participate in exchanges of knowledge, culture and story. The residency program will operate at the ROM, Saturdays and Sundays from 11 – 4 pm every weekend starting April 14/15 and ending June 9/10.  Come see the emerging art stars of AFCY in action at the ROM!

AFCY’s new Emerging Youth Arts Educators Residency Program will also be a part of Youth Arts Week. On the Weekend of May 4 and 5, 2012, join us at the ROM and engage in youth-led arts activities and experience hands-on art-making activities.

Wednesday May 23, 2012 from 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. at Lakeshore Arts

Emerging Arts Educators

Join art educator Hilary Inwood for an introduction to the power and practice of arts education.  This workshop will explore the fundamentals of quality arts education and offer tips to improve the experience of learners and the reach of programs.  Participants will examine their own assumptions about arts education, discuss what they bring to their programs currently and identify their needs for ongoing professional learning to develop their ‘educational toolkits’ for the future.

To register for a workshop and for more information, please contact: Nicole Fisher at 416-929-9314 x 109 or nicole@afcy.ca

Click on the image to see a larger version.

AFCY’s Executive and Artistic Director Julie Frost has won a prestigious Community Arts Educator of the Year Award. The announcement was made by the Ontario Art Education Association on October 15, at the OAEA Art Education Conference at the Etobicoke School of the Arts. This is the first year this honour has been awarded. Frost will be attending a formal event at U of T’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) on February 24, 2012 to receive the award along with other winners in different art-education categories. Arts educators from all of Ontario will be invited to attend this event. Another feather in AFCY’s hat!

Students from George Brown College’s Fundraising program donated 20% of their proceeds from an inspiring cultural event downtown Toronto. The Fundraising Program  team put on an event as part of their studies. The event was called Wanderlust, which means a desire to travel. The students focused
on 4 main countries, Egypt, India, Ireland, and Columbia.
They served food, had fun activities and live dance performances from each country and there was a
raffle and silent auction.

The event was a great success and everyone had a great time.

AFCY staff send out a huge THANKS to the George Brown College students and Wanderlust team.

“This handbook offers a Vital Idea: Evaluation can be a creative, artful, energizing and inclusive process.” This is the first line of the document so let this be the dangling carrot that prompts you to call for your own complete copy.  We are excited to share more by offering those interested in learning about innovative ways of assessing community-based programs.  The handbook was written by Leah Burns and Julie Frost and was funded by the Toronto Community Foundation through a Vital Idea Award. It was designed as a “living” document intended for artists and people working in the fields of child and youth services and community development to use as a flexible framework from which to explore, experiment and inquire about arts-informed evaluation.

At its core, AFCY believes in community engagement through the arts. We work collaboratively with underserviced Toronto communities, educationally linking school and community-based arts experiences. We believe that engagement in the arts provides opportunities for young people to discover their role as cultural innovators who can shape our collective futures.

Some of the postcard that were created during one of several experiential activities:

Me@Scotiabank Nuit Blanche

Me@Scotiabank Nuit Blanche was one of the three activities Arts for Children and Youth had planned for Nuit Blanche 2011. Me@Scotiabank Nuit Blanche doodle postcard activity invited visitors to visually represent and record themselves and their festival experiences. Blank postcards were distributed for participants to draw, doodle, sketch, write their interpretations of the event. We invited the public to mail their postcard creations to AFCY for a chance to have their postcard image featured on our website.

At Nuit Blanche:

Photos: courtesy of John Tavares

Arts for Children and Youth (AFCY) had designated October 1, 2011 as “Toronto Doodle Day”.  AFCY  handed out postcards on October 1st and 2nd for people to doodle on. The theme for the drawings was “Express Yourself”.

This hands-on art-activity encouraged the public to “creatively play” and express themselves while they engaged in the same kind of collective art-making experience that our program participants enjoy. The public was invited to send in their drawings, to be featured on our website. AFCY will also be showcasing some of the artwork created on our social media channels. Participants are invited to send in a Twitpic (Our Twitter handle is @AFCY2010) with the hashtag #me.

Some of the work created during Culture Days:

Click image to zoom

Scotiabank Nuit Blanche

Exciting News! For every new “Like” on the Scotiabank Nuit Blanche FLUXe Facebook page, Scotiabank will donate $1 (to a maximum of $15,000) to Arts for Children and Youth. Click the “Like” button below to show your support for AFCY!

Be an artist on October 1st from Dusk to Dawn

This is your chance to be an artist! Me@Scotiabank Nuit Blanche is one of the many activities Arts for Children and Youth has planned for Nuit Blanche 2011. Me@Scotiabank Nuit Blanche doodle postcard activity invites visitors to express how they envision themselves during this art festival. We will be handing out blank postcards and will ask participants to doodle on them and post them on either of our social media channels, Facebook or Twitter. A select few will be displayed on TTC monitors on subway platforms for the rest of October 2011.

AFCY is Scotiabank Nuit Blanche’s chosen charity. This means that AFCY will benefit from all proceeds and donations made at Nuit Blanche this year.  Three AFCY activity tents will be set up along Yonge Street: At Wellesley, at Yonge/Dundas Square and at King during the October 1st all-night art event and yes, we do need volunteers for the night. For more volunteering information call us at 416-929-9314 x 109 or email Sonia Briglio: Sonia@afcy.ca.

Shadow Works

Shadow Works, a video-based activity

Visual and digital artists Alina Martiros and Pamella Schuller will be collaborating with AFCY during Scotiabank Nuit Blanche. At AFCY’s Yonge and Wellesley tent, Martiros, will be leading the Shadow Works activity. The tent will be a part of the art-making process as a screen. Inside the tent, participants will experiment with shadows using simple cut-outs to create vignettes as well as patterns that would be visible to the audience and passers by outside the tent.

At least 2 video cameras will document the shadow happenings from outside the tent throughout the night.

Shadow Works

Community Streamers

Community Streamers – this is a mixed media collaborative art activity that integrates fabric arts, the outdoors and collective art making. Dab, doodle, draw or paint images onto fabric streamers, which will be included in artful public installations featuring a myriad of colourful painted ribbon-streamers that are hung as cooperatives to represent of the notion of community.

Community Streamers

Buy the Edible Alphabet Book before Nuit Blanche here.

Please visit this webpage regularly because we will be updating information as it becomes available.