What We Do
Everyone’s Welcome
We prioritize intergenerational activities and have a bias toward large, chaotic events where community members of all ages, abilities and backgrounds can come together. Saying everyone’s welcome means constantly asking: “Who’s here?” “Who’s missing?” “Who’s standing at the center?” “Who is hovering around the edges?” We are slightly discomforted by the constant contradiction of saying everyone’s welcome while never quite realizing the promise of total inclusion. This contradiction drives our work and inspires us to keep trying.
Participation Over Discussion
At Mabelle Arts, we prioritize doing over talking. Getting residents together to participate in activities that quickly and obviously lead to positive outcomes builds trust and strengthens relationships. Doing things together (cleaning up an abandoned field, fixing a broken bench or planting a garden) allows us to see the positive outcomes of our shared actions. Participating in community meetings or committees often takes time and a naturally extraverted personality and doesn’t always lead to positive outcomes.
Responsive and Built for Change
Our work is responsive to the people and places we’re working with. We celebrate change and welcome the chance to experiment, innovate and begin again - with joy. We remain nimble and decisive in order to respond to challenges and opportunities as they arise.
Strong Relationships Built Over Time
Strong relationships with people and places build shared power, a place to stand together and an ability to care for and support each other. By choosing to build relationships across real and perceived differences, we are working together to heal the ways we’ve been divided and isolated from each other to build a world of social connection and trust.
Art In Everything
We invite professional artists, architects and craftspeople to co-create new artworks of all kinds with community members of all ages, abilities and backgrounds. Together, we devise co-creative processes that prioritize participation over virtuosity and foreground personal stories and cultural backgrounds while striving for artistic integrity and innovation. The process and outcomes of collaborative art-making provide boundless opportunities to do something meaningful together. This is what it means to co-create culture.
How We Do It
Woven together, these ingredients become the social infrastructure that supports community connection, ownership and care.
Relationships
Strong relationships between people and places builds shared power, a place to stand together and an ability to support one another.
Art
Artmaking brings people together to do something fun, surprising and great. It gives us a chance to make instant change; to co-create something that has never existed before and to see things (and each other) in new ways.
Programs
Programs develop out of arts-based activities, experimental projects and shared learning. Together with community members and partners we respond to the problems we see with our artist minds and explore new opportunities to make our community better.
Places
Together we co-create places that respond to community needs and desires; reflect local cultures and concerns and welcome people across real and perceived differences.
Our Impact
In 2023, together with thousands of residents, partners, architects and artists, we broke ground on a new vision for Mabelle Park, setting sail for transformative impacts on Mabelle Avenue.
Placing Parks
People often ask us how they can harness the power of art and placemaking in their own communities. We developed placingparks.ca in 2017 to share our process, through the lens of our highly successful national project, Welcome to this Place.
Donate Now
Video & Photo Credits
Rahaf Alakbani, Vocalist and Facilitator
Val T. Vint, Lead Artist (Outdoor Kitchen)
Henry Mak, Videography
Katrin Faridani, Photography
Website Design
Puncture Design