2024-2025 Impact Report
Resilience Taking Root
The new Mabelle Park, one year in
It’s been one year since we opened the revitalized Mabelle Park and community arts hub, The Belle. Eighteen years of community collaboration, hundreds of resident voices, countless supporters (like you!) and a $3.8 million capital campaign transformed what was once a neglected thoroughfare into a green oasis at the heart of our rapidly densifying neighbourhood.
What has emerged is more than a neighbourhood greenspace. Mabelle Park is a cultural meeting place, bringing us together across our real and perceived differences. Mabelle Park is a local economic engine and leadership driver, removing some of the barriers to opportunity that have held our community back for too long. Most importantly, Mabelle Park is an antidote to the loneliness so many of us are facing, a green and vibrant invitation to be part of something great. With over 1,500 native plants, new spaces for gathering and play and a beautifully designed community clubhouse, Mabelle Park is building resiliency in our underserved, over-deserving neighbourhood. It’s a resilience that’s taking root in this place, preparing us for an uncertain future and making life so much sweeter in the meantime.
Thank you for being part of our great adventure. Your support makes it possible. Keep dreaming with us. The best is yet to come — with your help!
Big Love,
Leah Houston, Executive Director
Over 12,400 people were impacted by our work on Mabelle Avenue this year.
On average, 27 people visit Mabelle Park each day and linger 20 minutes or more.
That’s 9,855 visits this year and over 3000 hours of picnics in the sun, book-reading in the shade, toddlers adventuring in the tot-lot (our little people forest), neighbours patting dogs in the grassy jellybean, and elders getting their steps on the limestone pathways.
365 days in operation and still no vandalism.
Neighbours keep a keen eye on the park they love, increasing neighbourhood safety and ensuring the park remains a beautiful place for everyone.
219 free workshops and events.
That’s at least four free arts and culture events every week this past year in Mabelle Park, on Mabelle Avenue and across the GTA.
Art and Nature in Mabelle Park
30+ kids from Mabelle Avenue were part of an outdoor play, art and nature revolution taking hold at Mabelle Arts.
Through the years, getting kids to play outside has been an important part of our work. Now, with our renewed Mabelle Park in full bloom, we are witnessing how community art and architecture can spark new behaviours and ways of being. Oh, and hey there adults who worry that kids forget how to play — they don’t!!! The impulse is right there, waiting for an invitation.
Over 250 residents supported three community planting days with Evergreen, introducing more than 1,500 native plants, trees and shrubs to Mabelle Park thanks to guidance from SHIFT Landscape.
Indigenous Knowledge Keeper and Earthworker Rose Morrissette led four workshops with newcomer families and neighbours of all ages, sharing wisdom on earth care and native plants.
Welcome to the Neighbourhood
467 newcomers found connection through community arts programs on Mabelle Avenue and across the GTA.
102 workshops and events delivered by Mabelle Arts and our six Welcome to the Neighbourhood partner organizations.
56 artists were employed to facilitate and support program delivery.
This year, Welcome to the Neighbourhood reached an exciting milestone: Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada renewed their support, extending the program through 2028.
Through our workshops, trainings and events, newcomer residents from Mabelle Avenue and across the GTA are building social networks and forging supportive relationships, while newcomer artists are gaining meaningful employment, training and leadership opportunities at a time of great uncertainty in the arts sector. Welcome to the Neighbourhood is building social capital on Mabelle Avenue and across the city, helping newcomers put down roots and establish a sense of community belonging.
Mabelle Youth Corps
46 youth participants enrolled in the first year of our brand new youth program, Mabelle Youth Corps.
46 workshops, events and gatherings were attended and supported by youth.
1,243 hours were volunteered on Mabelle Avenue and beyond.
Mabelle Arts’ youth programming was reinvigorated this year with funding from Employment and Social Development Canada’s Canada Service Corps program. Alongside an impressive roster of partners, Mabelle Youth Corps is creating meaningful opportunities for young people from Mabelle Avenue and beyond to contribute to Mabelle Arts’ work and to community wellbeing.
Through purposeful volunteer placements and hands-on skills-building opportunities, Mabelle Youth Corps guides participants to develop leadership skills, strengthen community connections and build resilience within the community.
Mabelle Works
12 community members, including youth, were employed through Mabelle Works.
$129,000+ paid to community staff and leaders, and over 25 hours of workplace training, are building opportunity on Mabelle Avenue.
$949,000+ invested in the community as wages and honoraria since the program’s launch.
Mabelle Works provides low-barrier, meaningful employment opportunities for residents of Mabelle Avenue and beyond, including youth, newcomer artists and community members facing systemic barriers.
From program support to Park stewardship, Mabelle Works employees are integral to everything we do — our work would not be possible without this dedicated team. Mabelle Works staff are an integral part of our organization. They are important leaders in the broader community, as well.
Stewarding Long-term Community Resilience
Since the opening of Mabelle Park, Mabelle Works staff have been at the heart of its care and growth. Together with seasonal support from our Summer Youth Staff, they have led the park’s daily stewardship: picking up litter, watering and weeding garden beds, tending to planters, and more.
Through community employment, we are building a culture of stewardship that will keep Mabelle Park vibrant and welcoming for years to come. By equipping residents with environmental knowledge, hands-on experience and a sense of ownership, we’re creating a model for long-term sustainability. The skills and commitment cultivated today will carry forward as ongoing investments in the park’s future, strengthening community resilience in a historically underserved neighbourhood.
By embedding employment opportunities, youth engagement and intergenerational programming into our stewardship model, this initiative ensures that care for Mabelle Park is deeply woven into the fabric of the community.
Funders
Sponsors
Partners
Photography by Younes Bounhar, Katrin Faridani and Emma Stewart-Small