Card-Yards 2026!

Cardyard is a free art, activity, and performance hub on the north side of Bloor and Brock.

Installations:

PULP: Make is a pop-up architecture art installation. Different forms cut from plywood have circular holes the size of cardboard tubes, allowing for easy connections. Join us in playing with a a larger than life kit of parts.

Activities:

Splattorium by Ben Baird: A patch and mural dyeing station using reclaimed materials, with patches to dye and take home and a paintable mural made from recycled textiles and a sewing machine. Paint patches for your own collection or take a brush to our garden mural and dye the landscape!

Colourful Critters by Yasmine El Hamamsy: At the Colourful Critters tent, we will have mix of recycled and natural materials for you to paint and shape into your own unique little creature to take home with you. The creative choices are yours! From the items we provide, you might choose a toilet paper roll body, decorated using paint markers, legs made of cardboard strips, tissue paper wings, or shredded paper hair. Want your critter to make some sounds? We'll show you how to fill it with some beans and seal it to make it a shaker. We hope it helps you dream up all the ways you can use things that may not seem useful at first.

Magic Nature Wands by Katy Stenberg-Baine: Create your own magic nature wand using a variety of recycled, repurposed and foraged supplies. From sticks and leaves to textiles and glitter, create a personalized wand to take the magic with you.

Performances:

Arts4All is a community arts organization based out of the Davenport-Perth Neighbourhood.Come parade with us, and explore the homes we carry, those we make and the sense of home we dream about

Justin Robinson Brown, is a longtime Toronto guitarist who had spent the last 20 years playing for Flamenco schools and recording studios, gigging in all manner of venues in the GTA and teaching multiple styles of guitar and bass at his private studio.

The Bad Apples are a premier Toronto-based folk-rock and classic-rock cover band known for their high-energy, nostalgic live shows and rotating tribute nights.

Ben Bootsma presents a variety of original songs and selected covers on the themes of love, religion and solitude, sung in an uncommon bass-baritone register and accompanied by unique fingerstyle and rhythmic guitar arrangements. Visit his website at https://benbootsma.com/.

Edllusion is a Stand-up show containing a bunch of effects that will entertain and dazzle. Spectators will take turns helping Edllusion with the miracles also becoming a part of the show. This experience is a program filled with Astonishing and confounding effects like Card tricks, Fire tricks, Illusions, Professionally skilled sleight of hand, Levitating items, Mind reading and many more effects performed as performed on live television.

Matthew Maaskant is A singer-songwriter who explores sonic textures and landscapes while keeping beats and basslines front and centre; joined by guitarist Keith Stirling.

Yola Beru is songwriter & loop vocalist Laura Boyle and her bass playing partner Matthew Maaskant making lo-pressure electronic music that keeps heads bopping.

The Emerging Writers Reading Series hosts literary readings and workshops that are dedicated to professionally serious writers still establishing themselves. Join us on July 18th at 1:00pm for an incredible lineup of readings from Melissa Thorne, Megan Callahan, Jennifer Smith Gray, and Alexandra McKay!

PULP: Obstacle, 2017. Photo credit: Krystle Merrow.

PULP: Reclaimed Materials Arts and Design is coming back for another Card-yard at BIG On Bloor! As always, our fun installations, activities, and performances are completely free.

PULP: Make is a pop-up architecture art installation. Different forms cut from plywood have circular holes the size of cardboard tubes (carpet cores), allowing for easy connections. Join us in playing with a a larger than life kit of parts.