i-Sites - Zones of Calm and Creation
What's On for 2026!
Cassia Leung: Meow & Grow Seed Paper Cookie Workshop
I am Cassia Leung, a Hong Kong-born artist and educator with over six years of experience in community arts across four continents. I co-founded ComMAground, a global artist residency platform connecting creative communities across Hong Kong, China, South Africa, and Egypt. I also co-founded Stirring Paper, an eco-art initiative that has grown into a network of over 50 partners, including the YMCA, Greenpeace, and The Salvation Army, running papermaking workshops across museums, NGOs, schools, and banks worldwide.
Workshop Description:
Meow & Grow is a hands-on eco-art workshop where participants create cat-shaped seed paper cookies using recycled paper pulp, pigments, and mixed vegetable seeds. No art experience needed, just curiosity and a willingness to get your hands wet.
Each session opens with a short guided tour of handmade paper samples from Japan, Nepal, South Africa, and Taiwan, exploring how different cultures have treated paper as both craft and ceremony for centuries. Participants then mix their own colors, embed seeds into the pulp, and press it into cat-shaped molds. Because recycled paper breaks down naturally in soil, it becomes organic fertilizer over time and requires less water than conventional planting. Take your Meow & Grow cat home, press it into soil, and watch your vegetables grow where the paper used to be.
IG:@stirringpaper & @lws_cassia
Riley Drummond: Zinetopia Workshop
Workshop Description
This workshop will teach people how to make a simple 8 fold zine, providing collage material, art supplies, as well as instructions and prompts to inspire passerbyers to observe their surroundings, draw from experience, and have fun! This would be accessible to all ages from kids to adults!
IG: @rrriiiillleeeeyyyy
Izzy Paez: Alebrije Figure Creation Workshop
Izzy Paez is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist with over ten years of experience in local exhibitions and community arts engagement in Toronto. Paez uses folklore from her Mexican and El Salvadoran heritage as anchors for her works. Working primarily in painting and illustration. Growing up in Mexicali, Baja California, Paez’s childhood was often highlighted by the many folkloric tales that warned children of danger or conveyed important lessons. But the most impactful stories for Paez were the ones children told each other, blending familiar folklore, imagination, and life reflections. Paez’s practice draws from this storytelling blueprint, navigating spaces of familiar memory, the subconscious and dream worlds.
Workshop Description
This workshop will focus on creating Alebrije figures. Alebrije’s are colourful, fantastical folk art creatures that originated in Mexico. They are often seen as representations of dream worlds and spiritual guides between realms. The workshop will begin with an educational introduction exploring the history, cultural significance, and origins of Alebrijes. Participants will then be guided through a step-by-step sculpting process, learning foundational figure-making techniques using materials such as wire armatures, paper sculpting methods, and plaster. By the end of the workshop, each participant will have created their own unique Alebrije inspired by Mexican artistic tradition.
IG: @izzypaez
Collage Workshops:
We welcome back our collage booth put on by Maggie Keogh who will be facilitating a collage making workshop!
More workshop information coming soon!
Live Poetry Writers:
This year we have Marc Nair and William Hunt bringing live poetry writing to the festival! Participants can request and receive a poem that will be written live, pwyc to support Toronto writers!
Live Painters:
Toronto based artists will be painting 'portals' and live paintings along Bloor street during the festival. These art poieces will give Bloor street an exciting flair as artists design murals on several doors and points in the community!
Kalmplex at Dufferin
Kalmplex is a Jamaican/Ghanaian born in Toronto. He’s a multimedia visual artist whose practice spans more than two decades of documenting the city’s arts & culture. His work blends photography, painting, installation, and community-based documentation. Critically acclaimed for his Blessed and Highly Favoured exhibition at Koffler 301 (inaugural residency curated by David Liss), which received a 3.5/4 star review in the Toronto Star and was selected by The Globe and Mail as a must-see exhibition. Currently his work from his Gladstone Hotel residency is on view at his exhibition Ancient Beings until August 3rd at Pamanar located at 307 Augusta ave in kensington market. To coincide with his show Ancient Beings From Time, the painting above Pamanar will be on view for the next 3 months.
Http://www.Kalmplex.com
http://twitter.com/kalmplex
https://boldjourney.com/
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2025 Programming:
Portals:
Toronto based artists will be painting 'portals' along Bloor street! These art portals will give Bloor street an exciting flair as artists design murals on several doors in the community!
Collage Workshops:
This year we welcome two collage booths to the festival! Visitors can stop and make collages with provided materials to take home.
Poetry:
This year we have Marc Nair bringing live poetry to the fest! Participants can request and receive a poem that will be written live, pwyc, support Toronto writers!
BIG on Bloor celebrated Bloordale’s main streets Summer 2024
i-Sites received My Main Street support to draw visitors and increase vibrancy in the Bloordale Village.
i-Sites launched a series of environmental installations at the BIG on Bloor Festival this past July that invited the public to enter a traffic-calming zone curated by local artists from underrepresented groups. These were safe spaces for self-reflection and artmaking which explored shared spaces.
Familiar locations within the neighbourhood were reimagined; the participants' relationships redefined within these zones to themselves and how others are connected. We hosted conversations that helped people better understand the diverse community the art installations reflected and the collective futures we can foster through collaboratively reimagining and reshaping public spaces to maximize shared value.
BIG encourages and sustains civic participation by providing positive events in the community. Support from My Main Street has positively impacted BIG’s project, especially through the opportunities provided to disenfranchised local artists and through celebrating local businesses.
What is i-Sites?
The “I” is self, focusing on the individual and reflection on the "site" or public spaces, while also highlighting the vision (eyesight) of placemaking.
Each zone was a welcoming area that is judgement free. They were for guests that needed to balance sensory input in a calm environment.
Each site was an environmental art installation created by a local BIPOC artists that encouraged self-reflection and self-led art making.
From meditation to collages, join us in celebrating Bloordale through art and community!
Workshops & Projects From Previous Years:
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Renelyn Quinicot Renelyn Quinicot (she/her) is a queer filipina artist and movement & meditation teacher born and raised in Toronto. She is trained in various styles of mindfulness such as Kundalini Yoga,Yoga Nidrā, Cardio-Dance, Pilates, Sound and more, The events she curates root in an vulnerable exchange of storytelling, resources, and other tools for care to support all. Her facilitation in the wellness and arts communities centres in the belief that the body is a carrier of lineage and story, and explorations of PLAY as a radical reclamation of Self. REST PORTAL - "Big-Care on Bloor!" A tender landing to connect, and reset. Rest Portal combines the healing quality of tools such as ooey-gooey stretches, cathartic, playful shake offs, as well as breathwork, mindful writing and sound-meditations, to support a sense of balance and holistic reset during your lively art-festival experience.
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Collage Booth The i-SITE presented a collage workshop. At the collage booth participants can cut out photography from various magazines to make their own collage. They can also use words to create a poem on their piece. Practicing creativity and freedom in art is an important part of finding one’s artistic identity. There will be an example piece and instructional help to guide the collaging flow.
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Akash Inbakumar is a Tamil-Singalese Canadian artist based in Tkaronto. Their interdisciplinary practice uses installation, costumes, and performance to explore ideas of world-building, mythology, and kinship; entering partnerships with multiple mediums, tools, and processes, they conceive material-kin. These kin represent a world where craft objects play the role of carrying family lineage and storyteller, compared to the colonial west’s nuclear family. Queering the idea of how information can be passed down multi-generational/multi-specie networks. Inbakumar is a recent graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design University and has shown work at ArtAdress (Oakville) The Robert Mclaughlin Gallery (Oshawa), Artscape Gibraltar Point (Toronto), Patel Brown Gallery (Toronto), Xpace Cultural Center (Toronto) and Riverdale Hub (Toronto). Batik Booth Intro to Batik Dye using non toxic glue and watered down acrylic paint set up for all ages!
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Jennifer Matsalla Jennifer Matsalla is an artist and arts educator who uses various art forms as a meditative way to foster creativity. Her work involves mixed media styles surrounding drawing, painting, and collaging. Trading Cards Create your own trading cards using a mixed media approach. Participants are invited to create their own unique trading cards with collaging materials. People can design their own card from a giant deck of cards. Once completed they can leave the card they made behind and take one that someone else has left. This exciting activity promotes community based artwork that people can keep!
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Clay and Pottery with the Gardiner Museum
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Aerosol Area
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Plumb Paracord Party The Plumb Paracord Party workshop will inspire participants to play with the paracord, tying and untying knots; sharing their knowledge on how to tie knots along the way.
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Kabuté Join Cathleen Calica and Alexus Vernus for a mixed media workshop creating beautiful paper flowers and collaged textile bows.
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Placemaking is an approach that asks people to collectively reimagine and reshape public space to maximize its shared value. We're grateful for the supporters that recognize that importance and have made it possible for i-Sites to present placemaking installations.
The My Main Street Community Activator initiative provides support across southern Ontario for local community placemaking projects, including festivals and events, community enhancements, and streetscape improvements designed to draw visitors and increase local vibrancy. Thank you @mymainst, @canadianurbaninstitute and @feddevontario for supporting local communities and revitalizing main streets. Thank you to all our supporters, participants and visitors for making i-Sites possible!
