In February 2009, we decided to create a project that would bring beauty to parts of the city that were not typically seen as beautiful. We wanted to suprise, make people feel welcome, and invite them to notice their surroundings. Our first idea was to "roll out the red carpet" by hanging chandeliers and paintings in an abandoned alleyway. This led to the idea of 'dressing up' a bus shelter. We would make handmade cushions for the benches, hang art, hand-made chandeliers, and lay a red carpet to the bus/streetcar. We would also have musicians play and street theatre - actors to hand out chocolates on silver trays to people waiting at the stop. We wanted to generate excitement about WHY, our city and social change.
Through the next few months we developed our idea and met with professional artists to explore and expand our art and facilitation skills. Our next step was to recruit youth to work with us. Before we even had a chance to follow through with our ideas, a new opportunity came our way in May, when we discovered City on the Move: A Festival for Youth In Transit. We were excited to see that our city had the same ideas as us! So we changed our vision to include buses, streetcars, trains and platforms and sent a proposal to the City and the TTC.
While we were well-received, our plans were considered a bit ambitious (and risky from 'insurance' perspective). What they liked was our idea to do performance (music & theatre) on buses and trains. This was a new focus for our group, but we liked the idea, so we partnered with Walls of Hope Canada to host "WHY Talk" - a series of collaborative art workshops to design and implement the project.
