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DonatePublished on November 19, 2024 by Ethan Rotberg, Senior Communications Specialist | Evergreen
A Toronto park that brought together artists, designers, builders and dreamers is officially open.
Mabelle Park celebrated its grand opening last month, a transformation 15 years in the making that includes a new multi-use building, a range of park improvements and public artworks in an underserved neighbourhood.
The park in central Etobicoke aims to respond to the unique needs and desires of residents living together in a high density, low-income tower community. The revitalization was led by Mabelle Arts, a non-profit group, and co-designed with the direct input of the community, says Leah Houston, executive director of Mabelle Arts.
“When we first started working in this neighbourhood, the space was very much forgotten and neglected except for its role as a thoroughfare for community members on their way to school or to the subway,” Houston says. “But very quickly that began to change, and over the years Mabelle Park has become a vital meeting place for neighbours.”
Mabelle Arts was formed following a residency from Jumblies Theatre, a project that brought together theatre artists and more than 100 community members to create a play about the neighbourhood that premiered at the Harbourfront Centre.
“For me, as an artist, I was really interested in this little park in the centre of the neighbourhood. It was very much neglected — broken benches, pieces of fencing — but it was also well traveled. So, it seemed like it had a lot of potential.”
The intersection of arts and community collaboration began as a team of artists packing up shopping carts full of arts supplies and making art and gardening in the park.
“The space started to become increasingly important to the community through all the years of animating it and transforming it with community arts.”
Four of the seven rental towers lining the block are owned and operated by Toronto Community Housing. The block is highly diverse and majority-racialized, with a strong Muslim population from Somalia, South Asia and the Middle East, according to Mabelle Arts. This new cultural space provides opportunities for self-expression, cultural reclamation, collaboration across difference and local employment.
To accomplish this, Mabelle Arts, in collaboration with LGA Architectural Partners, developed a unique community consultation process inspired by the community’s rich history of engaging in arts projects over the years.
Among some of the out-of-the-box activities that doubled as community consultation, Mabelle Arts and LGA launched “SSSchmarkitects.” Clowns took on the roles of architect characters, complete with lab coats, hard hats and clipboards, engaging with over 200 MABELLEpantry users (a foodbank, farmers market and covid-safe cultural venue) by asking both practical and imaginative questions about their current use of the park and their vision for its future.
“We have always seen our work as a kind of community consultation,” explains Houston. “Everything we’ve done in the park over the past 18 years has really been a shared exploration of what this park can do and be. Those innovative things are a neat marriage between the architecture world and the community arts world in terms of how we reached out to people to get feedback.”
In another activity, Mabelle Arts attempted to introduce stakeholders to the notion of the third place — public or semi-public spaces outside of home and work where people can gather and connect.
By sharing stories of third places of personal importance, participants were invited to see the park as another vital third space in their lives.
“By inviting people to map out their own idea of third place, we were able to stand together and speak from shared experience,” Houston says. “Everyone has an experience of a third place making an impact in their lives. For me, I can’t imagine a more powerful third place than Mabelle Park.”
An innovative approach to landscape design has also introduced further naturalization to the park — in addition to providing even more opportunities for community participation.
Evergreen partnered with Mabelle Arts on the project to lead three community engagement days in September to help the neighbourhood come together to plant trees and shrubs.
Credit: Katrin Faridani
Everyone from kids to seniors showed up ready to lend a hand (or green thumb).
“Over the course of those three days, we planted, we watered, we mulched; it was awesome,” says Olivia Dziwak, Evergreen’s Urban Ecology and Greenspace Lead. “The turnout was truly incredible; more than I’ve ever seen before. People really, really love that park.”
Mabelle Arts sees the project as a reimagining of what Canadian parks can be. Houston hopes that the emphasis on community arts inspires other communities that are working to transform public spaces.
“Because this community had all these years of experience collaborating with us on community artworks, we were really well positioned to collaborate with the architectural team. The architects were able to step into an ecosystem of creativity that was already long established.”
Learn more
Read more on how public spaces help strengthen local communities, especially when public spaces are built alongside local people who best understand the needs of their community. For more about how Evergreen can help you create vibrant public spaces, visit our services page.
Don’t forget to visit Mabelle Arts to learn more about the Mabelle Park transformation and how the non-profit is unlocking the creative potential of a neighbourhood.
