All in Ontario's Southwest
Over the past five years, our team at ‘young & free press’ has focussed on coordinating the installation of large-scale murals around southwestern Ontario. After the murals are painted, often we are asked for ‘before & after’ photos, as viewers are curious about how this kind of artwork helps to transform urban spaces.
Our team at young & free press is thrilled to help announce a new donation of $15,000 to the Elgin County Railway Museum to introduce cycling tours to St. Thomas! With the funds, staff members will purchase a fleet of new bikes, including two e-bikes, and coordinate guided tours that feature the rolling stock gallery at the Museum, the collection of large-scale murals in the city, and the St. Thomas Elevated Park.
Our team at young & free press is thrilled to help introduce a spectacular new mural by artist Meaghan Claire Kehoe inside the London International Airport. Both the origins of the image and the purpose of the artwork are significant.
Beginning in summer 2023, the team at the STEAM Centre in St. Thomas will coordinate a new engagement project that will invite community members and visitors to produce artwork outdoors! Imagine painting at the St. Thomas Elevated Park, or in the new Westlake-Evans Civic Park downtown, or at other beautiful locations around the city … this is the goal for summer 2023 in St. Thomas! Our team at young & free press coordinated a contribution of $7500 to help make this program happen.
On November 8, 1946, Viola Desmond went to a movie at the Roseland Theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. She sat on the main floor – the whites-only section – unaware that she had purchased a ticket for the balcony, where Black audience members were expected to sit. Although she offered to pay the extra cost for a seat on the main floor, she was removed from the theatre, held in jail & charged. This incident of racial discrimination helped to ignite the civil rights movement in Canada. More than seven decades later, in November 2018, the new ten-dollar bill design featuring Desmond went into circulation across Canada, acknowledging the Halifax-based business owner who altered the social history of the country.
Encounters @ 365 Talbot is an interactive art installation by Maddie King and Andrew Gunn in downtown St. Thomas. In August 2022, eighteen vintage mirrors were placed in the walkway at 365 Talbot Street, each one drawn from a different city or town in southern Ontario. The mirrors complement the stunning mural on-site by artist Stephanie Boutari. This is a managed installation, and the depth of the piece is meant to be revealed gradually.
With increasing numbers of newcomers moving into the London, St. Thomas & Elgin County area – and lots of tourists visiting, too – there is the opportunity to consider how to make everyone feel welcome as quickly as possible. The STEAM Centre and Catfish Creek Conservation Authority have taken an interesting approach by introducing multilingual signs on local hiking trails.
Hey London! There are lots of reasons to check out the new play Grand Ghosts running until November 5th at the Grand Theatre on Richmond Street. Members of our team at young & free attended the play on opening night, October 21st. Afterwards, we came up with our top five reasons to attend the show.
The Track to the Future Mural Festival made July 2022 a remarkable month in St. Thomas. Artists transformed spaces around the city with large-scale murals, and residents & visitors walked, cycled & skateboarded on local streets & trails to check out the artwork. St. Thomas is becoming a genuine street art capital!
Recently our friends at the St. Thomas & District Chamber of Commerce asked us to share our thoughts on how to build a workplace that will appeal to members of Generation Z. We work continuously, and rarely take the time to reflect on what has made our approach effective; further, we have never attempted to communicate what lessons could be gleaned from our experience to assist other businesses. Maddie and Andrew collaborated on the article below, blending our voices to share some insights. The tips for employers have been drawn from our team and conversations with young people locally.
The Track to the Future mural project continues in St. Thomas with the addition of a remarkable new mural by Nancy Deleary, who is an accomplished artist and also a Cultural Coordinator at Chippewas of the Thames First Nation. Completed this month at the St. Thomas Public Library, the artwork highlights the importance of storytelling, and will captivate the next generation of children who gather to read books and listen to speakers in the outdoor reading garden.
The Downtown Simcoe BIA and the team at young & free press are excited to share this call for artists to paint picnic tables to be placed on the beautiful grounds of the Norfolk Arts Centre! Located at 21 Lynnwood Avenue in Simcoe, the Norfolk Arts Centre offers a lovely urban green-space adjacent to the downtown core.
Our team at young & free devotes a lot of energy to highlighting our favourite St. Thomas attractions. Some landmarks seem to have resonated in the public imagination over the years – the Jumbo monument, Pinafore Park, and the Horton Farmers’ Market, and more recently the murals downtown and the St. Thomas Elevated Park – while we find ourselves still encouraging people to take a closer look at other unique assets in the community. So, we thought that we should assemble our list of ‘Top Ten Hidden Gems in St. Thomas’ – our list actually swelled to more than twenty, which means that we might need to put together a sequel!
Look closely at St. Thomas and the signals are clear … the community is in the process of a great reinvention. Known as ‘The Railway City’, the nickname holds, if only as a historical point of reference and an indication of how assets from that early industry are being repurposed now.
Professional mural artists are set to work with local Thames Valley District School Board (TVDSB) students to paint a series of picnic tables for Covent Garden Market in downtown London! Over the next six weeks, London-based artists Evond Blake (MEDIAH) and Hawlii Pichette will paint one table each, and guide elementary and secondary school students to paint six others. The tables will be returned and placed outdoors at the Market this spring. As an innovative twist, London-based EXAR Studios has been engaged to build an augmented reality (AR) experience for the setting, bringing to life elements of the picnic table-top designs in their AR app Engage ARt!
Middlesex County is full of wide-open spaces & pleasant surprises. Surrounding the City of London in southwestern Ontario, this massive rural area may feel overwhelming at first for visitors trying to discover the essence of the place. There are lots of small towns and villages, including Strathroy, Glencoe, Mount Brydges, Komoka & Kilworth, Ailsa Craig, Parkhill, Ilderton, Lucan, Thorndale and Dorchester. What binds all these places together, aside from the obvious political boundaries? What makes Middlesex County truly a community? What is the identity of the place? This is what our team at young & free pressset out to discover.
Building on the tremendous success of the ‘Track to the Future’ mural project, Railway City Tourism is requesting expressions of interest from artists who would like to design and paint an original mural of an elephant in St. Thomas! This is a rare opportunity to connect one of the key stories in the history and mythology of the community – specifically, the death of Jumbo the Elephant in 1885 – with the future of the city in augmented reality.
Artists are set to begin transforming downtown Simcoe with a new series of vibrant murals that celebrate the distinctive intersection of urban and rural life in Norfolk County. Coordinated by the Downtown Simcoe BIA and curated by Andrew Gunn Consulting and young & free press in collaboration with local partners, three murals are planned for the downtown area in the coming months with plans to expand the project around the community.
Riversyde 83 is a new food and community hub set to open in summer 2021 in downtown Simcoe in Norfolk County. Located at 83 Sydenham Street, the building will feature a marketplace, café, teaching kitchen, event spaces and an outdoor garden. Artist Meaghan Claire Kehoe will be painting a spectacular new mural on the south side of the building first thing in the spring, and we are excited to offer this call for artists to paint a mural on the north side of the building, too!
Recently the City of London decided to establish a ‘film office’ with the goal of attracting film and television productions to the community. The commitment is significant — $300,000 a year for three years.
