Riverside Neighbourhood Featured in Transitions in Progress, part of International Performigrations Project
‘Transition in Progress (TiP): Making Space for Place is a bike-powered mobile lab, an online archive, and an ephemeral collection of artifacts, engaging with the city’s structure and its multiple protagonists through an in-vivo, bottom-up approach.’
This is fancy way of saying that the TiP team, Roberta, Elena and Valentina, spent countless hours visiting Toronto’s communities by bike – hearing and collecting people’s stories and personal mementos. One community they spent a good deal of time getting to know was Riverside, which they were originally drawn to by Elena’s uncle Larry – a Riverside resident and local historian of sorts. Larry met the TiP team at the Riverside BIA office back in the early days of summer 2015 and toured them through the neighbourhood; sharing his own memories of various businesses come and gone, history of landmark buildings, and a view of the area’s vibrant parks. They re-grouped back at the BIA office and from there hatched a plan to bring the project alive in Riverside, as part of the Riverside Walks event on September 12th (Riverside’s monthly local walking tours).
The TiP project is part of a larger EU/Canada project Performigrations: People are the Territory. The project, coordinated by the University of Bologna, brings together an international team of six European co-organizers representing Italy, Greece, Portugal and Austria, and five partners representing Canada’s three largest provinces (Ontario, Quebec and BC), as well as five partners in the UK and Malta. Over two years, their goal was to produce seven travelling art installations.
At the ground level, TiP’s goal was to call attention to the frayed, messy and deeply interconnected layers of landscapes and stories that are often hidden. To do that, TiP visited four locations along Toronto’s Queen Street corridor, collecting a variety of natural specimens, local artifacts, testimonies and unique stories about migration and mobility, settlement and displacement, vivid recollection and forgotten memory. Their installation offered ‘snippets, slices and partial vistas on the swirling micro narratives that compose the city with and against the grain of governing, economic and political forces’.
In Riverside, the TiP project discovered a rich history, dating back to the 1800s and the Riverside BIA and many residents shared their memories and artifacts. People from all walks of life came forth to share with the team.
Here’s the account written up by the TiP team:
The mementos from Riverside were on display at Ryerson University from October 19-23. Visiting the display was a bit like taking a walk through the neighbourhood and being transported through time.
