Artist rendering provided by: Gow Hastings Architects
The grand opening of our new performing arts space will be here before we know it, and we are absolutely thrilled at what this space means for our students and instructors.
From dance and theatre studios to music practice rooms to a fully-equipped theatre space – our Music, Dance, Theatre, and Performing Arts Fundamentals programs will have a space of their own to learn, practice, and create.
Located at 2200 Eglinton Avenue East, Nate Horowitz, Dean of the School of Communications, Media, Arts and Design, says, “We are going to be one beautiful integrated space with a lot of facilities. We will have a black box theatre where we can invite friends and family, we will have great studios, one-on-one music rooms where there is a teacher and student learning music, and all kinds of facilities that will give us what we want. The beauty is that it is an integrated space; everybody gets to see each other and work together.”
Some of the other components on-site will include five dance and theatre studios, full change rooms, a technologically enhanced music lab, four ensemble and six individual music practice rooms, and a student lounge space.
Nate says instructors will be able to work together and brainstorm, such as on new project ideas, while students can do the same, as they can more easily interact with their instructors and with each other to share different concepts for performances.
The push to open this site partly stems from the fact that each of our performing arts programs had separate studios around the city, without anything to really unify them. Dr. Chris Jackman, Academic Chair of Arts and Design, explains, “For several years, we have had thriving performing arts programs in music, dance, theatre, and performing arts fundamentals. As new programs, it is rare for any institution to have ready-built facilities when they launch, and so, for the past several years, we have been relying on rental spaces and short-term leases.”
He continues, “This has led to many great partnerships, such as with Daniel Spectrum and Artscape at our Regent Park location, as well as Lynx Music, Steps Dance and Dance North. However, it has been very challenging from an operational perspective to be dependent on external facilities when we are planning our programming, and we have had to move several times between facilities. More importantly, the sites, while professional-quality, have been satellites amongst themselves, which can leave our programs feeling a bit more isolated than we would like.
Bringing them all together in one performing arts centre is an opportunity to ensure the stability of our resources and our planning, to make sure that our students have access to professional-grade studios for years ahead, and to bring our students together in interdisciplinary performing arts projects to create a vibrant sense of community among performing arts students.”
This space is located in Scarborough, which Chris says has a really dynamic arts community. “One thing we hope to explore as we get settled there is working with community partners on new initiatives that allow us to really put down roots in the communities that we serve.”
After a tremendous amount of work put in to carefully create this performing arts site, along with a great deal of support from the college, both from the President and Vice Presidents, our new space will act as a home base for students and instructors to grow and showcase their incredible talents.
Stay tuned for further details as we get closer to opening day.
Article by: Alexandra Few
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