Toronto’s shared space
featured programs
Beyond Concrete
May 26 – Sep 24
Join us for a summer of free artworks, events, and celebrations that explore the ways urban nature and the built environment can co-exist, even collaborate.
Waterfront ReConnect
Waterfront ReConnect re-imagines the street-level experience of two under-Gardiner intersections through innovative approaches to lighting, color, and storytelling. The projects (located at York Street and Simcoe Street) showcase how the Expressway can better serve our city as a thriving civic asset – both above and below the deck.
Bentway Staging Grounds
Bentway Staging Grounds is a site of active, environmental learning that continues The Bentway’s creative work along the Gardiner Expressway. Visitors are invited into a living laboratory for urban ecology, with experimental gardens that use rainwater run-off from the highway above to support the growth of flowering plant species.
Bentway Staging Grounds Eco Workshop
Oct 14, 2pm – 4pm
Join us for an intro to the features, functions, and possibilities of Bentway Staging Grounds through a free guided tour and foraging walk! Then explore creative ways to collaborate with nature using foraged materials to create artwork inspired by the site and local environment.
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Grand Opening: Experimental Gardens under the Gardiner Expressway
Bentway Staging Grounds is a new public meeting place for community, culture, and ecology. This temporary public space under the Gardiner Expressway at Dan Leckie Way explores new ways to leverage stormwater runoff from the highway to support urban ecology.
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Bentway neighbourhood illuminated for Nuit Blanche
This Nuit Blanche, we invite you down to The Bentway and surrounding area for a series of installations that light up the neighbourhoods along the Gardiner Expressway.
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Attend the Under Gardiner Public Realm Plan Showcase
Explore how the spaces under the Expressway can better serve Toronto as we present the recommendations of the Under Gardiner Public Realm Plan for the first time on September 26.
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Attend our Dance in Public Space Showcase
Join The Bentway and our Dance in Public Space Artists-in-Residence on September 13 for an evening of participatory presentations where they will share insights and inspirations gained through their summer of onsite research at The Bentway.
what’s on
Atmospheres
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What can the wind teach us about our city’s infrastructure and our own needs for comfort? Atmospheres manifests this powerful force into a series of soaring soft sculptures, sound, and video that both generates and visualizes environmental data collected under the Gardiner.
Balete Bulate Bituka
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An otherworldly creature germinates at The Bentway, its parasitic tentacles emerging from the history of waste materials used as landfill to create the solid ground where the Gardiner now sits. Woven with bamboo, living plants, and locally-sourced discarded plastics, Leeroy New’s first North American commission presents nature reasserting itself amidst concrete infrastructure.
Bentempus Gardinus: A Long-Exposure Ecological Portrait
May 26 to Sep 24, 2023 – Viewable 24 hours a day
Geometric animal sculptures emerge from the Gardiner, representing species who’ve inhabited this place across time – from prehistoric woolly mammoths to sly modern foxes. Alex Sheriff’s speculative new work uncovers each of their stories and reconsiders our own role within natural history.
Lichen
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Remarkable, powerful, and resilient, “lichen” are ancient and diverse life forms, both an individual and a community. Anishinaabe filmmaker Lisa Jackson re-imagines her acclaimed short film as a multi-media installation and invites us to learn from lichen about being in relation to our environment and one another.
Groundcover
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Photographer Genesis Báez co-creates with the soil and stormwater below the Gardiner, burying film underground beneath the highway to absorb the surrounding landscape. Developing and displaying the images at large-scale reveals the reciprocal nature of the Expressway and its ecology. Co-presented with the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.
Multispecies Lounge
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At The Bentway Studio facing Canoe Landing Park, a new set of public furniture invites interspecies-encounters with urban wildlife. Through UV-painted details, the piece offers glimpses of how birds and insects see beyond the human eye and offers a more-than-human lens through which to experience the urban ecosystem.
The Benchway
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Bentway Public Space Fellow Ella Hough’s Benchway public furniture project starts a conversation about the waste produced by the private construction industry, its impact on our city, and the potential for a circular economy approach instead.
Waterfront ReConnect: Boom Town
On view now
Boom Town employs vibrant colour, playful characters, and environmental lighting to enliven the York Street intersection, improving safety and accessibility for pedestrians and cyclists.
Waterfront ReConnect: Pixel Story
On view now
Set to be installed in Summer 2023 (under the Gardiner at Simcoe Street), Pixel Story references the multitude of vantages, scales, speeds, and distances at which to view the Expressway, enticing passersby to move forward towards the waterfront, or pause to reflect on its diverse stories.
The Aliens of Manila
Nuit Blanche, September 23 with performances at 10pm, 11pm, 12am, 1am
A companion to his installation at The Bentway, Leeroy New’s The Aliens of Manila is a set of sculptural costumes made from locally-sourced discarded plastics. At first glance eye-catching and whimsical, the Aliens call attention to experiences of overseas Filipino workers as an essential, yet invisible workforce across the globe.
Shared Space
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Step inside an immersive installation that reuses upcycled plastics to explore the possibilities of inflatable architecture, circular design, and the role waste plays in the larger Gardiner ecosystem. Experience a snapshot of our shared consumer habits transformed in a unique gathering space, with a mesmerizing soundscape by MONEYPHONE.
A New Nature at Bathurst Quay
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During Nuit Blanche, the iconic Canada Malting Silos will be brought to life by a large-scale projection by Mark Dorf that reflects on the changing nature of both the building and the city at large. As this historic property transforms into a new civic and cultural landmark, The Bentway and the City of Toronto have teamed up to demonstrate the creative potential of this unique canvas.
visit
The Bentway is active at multiple sites under and near the Gardiner Expressway:
Getting there
250 Fort York Blvd, under the Gardiner
The Bentway Strachan Gate is situated on the lands of Fort York National Historic Site, at Strachan Ave.
Find at: bents 46-50
By TTC
509 Harbourfront (at Fleet St)
63 Ossington (at East Liberty St)
511 Bathurst (at Fort York Blvd)
Parking
Paid parking available @ Green P lots, located at 250 Fort York Blvd and 800 Fleet Street.
Accessibility
This space is partially accessible to mobility devices. In addition to flat and sloped paved surfaces, a large surface is covered in compacted gravel. Washrooms are accessible to mobility devices. Recommended entry to the site: from the east or the south.
Free wifi
Free wifi is provided by Beanfield. Sign onto “Beanfield1hfree” and get one free hour of wifi at The Bentway.
Getting there
250 Fort York Blvd, under the Gardiner
The Bentway Skate Trail is situated on the lands of Fort York National Historic Site, running from just east of the Fort York Visitors Centre to Bastion St.
Find at: bents 83-89
By TTC
511 Bathurst (at Fort York Blvd)
509 Harbourfront (at Fleet St)
Parking
Paid parking available @ Green P lots, located at 250 Fort York Blvd and 800 Fleet Street.
Accessibility
This space is fully accessible to mobility devices, with flat paved and wooden decked surfaces.
Free wifi
Free wifi is provided by Beanfield. Sign onto “Beanfield1hfree” and get one free hour of wifi at The Bentway.
Getting there
55 Fort York Blvd
The Bentway Studio is a mixed indoor/outdoor facility that faces into Canoe Landing Park, just west of Spadina Ave.
Find at: north of bent 116
By TTC
510 Spadina (at Bremner Blvd / Fort York Blvd)
Parking
Paid parking available at local InPark and Green P lots, and on local streets (including Dan Leckie Way and Housey St).
Accessibility
This space is fully accessible to mobility devices, with flat surfaces.