The Bentway is a new public space and programming platform that is both “of the city” and “about the city”. Through the lens of arts, culture, and recreation we explore the changing landscape of Toronto and urbanism on a global scale.
Discover our shared experiences and explorations below!
current programs
Beyond Concrete
Summer 2023 | May 26 – September 24
Beyond Concrete brings together artists, architects, botanists, and neighbours to explore the nature of the Gardiner Expressway. Discover a uniquely urban ecosystem – where human-made infrastructure intertwines with resilient flora and fauna – at a summer of free artworks, events, and celebrations.
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Neighbourhood Nuit
toThis 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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BEYOND CONCRETE
toBeyond Concrete brings together artists, architects, botanists, and neighbours to explore the nature of the Gardiner Expressway. Discover a uniquely urban ecosystem – where human-made infrastructure intertwines with resilient flora and fauna – at a summer of free artworks, events, and celebrations.
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Waterfront ReConnect
On view nowWaterfront 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.
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Public Space Fellowship
Ongoing, annual programThe Bentway’s Public Space Fellowship seeks to address sector-wide gaps and ensure that burgeoning talent, lived experience, and a diversity of expertise help shape a more sustainable city. The Fellowship is a paid professional development opportunity that provides resources, support, and a platform for learning, generative exchange, and capacity-building.
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Artist Residency
Ongoing, annual programThe Bentway Artist Residency is an annual, self-directed onsite program focused on advancing creative research and experimentation around a specified project theme or approach that responds to the features and/or functions of The Bentway Phase 1 site.
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Communal Table with The Depanneur
toThe Depanneur and The Bentway are teaming up again to bring you a fabulous lineup of diverse and delicious dinners. Guests are seated together across 10 tables of 6, sharing platters of food as part of a communal dining experience.
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Memory Work
toMemory Work is a mural made up of twelve embellished portraits of revolutionary women and non-binary figures from a future Toronto. Initiated by From Later with artist Rajni Perera and Memory Work Collective, this speculative monument imagines a city characterized by collective care and politics that value nurturing over growth.
upcoming programs
Bentway Staging Grounds
Opening September 2023
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.
recent publications
Play Provocations
(with Daily tous les jours)
Play Provocations is an exploration of how to expand the definition of play, both who it is for and what it can do. An output of The Bentway’s Summer 2021 program, Playing in Public, the publication was created with Daily tous les jours, and both examines program learnings and suggests discoveries that can inform the work of others ‘playing’ in play.
Street Summit – Live Magazine
(with Frontier)
Live Magazine is a project by Frontier, a Toronto design studio, that offers smart distillations of stimulating gatherings. Each issue gives readers insight into an event’s most powerful ideas and conversations. This issue took place at the Bentway’s 2022 Street Summit, where we took to streets and public spaces to think with others about city life.