Check out our ongoing and upcoming events and series.
events calendar
Still Life Painting: BYOO – Bring Your Own Object!
BYOO – Bring Your Own Object from home and learn to paint a still life! This is a beginner friendly workshop where Mason will guide you through the creation process and help you discover just how fun and relaxing painting can be. Suggested objects: things that are nostalgic or sentimental. Bring something that you enjoy looking at and have good memories associated with! Mason will also bring his collection of interesting nostalgic objects in case you prefer to paint something new.
Exploring Nature Beyond Sight
Experience urban nature through a guided sensory walk designed to engage with touch, smell, and sound. This interactive program and hands-on planting activity invites participants to slow down, connect, and explore public space in new ways.
Social Fabric: A Community Textile Activation
Drawing on the textile traditions reflected in Anahita Akhavan’s new mural, West Block becomes a place for shared making. Working with SHEEEP Studio, visitors of all ages will assemble textiles throughout the afternoon, gathering colour, pattern, and the gestures of many hands.
Printmaking: Toronto Trading Cards
Whether it’s cheering on your favourite Toronto sports teams this summer, grabbing a TTC transfer on the first day of a new year, spotting the elusive white squirrel of Trinity Bellwoods park, or grabbing a beef patty on your way home from school, this workshop is about commemorating the things that make Toronto a special place to you. You will learn how to create your own image on styrofoam blocks and then print a series of 5 “Toronto trading cards”. At the end of the workshop, you are invited to trade some of your cards with your fellow civic superfans and take home your own collection of uniquely Toronto experiences.
Collage: ReExpressway Edition
This summer, Collage Grad is inspired by The Bentway’s vibrant public space under the Gardiner Expressway! This monthly session explores art, urbanism, and placemaking through collage. Work with a curated mix of archival photos of Toronto, urban planning publications, and vintage magazines to express your own take on citybuilding and create your own reimagined built environment.
Textiles: Felted & Embroidered Pins
Learn how to “draw” with textiles this summer! Using needle felting, stitching, and other creative embellishments, design your own unique, wearable button. You’ll learn how to work with wool roving, and some simple embroidery stitches that are useful for adding lines, dimension, and artistic expression.
on view / ongoing
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Nature in our Neighbourhood
Discover urban wildlife in Canoe Landing Park and CityPlace on this interactive walking tour. Learn to identify local plants and animals, explore how nature adapts in city spaces through hands-on activities, and take home native wildflower seeds to support biodiversity in your own garden!
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United in Light
toMontreal-based LeMonde Studio presents United in Light, a luminous new installation celebrating the many nations of the FIFA World Cup™. Featuring four largescale, interactive LED-screen flags at the Bentway Skate Trail, the work responds to human touch, transforming as visitors engage. Fans are invited to interact with the installation, celebrating their home teams while reflecting the global spirit of the city.
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Make the World Go Round
toToronto-based illustrator and muralist Caitlin Taguibao brings the city to life with Make the World Go Round, a striking signature mural installation that wraps the columns of the Bentway Skate Trail, immersing viewers in the iconic sights and scenes of the Toronto that we know and love. A vibrant tribute to the diversity of experiences that make Toronto great, this newly commissioned mural will offer fans a lasting impression as they leave the festival.
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Net Scape
toSit down and relax in Net Scape, a new furniture installation from Toronto-based RAW Work. Created using the elements of the game—soccer balls and goal netting—these fun, interactive pieces create the perfect way to watch the matches with your friends at the Bentway Strachan Gate.
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Shore Lines
toToronto-based design firm RAW Work presents Shore Lines, a series of modular, soccer field-inspired furniture welcoming you to connect and rest underneath the Gardiner. Inspired by Toronto’s original shoreline, which the Gardiner Expressway traces, these comfortable benches will appear as one continuous soccer pitch along the Bentway Skate Trail’s southern edge.
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Fans Can Dance
toFans Can Dance by Montreal-based studio Daily tous les jours invites you to a collective soccer celebration—part dance party, part game. This interactive installation explores the popular phenomena of soccer players’ goal score celebrations through dances, poses, and gestures. Bring your dancing cleats and join the team for this engaging imitation game at the Bentway Strachan Gate.
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A Persistent Crossing
May 9, 2026 to Spring 2027Bentway Staging Grounds hosts the final chapter of its immersive installations, where human silhouettes, native vegetation, and Ontario pollinators invite visitors to reflect on their place within the city. The work blurs boundaries between people, place, and the natural world, revealing the interconnected rhythms of built and living environments.
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Petal and Stone
October 2025 through to 2027A 10,000 square-foot mural project inaugurates the Gardiner Wallworks series, transforming this concrete expanse into a poetic tableau of site memory, native flora, and symbolic passage. Inspired by the architecture and ecological communities bridging The Bentway and Exhibition Place, it offers commuters and residents an evocative new lens on their urban landscape.
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Waterfront ReConnect: Boom Town
On view nowBoom Town employs vibrant colour, playful characters, and environmental lighting to enliven the York Street intersection, improving safety and accessibility for pedestrians and cyclists.
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Waterfront ReConnect: Pixel Story
On view nowPixel 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.
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Bentway Staging Grounds
On view nowBentway 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.
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Memory Work
On display May 1, 2022 onwardsSituated at the western entrance to The Bentway, Memory Work is a mural made up of twelve embellished photographic portraits of revolutionary women and non-binary figures from a future Toronto. Initiated by studio From Later with artist Rajni Perera and Memory Work Collective, this speculative monument imagines a city characterized by collective care and politics…