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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مجلس Majles / Sitting Room
toRooted in archival Persian rug work, the inaugural Step-Up Series commission transforms the West Block staircases and courtyard into a vivid cultural tapestry, one that threads migration, memory, and everyday connection through the local architecture to welcome gathering and mark shared urban space.
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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…