Our Mandate

Mabelle Arts unlocks the creative potential of the neighbourhood. We co-create social infrastructure (relationships, programs, and places) that build individual and community resilience. Our work is centered on Mabelle Avenue - a high-density,low-income community in Etobicoke. Since 2007, we've worked withhttps://mabellearts.ca/ thousands of residents to address seemingly intractable problems shaped by the chronic underinvestment in the GTA's low-income neighbourhoods. We approach our work as artists and use the creative process to unlock empathy across difference, participation, leadership and community cohesion.

Our Theory of Change

Relationships

Strong relationships between people and places builds shared power, a place to stand together, and an ability to support one another.

Art

Art making brings people together to do something fun, and gives us a chance to make instant change; to co-create something that has never existed before and to see things(and each other) in new ways.

Programs

Programs develop out of arts-based activities, experimental projects and shared learning. We respond to the problems we see with our artist minds and explore new opportunities to better our community.

Places

We co-create places that respond to community needs and desires; reflect local cultures and concerns and welcome people across real and perceived differences.

Programs & Activities

We bring people together across real and perceived differences to do extraordinary things together. Through high-impact co-creation projects, people who take part get to know one another and move from being strangers to becoming neighbours and friends. Our programs include:

Community Mobilization

We train and hire Mabelle residents to work shoulder to shoulder with artists, non-profit leaders and other professionals. Since 2007, over $800,000 has gone back into the community as wages and honoraria.

Co-Creation

Artists, architects, builders and other professionals work collaboratively with Mabelle residents of all ages and backgrounds to make art and solve problems like social isolation, neglected and dangerous public spaces and economic insecurity.

Mabelle Avenue Project (MAP)

We work with residents to unlock the potential of many underused community indoor and outdoor amenities such as community rooms, kitchens, gazebos, and lawns; notable recent projects include our redesign and renovation of the 57 Mabelle Avenue Computer Room, and our reanimation and beautification of a building tower side lawn, now called "The Patch".

Capacity Building and Systems Change

We work with artists and non-profit leaders to co-create systemic change through policy development, best practice learning and teaching and sectoral network development.