Drift Seeds

Drift Seeds is a multi-discipline, multi-sensory theatrical production with music, dance, puppetry, installation, interaction, and elements of live audio description and American Sign Language performance with a cast of 100+ community members from the Winchester Park, Cabbagetown, and St. James Town neighbourhoods. Drift Seeds welcomed audiences of all ages and all abilities and incorporated a wide range of art forms from a diverse range of artists, writers, and performers. As well as English, spoken languages included pieces in Urdu, Korean, Spanish, Mandarin, and Russian.

Drift Seeds is the sum of many parts: a fictional collage created out of fragments harvested through artistic exploration that revealed themes of loss and discovery, migrations and transformation, safety and danger, inclusion and isolation, hope and resistance.

Drift Seeds is the culmination of Promise in the Park, a 4-year multidisciplinary community-engaged arts project that featured 300 art-making workshops in local schools, community groups, housing co-ops, community organizations and parks, and the creation of collaborative public art in Toronto’s Winchester Park area based upon the local stories and traditions of the people in the Winchester Park neighbourhood. Through an immersive and evolving artistic process, we showcased, cross pollinated, and grew the unacknowledged cultural riches in the neighbourhood, catalyzed new social connections and alliances, and increased neighbourhood safety by animating public spaces.

Promise in the Park built upon ReDefine Arts’ six-year artistic residency with Diane Frankling Co-operative Housing between 2006 and 2012 that engaged 500+ community member contributors and culminated in the creation of three large-scale mosaic public artworks.

Community Partners: Diane Frankling Housing Co-operative, The Rekai Centres, E Fry Toronto, Winchester Public School, Dixon Hall, Supporting Our Youth, Maggie's, Ernescliffe Housing Co-operative, Hugh Garner Housing Co-operative, St James Town Community Corner, Fieldstone Co-op, St James Town Community Corner, City of Toronto Parks, Forestry, and Recreation, and the Toronto District School Board.

Artistic Partners: Jumblies Theatre, Kaeja d'Dance, Ottawa Valley Community Arts, Puppetmongers Theatre, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, and Art City.

Funding Partners: Ontario Trillium Foundation, Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, Miziwe Biik Aboriginal Employment and Training, and Service Canada.