This weekend, urban enthusiasts around the world will be leading free walking tours of their neighbourhoods as part of Jane’s Walk. Started in Toronto, this annual festival was created to help people explore their cities through the eyes of local residents. The global event was inspired by urban activist Jane Jacobs, who championed community-based city building.

Daniels student Farah Michel is leading two walks this year, one on Saturday, May 5 and one of Sunday, May 7. See below for more details!

Little Italy: Exploring Natural and Built Heritage
Led by Farah Michel
Saturday, 4:00 – 5:30 pm | Meet at the Johnny Lombardi Piazza (College and Grace Street) – I’ll be holding a Jane’s Walk sign!

This Walk explores one of Toronto’s most historically significant sites; a place of remarkable natural and built heritage. By walking through the site and calling attention to noteworthy landmarks (or where noteworthy landmarks used to stand), this Walk will acknowledge the site’s history as a prominent centre of immigration and humble beginnings starting from the late 19th century, and will trace its development into a vibrant, demographically diverse neighbourhood whose cultural authenticity may be at risk of getting lost amidst developers’ plans for its commercial growth. This Walk will end at Trinity Bellwoods Park.

Walk and Chalk
Led by Farah Michel
Sunday 2:00 – 3:30pm | Meet at 255 Queens Quay West, across the We Brew Cafe. I’ll be holding a Jane’s Walk sign!

Use chalk as your brushes and the pavement as your canvas on this Chalk Walk! We will sit in the middle of a street and create art together. Anyone can take part in the fun, no matter what their artistic skills might be.

We tend to think of art as special, which in fact marginalises it; but art is a social activity, and art in public is part of the extraordinary ever-changing complexity of the public spaces we occupy. Whether a space can be considered public or not is not predicated on whether people are permitted open access to it, but on the extent to which they actively engage with one another when there. Public space only genuinely exists when social interaction goes beyond the passive and becomes active, and when individuals have to negotiate their social differences in order to actively engage with one another. When consumers of the city become producers of it, we get to experience the power of temporary use, and in using the sidewalk as our canvas, we can explore the role of the citizen as artist in making that public space, and in being actively involved in producing the environment we live in.

As art does not require an expensive canvas, the sharing of ideas does not require a specific platform. Sometimes art and conversation are as simple as an idea expressed with a grainy stick of coloured chalk and pavement. Materials and Fancy Frank’s hotdogs will be provided, you need only bring your kneepads/cushions/blankets, and your enthusiasm! “If only we remember to play, rediscover, and sense our surroundings, the invisible qualities of our cities can be uncovered”.

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For a list and descriptions of more tours taking place in Toronto this weekend, visit the Jane's Walk website.