Earlier this year, alumna Victoria Taylor (MLA 2008) co-founded and co-curated ====\\DeRAIL Platform for Art and Architecture with designer and public art curator, Gelareh Saadapajouh. ====\\DeRAIL is a curated program of site-specific exhibitions, events, competitions, and publications with a mission to foster, support, interpret, celebrate, and expand public understanding around placemaking, landscape, and urbanism. It aims to provide an alternative platform for dialogue and collaboration across disciplinary, geographical, and ideological boundaries at the intersection of contemporary art and architecture. Taylor and Saadapajouh’s vision for the program is to inspire Toronto to expand the public dialogue around contemporary art, placemaking, landscape, and urbanism.

For its inaugural commission in Spring 2016, ====\\DeRAIL presented the installation titled MOBILE INK FACTORY by Jason Logan of Toronto Ink Company. Through the Doors Open weekend, Logan led participants along a section of the West Toronto Railpath park to learn about the unique character of this urban ecosystem, and then invited participants to make ink from the natural and handmade elements collected during the exploratory walks. The bottles of ink were kept as a souvenir of place, time, and experience. Educational, playful and participatory, MOBILE INK FACTORY drew attention to biodiversity and the inherent colours of the West Toronto Railpath park to celebrate new ways of understanding a familiar place beyond its usual functionality. For photos of the event, click here.

Taylor was recently interviewed by Metro News Toronto for her work with Landscape Punctures – a project that encourages residents to make their laneways greener by using “crack mix.” The special horticultural blend contains durable plant seeds that can grow with little maintenance.

“Through the Laneway Puncture, community volunteers get together and dig punctures in the middle of a laneway, where they place the plants,” writes Gilbert Ngabo for Metro News Toronto. “As many as 250 km of laneways will be part of the project.”