Black Lives Matter Canada has a New Centre for Art and Activism

By Neil Armstrong

Black Lives Matter -- Canada has purchased a 10,000 square foot building that will be the home of its Wildseed Centre for Art and Activism on Cecil Street, a street with a long history of Black activism in Toronto.

Syrus Marcus Ware, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter-- Canada and a core-team member of Black Lives Matter –- Toronto, says the centre will be a hotbed of activity and a community hub for activist groups to have meetings, for dance classes, art, children’s programming, community gardens and much more.

“It’s a fully accessible building and it will be this home for community. This was a project that we are trying to build out space. We know that there are not enough Black art spaces and there isn’t space for Black activists to organize and connect together, space for Black families who have been affected by police violence. Like there’s all of these gaps that Wildseed Centre is going to fill.”

He said 24 Cecil Street will be the home of so many people for the next couple of generations.

On March 7, 2020, Black Lives Matter -- Canada launched the Wildseed Centre for Art and Activism at 76 Geary Street, a space it rented after working on the idea for about a year. However, the enthusiasm of opening and welcoming people was short-lived when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down everything globally on March 12.

It did not, however, stop the Black Arts Fellowship, which was initially programmed to happen at Wildseed Centre with twenty-one fellowships with seven residences. This was switched to online while the centre itself remained closed.

“This is really exciting to be now moving into this new building and the city is opening up and we’re going to be able to actually have people in the space and working and organizing,” says Ware. 

Black Lives Matter -- Canada will be doing a couple of soft launches during the last two weeks of July and then it should be fully open after some renovations in the fall, pending COVID-19.

Ware says a motion will be going forward to the City for the building and for renovations and the group has been working with Councillor Mike Layton, who represents Ward 11, University-Rosedale, to get a sense of the landscape and who they are going to be able to collaborate with in the neighbourhood.

“Excited to help announce that Black Lives Matter Canada has purchased a property at 24 Cecil Street, which will become the permanent home of BLM’s Wildseed Centre - the 1^st centre for art and activism of its kind in North America,” says Councillor Layton in a tweet.

The group is to receive $250,000 from the City for capital costs and upgrades.

“We’re really excited about being connected to some of the great organizing groups that are in the neighbourhood, including the steelworkers which are right across the hall. This project is a project that is created through Black Lives Matter -- Canada so it is something that will be used for the whole network so Black Lives Matter chapters from coast to coast to coast can come and use Wildseed Centre and can meet out of there and have organizing and connect so it will be a space, it will be used quite broadly,” says Ware.

He says Cecil Street was also home to the first trans group in the country run by BIPOC trans activists in the 1970s. Cecil Street is also near First Baptist Church Toronto, founded in 1826, that has the distinction of being both the very first Baptist church and the oldest Black institution in Toronto.

“Marcus Garvey organized in an office just down the road on College Street and, of course, we’re close by to A Different Booklist and sort of really feeling like we’re kind of in this beautiful Black neighbourhood that has a history that we’re part of.”

From 1925 to 1982, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) Hall, built by West Indian immigrants and African Canadians, was located at 355 College Street, just steps from Kensington Market.

In an August 17, 2018 article titled “Marcus Garvey’s Place in Toronto’s History” in Spacing magazine, Cheryl Thompson, an assistant professor in the School of Creative Studies at Ryerson University, notes that, “While the UNIA Hall is long gone, the location serves as a reminder of a time when a different generation of Black Torontonians gathered in that space to build community and foster Black self-love.”

 

The new location of the Wildseed Centre is also near 20 Cecil Street that was purchased in 1956 by Donald Willard Moore and two other members of the Negro Citizenship Association. The 12-room house was converted into a recreation centre for the West Indian community called Donavalon Centre.

“In addition to serving as the home of the United Negro Improvement Association and the Toronto Negro Citizenship Association, the Donavalon Centre offered a range of activities and services, including dances, teas, Sunday programs, insurance for its members, and the publication of a quarterly newsletter,” notes an article at the website, donaldmoorecanada.com. 

In 2000, the City of Toronto Culture Division erected a plaque at 20 Cecil Street to commemorate Moore’s significant contributions.

 

Moore was a community leader and civil rights activist who fought to change Canada’s exclusionary immigration laws. He led a delegation on April 27, 1954 to protest the immigration policies.

Camille Turner, performance artist, curator and educator has also conducted artistic research into the Black Grange area of the city.

Black Lives Matter – Canada is aware of that deep Black history of the neighbourhood and is glad to be there.

Ware says building at 24 Cecil Street has a finished basement with an industrial kitchen and he imagines arts programming and “things that can get messy and wet” being programed in that space.

The first floor can be a place where people come to gather. “One of the things that we loved about some of our organizing spaces is the moments when people have been able to sort of drop in and we wanted to create a drop-in environment where people feel comfortable to just sort of come by and work in the space.” There could be dance classes in another area of the first floor too. 

There is office space on the second floor and on the third floor there is a beautiful event space. 

Black Lives Matter -- Canada is also imagining spaces for people to be able to do recordings and podcasts, and quiet spaces for healing justice supports and therapists to work out of, and a space for artists to organize and practice and try out things. 

It has a wraparound yard so there will also be community gardening and some land justice and land work. 

“We’ve been dreaming of having a Black art and activist space really since we first came to realize that we need to build out Black Lives Matter -- Canada as a thing, so really from the very beginning. We knew that we were going to eventually be creating Black Lives Matter -- Canada as a network and we knew from the very beginning that we wanted to have a space. We thought that Black people deserve a space, that it’s time to have a space so it’s really been at least five or six years of working and sort of planning towards this. This year was the right year and we were able to find a place that really met a lot of our needs.”

Accessibility, light, and connection to a Black neighbourhood were among its important requirements. 

“There are some really wonderful things that came through so it’s been quite a journey to get to this place so we’re really happy to be here and to be able to really share it with the community.”

Ware says Black Lives Matter -- Canada was lucky to get a grant through Black Lives Matter Global to be able to support its fundraising towards the building. It will keep people posted as other fundraising things come up.

“What we saw in the last year, I think, was definitely the beginnings of a revolutionary moment. We’re in a moment of intense activism, of intense arts-based activism. What we saw in the last year also was a dramatic upswing of organizing around abolition and around making Black-affirming places. We also saw a lot of police brutality, we saw families lose their loved ones and we saw people unnecessarily having their lives taken through interactions with law enforcement. 

“So now more than ever we need a space for Black families to gather to organize around their campaigns. We need a space where there is accessible and affordable mental health supports and healing justice supports. We need a space for Black artists to be able to gather, organize and create and do all of the amazing things that are helping to fulfil and sort of sustain us as we go on. We need a space for activist and organizers to be able to come together and meet and help to do the work that is transforming society into a more just place. 

“Now more than ever we need spaces like this. The numbers of Black art spaces are shrinking in this city and there has been a crackdown and a criminalization of dissent and activism so the number of spaces for Black activists to organize safely is very few.”

They are building out a Black family support network and are “creating space for all of those groups that need space to come together and to do the work that they are doing,” says Ware.