The 27th annual Mayworks Festival utilized art to reflect the struggles of working people and communities in Toronto working to reclaim the city and the services we value most.
Festival highlights:
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Alien-Nation Saturday May 5, 8 pm, $10 – $15 sliding scale The Rivoli, 332 Queen Street West. The Mayworks opening is a celebration of creative resistance through art and music to build more resilient communities. Alien-Nation features award winning poet and powerful performer Truth Is…, Ritallin, a highly respected name in Canada’s spoken word community and arts educator and is a high-spirited, six-piece dub/ska band by Dub Trinity who have recentlhy released their album, Alexandria (and other cautionary tales).
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LeftWords Festival of Books and Ideas Sunday May 6, 11-5pm, free, Oakham House/Ryerson Student Centre 55 Goulud Street. Joine Michele Landsberg (keynote speaker), Frances FoxPiven, Keith Stewart, Deborah Barndt, Alan Filewod, Leo Panitch, Greg Albo, Larry Savage, Stephanie Ross, Sean Carleton, Emily Pohl-Weary and more writers for presentations, readings plus great Canadian books and magazines for sale.
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If I Were a Monument (Louise Liliefeldt) Exhibition: May 12 – June 2 Opening Reception and Performance: Saturday May 12, 8 pm, Free Toronto Free Gallery, 1277 Bloor Street West If I Were a Monument is an exhibition by renowned artist Louise Liliiefeldt.The exhibition consists of paintings and installations that deal with the issue of loneliness. The images Liliefeldt creates are born from a very personal place, as dementia and caregiving have been part of her immediate family, perhaps exaggerating the solitude of both the person who has dementia and the caregiver. The performance work presented at the opening is also inspired by the notionof the feeling of being solitary, without companionship, or isolated. Co-sponsored by Toronto Free Gallery.
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To Live in the Age of Melting: A Concert with evalyn parry Sunday May 13, 4 pm, $15 Gladstone Hotel Ballroom, 1214 Queen Street West. Innovative, award-winning songwriter, poet and theatre artist evalyn parry takes her listeners on an uncommon musical and poetic trip. In this special Mayworks concert, she presents the Toronto premiere of her musical essay To Live in the Age of Melting, a deconstruction of the icon Canadian folk song Northwest Passage by Stan Rogers, examining issues of Arctic sovereignty, global warming, colonization, folk song and the history of conquest in the Canadian North.
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Plus a labour history walking tour, an inter-active play on Toronto, the DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC MEMORY, the voices of Parkdale, food security and austerity, family fun day, workshops on silk screening, decolonization and a forum for community engaged artists.