The Bentway’s growing Safe in Public Space initiative broadens the definition of public safety, addressing new public health challenges and deep systemic inequities to build a new shared social contract for public space.
What does safety mean to you?
We want to better understand how we can create a safe space for everyone at The Bentway.
Stewards: Honouring Community Partnership Through Design with Krista Nightengale & Matthew Clarke
In this Stewards piece we discuss the value of community partnerships as a driving force behind reimagining safety in public space, with Krista Nightengale (Managing Director of the Better Block Foundation), and Matthew Clarke (Executive Director of Design Trust for Public Space).
Photo of the Week
Ebti Nabag travels beyond The Bentway to examine how ideas of safety manifest and are communicated in public space through borders and boundaries, signs and symbols, public space architectures, and delineations.
Radical Love - A digital exhibition
An audio soundscape about the future of our city and public safety by Ravyn Wngz, Monica Forrester and Chrys.
Snapshot: Organizing and Protest in Public Space
In this week’s Snapshot, we highlight the different ways movements can engage in protest and why public space acts as the ideal platform.
Virtual Talk: Hypervisibility in Public Space
Join us for a discussion highlighting the work and contributions of community leaders and creative project partners featured in the Safe in Public Space initiative. Contributors will reflect on their works’ exploration of the concept of visibility and hypervisibility in public space, the importance of documenting and displaying the lived experiences of BIPOC individuals, and how the notion of ‘proof’ is relevant to validating and legitimizing experiences in public spaces.
Stewards: Expressions of Place-keeping with Tanya Chung-Tiam-Fook
In our inaugural Stewards piece, we take a deep dive into unpacking and unlearning colonial relationships to the land, as well as their implications for public safety, with Tanya Chung-Tiam-Fook (Senior Lead of Indigenous Engagement at Evergreen and Future Cities Canada).
Photo of the Week
Ebti Nabag travels beyond The Bentway to examine how ideas of safety manifest and are communicated in public space through borders and boundaries, signs and symbols, public space architectures, and delineations.
Decolonizing Design: The Case for Universal Inclusivity
Mohawk architect Matthew Hickey argues that designing safer public spaces starts with broadening our definition of inclusivity.
Photo of the Week
Ebti Nabag travels beyond The Bentway to examine how ideas of safety manifest and are communicated in public space through borders and boundaries, signs and symbols, public space architectures, and delineations.
Snapshot: Centering Indigenous Perspectives in Public Space
In the first Snapshot, we discuss what it means to center Indigenous peoples, knowledge and history in public space - and why Indigenous worldviews, place-keeping, and decolonization are important to creating safer public spaces.
In Conversation with: The Bentway’s Public Space Fellows (Part 1)
In July, The Bentway Conservancy issued a call for Public Space Fellows with the aim of broadening the public space field to amplify marginalized perspectives and steward in a future of public space that ensures resiliency, inclusion and equitable access. Meet Gelila Mekonnen and Nahomi Amberber.
Creative Explorations
Receipts
Public Visualization Studio
A multimodal interface that receives, anonymizes, archives, and performs testimonies to anti-Asian aggression in public space.
Radical Love
Syrus Marcus Ware
A multimedia installation that centres Black and Afro-Indigenous trans women and non-binary people, creating monuments to trans lives and their survival.
Bentway as Hostile Architecture
Phat Le & Benjamin De Boer
A call to reinvest the work’s production budget into community initiatives by establishing aid networks to disseminate resources to local affinity groups.
Photo Essay
Ebti Nabag
Ebti Nabag travels beyond The Bentway to examine how ideas of safety manifest and are communicated in public space through borders and boundaries, signs and symbols, public space architectures, and delineations.