Organized under the groundwork program, Mercer Union invites curator Kate Wong to develop SITE Toronto, an ongoing research and co-creation project focused on understanding how art institutions can more meaningfully respond to the social, economic, and political realities of our time.
Each session will begin with a talk followed by a participatory format inviting attendees to think, share, and build together. Drawing on case studies from inside and outside the arts sector—such as SESC Pompeia (São Paulo), RAW Material Company (Dakar), Park Fiction (Hamburg), and Shorefast (Fogo Island)—SITE Toronto learns from models rooted in people, place, and a commitment to social transformation. This inquiry is further informed by the work of visionary institution-builders including Koyo Kouoh, Hope Chigudu, and Emelie Chhangur.
In a moment of cultural crisis, SITE Toronto begins with a question and moves towards a blueprint. Together we will work to define an arts institution grounded in twenty-first century values of justice, equity, and sustainability—not as empty buzzwords, but as radical commitments to how we want to create and live with one another. Together we can reject legacy frameworks that no longer serve us and imagine, instead, institutions that reflect the city we live in, the struggles we share, and the futures we are fighting for.
This is a call to all those who want to shape that future—artists, cultural workers, musicians, community organizers, urban planners, architects, designers, educators, researchers, economists, social entrepreneurs, policymakers, funders—anyone invested in the civic and cultural life of Toronto. Whether you bring lived experience, resources, ideas, or simply the desire to build something better, this is an invitation to co-create the future of art and culture in the city we call home.
SITE Toronto is an ongoing project that positions art in service of people and place.
Public Programming
III. Reimagining Toronto's Arts Institutions! with Emelie Chhangur
Saturday, 20 September 2025, 2pm
The culminating session of SITE Toronto will begin with a conversation between Emelie Chhangur and Kate Wong. Drawing from over 17 years of curatorial work at the Art Gallery of York University (now Goldfarb Gallery), and 5 years as the Director and Curator of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Queen’s University), Chhangur will discuss Agnes Reimagined, the centre’s major building project as a provocation to rethink the social, civic, and pedagogical role of university galleries.
Speaking from the perspective of institution-building as curatorial practice, the conversation will look at what it means to design a museum that centres cultural polyvocality. Inspired by Lina Bo Bardi’s vision of architecture as a social project—including vernacular traditions, mixed-race aesthetics, and human-centered design—the conversation asks: What is a social justice-informed approach to architectural process? How can institutional architecture shape institutional functions otherwise? And how can we imagine institutions for the 21st century that are alive—flexible and responsive to the ever-changing communities and contexts in which they are embedded?
Following this, participants will engage in a co-creation process that extends the conversation into practice. With a focus on the civic role of public arts institutions—and integrating alternative funding models arrived at during Session 2—we will imagine what a Toronto arts institution could be if truly positioned in service of people and place. Rather than advancing a singular model, the workshop emphasizes collective authorship and lived experience to shape a shared toolkit of values, strategies, and approaches for more just and sustainable forms of cultural infrastructure.
II. What Alternative Funding Models are Possible? with Sally Moussawi
Saturday, 13 September 2025, 2pm
Toronto’s arts institutions are under intense financial strain. This has direct consequences on the working conditions of artists and cultural workers—and the freedom to speak and act without censorship. At the same time, these institutions remain shaped by colonial structures and ways of working that are tokenistic and exclusionary. Session 2 of SITE Toronto asks: how can arts institutions resource themselves without being beholden to extractive capital?
The session opens with a virtual conversation between Kate Wong and Sally Moussawi—associate director at the Mosaic Rooms and worker at the filmmakers’ cooperative not/nowhere—whose practice is committed to building anti-capitalist infrastructures within and beyond arts institutions. Drawing on lived experience across both institutional and horizontal spaces, Moussawi will speak on how to build funding models for non-profit organizations that prioritise power-sharing and sustainability on our own terms. Together they will examine co-operative revenue generation, shared ownership, redistribution, and the framing of cultural labour, attending to the tension between practical constraints and political possibilities.
The discussion will be followed by a workshop to map the impacts of extractive funding and to generate alternative ways of resourcing arts institutions—models that counter exploitative and colonial structures, and free them from financial dependencies that undermine the very values they claim to uphold: intellectual and creative freedom, and genuine service to artists and communities.
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Sally Moussawi is Associate Director at The Mosaic Rooms. Based in London, they have held key roles at Cubitt Artists and Material Cultures, building systems and infrastructures that make cooperative, anti-capitalist work possible within and beyond the arts. An economic organiser, they run financial literacy workshops at the filmmakers’ workers’ cooperative not/nowhere, where they are a member and former co-Director.
All SITE Toronto events are free, with registration capped at 40 participants. Each builds on the last, so attendees are encouraged to take part in all three. This session runs for 2.5 hours and includes a 30-minute break to stretch and refuel. Refreshments will be provided.
I. Why are Toronto’s Arts Institutions in Crisis?
Saturday, 9 August 2025, 2pm
This session opens with a conversation between Kate Wong and Mercer Union on how legacy models for arts institutions are misaligned with the needs of artists, communities, and publics in Toronto. Wong argues that institutional frameworks inherited from other times and places have become exclusionary, and that exclusion has material consequences. The talk will lead into a participatory forum where attendees are invited to share their experiences of arts institutions in Toronto—what’s working, what’s broken, and what’s missing—and discuss the value of art and culture within society more broadly. Participants are asked to prepare at least one response to the question: why are Toronto’s arts institutions in crisis?
This page will be updated with additional programming announcements as they come out each month. Sign up for our mailing list to receive them in your inbox.
