Culture Hub
As Canada’s leading opera producer, we want to ensure that the art form can speak with vitality, power, and relevance to all Canadians in the 21st century.
That’s why we are actively working to open the COC’s doors to everyone, from our local neighbours to our fellow arts organizations.
Our Culture Hub project is at the core of this commitment, activating the COC’s administrative and rehearsal headquarters at the Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Opera Centre with meaningful – and accessible – arts programming.
This former industrial building at 227 Front St. E. has been home to the Canadian Opera Company since 1985 and we have been using the site for many aspects of production development, rehearsal activity, and artistic training since then.
Yet these activities have historically been insulated from our surrounding neighbourhood - existing at a remove from the life of the street and the life of our neighbours.
Recognizing that art should never exist apart from its community, we decided to open up this space for greater interaction and engagement with the myriad communities in our vicinity.
Today we are transforming this space in order to:
Engage diverse communities with publicly accessible art
From live opera, to concerts, to visual art installations, we envision a multi-faceted space that is shaped through continuous dialogue with the communities along the Esplanade, in the St. Lawrence neighbourhood, and the adjacent area of Corktown.
Lift up emerging voices through training, partnerships, and access to our spaces
The Culture Hub provides the physical and conceptual space necessary to expand our industry-leading mentorship and training activities, while also providing physical infrastructure and artistic resources to our artistic peers.
Shape opera’s future with what we learn
We want to create a space that fosters cross-pollination among different companies, artistic practices, and audiences, broadening the sphere of engagement and community-building, that opera can undertake as a vital form of cultural expression.
As an especially multidisciplinary art form, opera is a natural host of this collaborative Culture Hub.
This work is made possible, in part, by
