Community Knowledge Centre - Toronto Community Foundation

About this organization

Mission

No.9 is committed to the belief that contemporary art can stimulate positive social and environmental change. We are an art organization that provides artists and designers who address these concerns with the opportunity to make ambitious work in the public realm. No.9 brings the power of art to bear on some of the most pressing issues of our time, using urban public space as a forum for exhilarating creativity and vital discussion.

No.9 provides a wide variety of education programs and events to expand on the ideas behind its public projects, such as artist talks, film presentations, education programs, and multi-disciplinary symposia. In collaboration with our artists' projects, these programs will make our audiences more aware of their environment, the impact they have on it and the opportunities for local and global change.

History of Organization

No.9: Contemporary Art & the Environment was launched in Canada in 2006 with the mission to provide contemporary artists and designers with the unique opportunity to create public works of art that would bring awareness to pressing environmental issues. Loosely structured on the art organizations of Creative Time in New York City and Artangel in London, England, No.9 took on the added mission of using the power of art as a catalyst for social and environmental change. Bringing awareness to environmental areas in need of attention, innovative educational outreach projects and installations in high trafficked public spaces soon became strategic focuses for the organization. Examples of these approaches include an installation on the polluted waters of the Lower Don River in the spring of 2008, the Iain Baxter& Ecoartvan that visited 11,000 students at 26 intercity elementary schools in the spring of 2010 and No.9’s ongoing programming at Pearson International Airport, where 10 million travelers pass through each year. Strong collaborative partnerships with other art and environmental organizations has allowed No.9 to produce results well beyond its size and financial means. Since it’s inception in 2006 hundreds of thousands of Canadians have scene No.9’s public installations and tens of thousands of elementary school students have been introduced to art projects that bring awareness to pressing environmental issues.

Accolades and Accomplishments

Since its founding in 2006, No. 9: Contemporary Art & the Environment has flourished and become an important provincially recognized arts organization.  Some of the great things No. 9 has accomplished in that time include raising over $500,000 to deliver public art installations, attaining charitable status and bringing art and environmental issues to over 11,000 elementary school children in the Greater Toronto Area. To date No.9 has produced 14 major temporary public art installations created by high profile Canadian and International artists. These installations have resulted in bringing awareness to some of our most pressing environmental issues such as: climate change, food and energy consumption, water and waste management, sustainable building, animal habitat and species preservation.

Programs

>Iain Baxter& ECOARTVAN

ECOARTVAN – mobile eco-art educational outreach program

Pearson International Airport Exhibitions – ongoing public art exhibitions 

Photo Contest – an opportunity for youth to express their concerns for the environment through photos.

Evergreen Brickworks – on going contemporary art exhibitions with an environmental theme

My sustainable Neighborhood - educational outreach program teaching sustainable architecture and urban planning to grade 7 students. One school in each of Toronto's 44 wards

Iain Baxter& ECOARTVAN

The Iain Baxter& ECOARTVAN program addresses a wide range of art, science and social studies curriculum expectations in a systems approach to integrating Art and Ecology. No.9 is committed to helping achieve one of the major goals of the Ontario Ministry of Education’s Science and Technology Program, to “relate science and technology to society and the environment”. Artists and scientists share many attributes that this No.9 Art and Ecology Educational Program aims to reinforce: keen observational skills, fearless imagination, holistic thinking patterns and creative problem solving.

The ECOARTVAN is a glassed-in cube van running on bio-diesel fuel, which displays a No.9 commissioned installation by the award winning artist Iain Baxter&. The cube van is a traveling museum featuring artwork inspired by Baxter&’s long-standing interest in the environment. The ECOARTVAN parks in each school’s yard and is accompanied by two experienced No.9 educators. The educators lead a hands-on workshop with Grade Four students using a special education package designed in collaboration with Baxter& and focused around the artist’s concern for animals and their habitats.

Funding and Program Partners

The Toronto District School Board’s Model Schools for Inner Cities, the Toronto Public Library and the WWF-Canada partnered with No.9 and The Art Gallery of Ontario to bring the ECOARTVAN to inner city elementary students across the GTA. The WWF-Canada generously agreed to donate Adoption Kits, so that each Grade Four student who attended the workshops received a kit focused on an animal whose habitat is endangered. In addition the AGO and the TDSB partnered to offer each participating Grade Four class a free field trip to the AGO to participate in a guided tour of works that also address environmental issues. 

The ECOARTVAN educational programming was made possible by the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the AGO, TDSB Model Schools for Inner Cities and the Ontario Arts Council.

Program Impact

During the pilot project, the ECOARTVAN visited 26 TDSB inner city schools delivering a hands-on art and educational experience to over 1,400 grade four students. In addition 11,000 students experienced an educational tour of the ECOARTVAN in their schoolyard. 

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

“The arts help fuel innovation and creativity – critical components for successful city. The arts help us commemorate our past, understand our present, and imagine our future.” (Toronto Vital Signs, 2010).

If society’s expectation is for the creative class of the next generation to drive the new green economy then we must take on the responsibility of providing that generation with the necessary tools to do so. Changing attitudes about our environment over the long term starts with making a strong impression on our students now. The integration of art as a means of capturing young students imaginations and focusing their attention on our pressing environmental issues is crucial in bringing about social and environmental change.

Participant Vignette

The Model Schools for Inner Cities are located in many of the communities identified by the City of Toronto as “Priority Neighbourhoods.” These are communities that need more support and resources in order to thrive.  The factors used to identify inner city schools include family income, level of parent education, and number of lone-parent families.

The ECOARTVAN was developed to address the social, cultural and economical barriers that prevent inner city students from being introduced to the visual arts. Students have minimal opportunity to engage in the arts and are often not taught about our pressing environmental issues. No.9 worked with Iain Baxter& to develop this turnkey solution that provides access to artists, educators and critical environmental learning.

Once students learned about different animals and their habitats they had the opportunity to create works of their own called “handscapes” that incorporated formal ideas from Iain Baxter&’s work, their adopted animal’s landscape and the outline of their own hand. The following are explanations of paintings from two students at Willow Park Elementary:

“This is the blue shark, the pollution is pouring down on him, so he doesn’t have anywhere to go and so he will just die. We need to help and not let him become extinct. Please.”

“This is a picture of the mountains. When global warming happens the mountains will fall apart and the ice is breaking and destroying animal homes.”

Not only did the students benefit from this project but several teachers expressed their appreciation and enthusiasm to integrate art into the curriculum. The following are highlights from teachers involved with the ECOARTVAN:

“I did learn more about art and interpretation, because I realized I had been limiting my students exposure to certain kinds of art. I will definitely show them more installations and conceptual art.”


“I liked the way arts was embedded into the specific unit on animal habitats and it helped me begin to see meaningful ways that I could blend arts into lessons in other science units.”