08/08/2025
Hello Beautiful ArtHouseTO Fam,
We hope you and your loved ones are safe and healthy:)
We would like to first thank each and every one of you from the bottom of our hearts for your generous contributions and meaningful support at a challenging time on our ArtHouseTO journey. Your heartfelt messages of encouragement and recognition of the impact of our work have been the very medicine and energy we needed to lift us up, carry us through, and fortify us and our team! We are forever grateful! For those of you who have not received a personal thank you, please know we will be doing so shortly. We also want to see how we can support YOU and the work you are doing.
It is with heavy hearts that we inform you that, unfortunately, we were unable to reach our goal in time despite all of our best efforts. We relied on our decades long experience working behind the scenes in show biz (where we both met!) to gauge how long we could remain dedicated to reaching the goal, which was to nullify the eviction from our novel Live/Work Studio & Cultural Hub, while still allowing enough time to pivot to the logistics of moving out in the event that we needed to.
As we approached the July 31 deadline set by the LTB, a decision that we received on July 02, we went all out with multiple daily social media blasts, we sent out numerous newsletter updates and even had a fabulous article about our situation published in Now Toronto, beautifully crafted by Janiece Campbell. Much love and gratitude to our Marketing & Communications Director Shon Williams for setting that up!
In the short time frame we had, we reached out to our representatives at all levels of government which included Paula Fletcher, Peter Tabuns and Julie Dabrusin. We received a reply from Emma at Julie’s office with helpful links to grants that we can look to in the future. We also received a reply from Catherine at Paula’s office arranging a meeting with Adorenke and Ben at the Economic Development & Culture office at City Of Toronto. Thank you Paula and Julie for your timely responses!
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