The Queen West Art Crawl (QWAC) is a charitable corporation that drives a number of initiatives publicly benefiting artists and residents of Toronto through art, music, and multiculturalism, including a two-day multidisciplinary arts festival stretching along Queen Street West from Bathurst to Roncesvalles in Trinity Bellwoods Park in September of each year. With attendance at 25-35k, the Queen West Art Crawl has developed over the years into an inclusive arts and multicultural festival, while staying centered around its annual outdoor art exhibition.
Queen West Art Crawl creates an open, public space for arts and culture in a busy downtown neighbourhood. Our festival includes a 2SLGBT+ friendly Kids' Zone and a Main Stage with Music and Drag that is 50%+ BIPOC. To ensure that underserved populations are strongly represented in our art exhibit, we partner with groups, including Workman Arts and the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto, donating spaces for artists with lived mental health experiences and local Indigenous populations, that are recommended to us through their own communities.
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We are proud to be a hub for Ontario Culture Days this year in the heart of downtown Toronto!
The Queen West Art Crawl is excited to be the Regional hub for Toronto Focusing on the Queen West Neighbourhood!
The Queen West Art Crawl would like to acknowledge this sacred land on which we gather and operate is the traditional territory of the Wendat and Petun First Nations, The Seneca, the Mississaugas of the New Credit, and any other nations who cared for the land in its history - recorded and unrecorded.
The territory is the subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and Confederacy of the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes.
Today, the meeting place of Toronto is still the home to many indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to work in the community, on this territory.
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Miigwetch (Thank you)
Jonathan Brett
Queen West Art Crawl
Artistic Director
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