Scarborough, Toronto: With over a year in the making, Change Made launches its inaugural public art installation in partnership with Toronto History Museums and Toronto Arts Council.
Officially launching on November 9th, 2024, within Thomson Memorial Park in Toronto’s East, the Scarborough Historical Museum has become a canvas for storytelling change. Adorning two sections of the museum, you will find four portraits produced this summer by local youth artists and three images from my photojournalism archives.
Our newest stories are produced through our collaborative Scarborough Made x Change Made mentorship cohort, youth artists Ella Saini, Nikita Goutam, Sophie Bouquillon & Sumeya Farah, highlighting the stories from Ellie Henry (Scarborough Health Network), Krissan Veerasingam (Scarborough Environmental Association), Nhial Deng (SheLeads Kakuma) & Utcha Sawyers (East Scarborough BGC). These stories will be rolled out as original features as we continue to become a source of news, awareness, resources, and capacity-building for social change.
From my documentary archive, we bring back the story of Isaac Crosby (Crosby Gitigaan) & Charles Catchpole (Gitigaanes), who were featured at the start of 2024 in a solutions story I wrote and shot for The Narwhal on how Two Indigenous farmers are decolonizing Toronto’s Hydro-Fields. I also highlight Dr. Paul Caulford (The Canadian Centre for Refugee & Immigrant Healthcare) as they mark the 25th anniversary of the centre bringing the needed health equity to refugee and asylum seekers.
Indigenous Patient Navigator, Ellie Henry poses inside SHN General Hospital.
Nikita Goutam/Change Made Press.
Many people have asked me what The Change Made is. If you’ve followed my journey as a photojournalist and documentarian, you would probably know about Scarborough Made, a social impact artist collective championing Toronto’s East through documentary storytelling, public art, and youth employment. For over five years, we’ve been using lens-based storytelling and arts education to amplify the voices of underserved communities.
As a co-founder of the project, I built Scarborough Made’s community programming blueprint to strengthen diverse representation in the media and support workforce development for youth within Scarborough. Change Made builds on this blueprint to be a capacity-building platform which utilizes storytelling as a tool for change. Like many of my projects, there are many moving parts as we explore long-term direction around solutions journalism and reporting on the United Nation’s sustainable development goals. We see ourselves playing a role in both the arts and development by providing a bridge to connect the paths between different sectors where change is a central component of their narrative.
Out of the many things we are looking to innovate, we’re the most excited about our ability to bring people together around topics that highlight solutions and stories to create more awareness of how people are leading change for their communities.
As we wrap up five years of programming for Scarborough Made, The Change Made picks up the torch to continue growing our impact in local communities from Scarborough to the world.
The Change Made public art installation at Scarborough Museum is a taste of what’s to come as we start to make our mark as storytellers for change.
For me, it’s always about how the power of art can positively impact underserved communities. As I take a line from JR, one of my biggest artistic inspirations, I’m excited to launch the Change Made, knowing that “Art isn’t supposed to change the world, but it can.”
