• Call for large-scale activations on the Downsview Airport Lands
• Available funding: up to $100,000
• Date posted: April 29, 2024
• Optional site visits: May 14, May 23, and June 11, 2024 can be booked here
• Submission deadline: 11:59pm on June 20, 2024, to events@northcrestdev.ca
• Interviews for shortlisted applicants: August 15 – September 15, 2024
• Finalist Contacted: October 15, 2024
• Implementation period: January 2025 – December 2025 

 

Calling artists and teams that think big! Northcrest Developments invites calls for proposals for a high-impact festival, performance, installation, or activation on 600 metres of taxiway. This strip, connected to the Downsview Runway, will be a community-focused centrepiece of future development.

 

Where airplanes were once made, complete communities are coming. The site is a blank canvas ready to be infused with creativity. In the future and in the interim, this will be a place of big ideas. Do you have one that will take off?

 

Northcrest is leading the transformation of the 370-acre Downsview Airport Lands. As a focal point of the site, the runway has historically been a location for major events, including SARSstock: the largest rock concert in Canadian history. Building on this past, we want to make the runway a new destination for culture, creativity, and play in Toronto for the future.

 

With development still decades away, Northcrest has been working with artists, creators, and community groups to create a sense of place participatory arts and culture, sports and recreation, food and beverage, and community activities. 

 

We’re looking for one or more ideas that are imaginative, unique, engaging, and visually-striking, to bring people together and advance our vision of creating a new cultural destination in Toronto. The project could last for anywhere from 1 day to over a month. It must be free or low-cost to the public and accessible to a broad audience. 

 

Northcrest will contribute $100,000 to one or multiple projects. To ensure a diversity of onsite experiences, projects with budgets from $10,000 will be considered. For projects with budgets larger than $100,000, applicants can bring external funding.

 

Whatever your idea is — a visually stimulating installation, a live experience, an event, or festival — we want it to bring people together and bring these lands to life in imaginative ways. 

 

Read the full open call here.

To Apply, email us your submission before 11:59pm on June 20, 2024, to events@northcrestdev.ca

 

If you need to request special accommodations for your submission, please email us at  events@northcrestdev.ca