The 2012 planning committee:

Luc Bihan operates LucSculpture Studio & Schools, a sculpture & art studio on Greenwood Avenue just north of Danforth Ave.  Luc is an established artist & sculptor for over 25 years on several continents.  He came to Canada from France 10 years ago to work as a Director of Animation at Nelvana and has since had many exhibitions and demonstrations and received considerable public recognition.  Luc has an extensive network of over 1800 artists and community contacts, including: artists, art related associations, galleries, friends of LucSculpture, musicians, press, TV and radio.  He is very community oriented and committed to promoting the cultural health of this neighborhood.  LucSculpture is an official destination of the TDSB (English, Immersion and French as well as the Catholic board) and is integrally linked with many neighborhood artist groups and associations.

Alex Hong will be a recent graduate in June from the University of Toronto where she studies philosophy, semiotics and art history. She was an Art in Stores Curator for last year’s Art of the Danforth and is super excited to be a part of this year’s steering committee. She believes strongly in the ability to use arts as a springboard for innovation, education and community building.

Mila Khan has worked in fundraising / development for the past 4 years, and currently works at the Regent Park School of Music (RPSM) as their Development Officer. Prior to RPSM, she spent two years at the Canadian Film Centre managing their donor relations, and four years at Hart House Theatre as their Front of House Manager. She has also worked on various development contracts, including a cultural mapping project that led to the creation of the University of Toronto’s Art Council. Mila sits on the Board for the newly-formed East Danforth Creative Collective.

Asad Raza is an emerging researcher, archivist, curator and project manager. In 2008 he founded ARTSIDEOUT, which has grown to become the University of Toronto’s largest interdisciplinary arts festival, attracting thousands of people to the Scarborough campus. He has gone on to work for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, first as Exhibitions Assistant in 2010  and then as an archivist; collecting and cataloguing the visual memory of one of North America’s largest contemporary arts festivals. His research interests include radical public accessibility in the arts, festival design and collaborations between the ‘arts’ and ‘sciences’. He is currently based in Toronto.

Eileen Reilly earned a B.A. and M.A. in Art History from the University of Toronto and has also studied at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto School of Art and Open Studio. She worked at the Royal Ontario Museum for over 10 years as a research assistant working on the Safavid pottery project and then moved onto documentation of the Far Eastern, South Asian and Middle East collection for the Renaissance ROM project. Eileen’s final position at the museum was to oversee the making of mounts and installation of many of the new galleries. Her experience also includes work with the Ontario Crafts Council, the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour and she is currently working at the Art Gallery of Ontario in the paper conservation department. In addition Eileen also freelances as an art consultant (organization, care and storage of collections) and as an editor. She has also volunteered on many committees including the Hart House Art Committee for 5 years.   Eileen finds inspiration for her art at home and abroad, with frequent travel to Europe and the U.S.  Her photography’s current subject matter, and the theme of her work in Contact 2011, focuses on the idea of a local, traditional, commercial and shop-front culture as it rapidly disappears from our collective consciousness.

Cindy Rozeboom has worked in the arts (theatre, community arts, television & film) for 20+ years. During this time she has worked as a fundraiser, artist, administrator and communications specialist, in environments ranging from one-person projects to organizations with annual budgets of $5 million and in the cities of Toronto, New York City, Windsor and Edmonton. Cindy holds a MA degree in Communications (University of Windsor), diplomas in Radio & TV Arts and Digital Media Design and is a Certified Fundraising Executive. She currently is the Communications Coordinator at Scarborough Arts and is the Executive Director of the East Danforth Creative Collective.

Daniel Silver is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. He received his B.A. in Philosophy and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley before studying German language, politics, and history at the Free University in Berlin and Greek history and archaeology the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. He then received his M.A. and PhD degrees from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, focusing on the history of social theory. His dissertation investigated the cultural significance of boredom. His ongoing research in sociological theory mines classical texts for ideas that can help with theoretical problems faced by contemporary sociologists. While at Chicago, he also began research on urban issues, focusing on urban culture, scenes, and amenities. This work develops new methods and ideas for identifying patterns of urban cultural scenes and assessing their social, economic, and political consequences. Related work on the politics of urban culture investigates how grassroots arts activists and city governments in Toronto and Chicago have sought to use the buzz and energy generated by local cultural scenes for political purposes. He is the Editor and co-author of the forthcoming City of Toronto report, From the Ground Up: Growing Toronto’s Cultural Sector, which maps for the first time Toronto’s cultural workforce. He blogs about some of these ideas occasionally, here: http://music.martinprosperity.org/

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Art of the Danforth has been made possible by the contributions of hundreds of wonderful people from in and outside the neighborhood.