By Dylan Freeman-Grist
Since 2007, Ryerson has hosted “Light Up The Night,” a collection of projects in conjunction with the Scotiabank’s annual all-night contemporary art event, Nuit Blanche.
This year, however, the lights will be shut off, as Ryerson’s campus does not fall within any of the approved event zones — each west of Yonge Street — determined by the special events office at the City of Toronto.
Shirley Lewchuck, director of outreach and communications at FCAD, speculated on City Hall’s reasoning, saying, “There were real issues in the past two or three years with crowd management and the size of attendance, particularly on Yonge Street. The Yonge-Dundas area itself was really hard to control.”
Lewchuck said that, although Ryerson campus will not participate in this year’s festival, the school is supporting Ryerson artists through grants offered by Ryerson’s Nuit Blanche committee.
“We connected with the city of Toronto and asked if they could let us know of any Ryerson projects that were approved,” Lewchuck said. “So we ended up providing funding to four [Ryerson] projects.”
Those projects include Echo Chasm, a creation by Ryerson alumni Finlay Braithwaite and Alex Kurina that will be on display at the Royal Bank Plaza, as well as Ad Astra, Light_Scape and RevitaLight — all three of which were designed by members of the Ryerson University Architectural Science Design Lab. They will be on display at the Bata Shoe Museum.
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