Hub14, one of Toronto’s best loved arts incubators, has been asked to leave its performance/rehearsal space at 14 Markham Street by the end of the year.
For the past 14 years, hub14’s physical plant has been a sprung floor hall and attached utility rooms in an ivy-covered low rise just north of Queen Street West.
Small enough to be an affordable rehearsal space for emerging and experimenting artists, and just big enough to host formal performance and installation events, it’s been one of the neighbourhood’s most flexible and charming interdisciplinary spaces.
SummerWorks and FADO frequently used it for showings, workshops and residencies, as did diverse artists such as Kate Alton (This Dance in 2015), Susie Burpee, Ame Henderson, bluemouth inc., Cathy Gordon, Meaghan O’Shea, Allison Cummings, Susanna Hood, Liz Peterson and Chad Dembski.
“Our lease is generally renewed each September,” co-artistic director Candice Irwin told me Tuesday, just after hub14’s announcement to the community.
“This year the owners of the building indicated they weren’t interested in continuing to work with us and that they were planning to move in a new direction with the space.”
The collective negotiated to remain in place through December 18, allowing them to honour some of their existing commitments for artist residencies.
Irwin does not know what caused the owner’s sudden change of heart, calling property management (which has remained the same over 14 years) “tight-lipped” on the subject.
“It’s not clear what their new direction is.”
Irwin is also unsure whether 14 Markham’s other tenants – some photographers, a few live/work artists, a leather goods studio – are being similarly uprooted.
Given the radical changes in Toronto’s real estate landscape over the past few years, hub14 (which is collectively managed by a revolving slate of volunteer directors and funded through its rentals, residency programs and donations) has occasionally wondered at the good fortune having affordable space in such a desirable location. But Irwin says they were still caught off guard.
Just six months ago, the collective replaced the main hall’s hardwood floors. Other recent capital improvements include upgrading the soundboard and purchasing materials (new toilet, tiles etc, not yet installed) to renovate the hall’s tiny washroom. Hub14 can take certain portables like chairs and tables with them, but will pretty much lose their hard-earned investment in the space.
“That’s just the nature of commercial real estate,” says Irwin, “whether you’re not for profit or not.”
The much bigger question for hub14 is: where can they go?
The group wants to relocate downtown, close to transit, in a space where they can continue the work of providing low cost support to the Toronto arts community, but Irwin is unsure that’s even possible.
“We just don’t know,” she says.
Irwin says the other big priority in the days ahead is providing for residency artists who were booked to work in the space in 2019. Irwin says hub14 is reaching out to other arts organizations to ask for support for those artists.
Says Irwin, “The loss of downtown spaces for artists who are starting out or who are working with tight budgets … it’s something that is on a lot of artists’ minds in Toronto. But I also have confidence that we’re a group of pretty resourceful individuals – I don’t think we’d be in the arts if we weren’t. So we will keep going and we will find new ways of making things happen.”
Hub14 will host a big goodbye party in the space on December 7. The future of their physical location uncertain, the group still wants to honour what the place has meant to so many Toronto artists who have worked and presented at 14 Markham. And maybe raffle off that new toilet.
