NEWS RELEASE
ONTARIO CULTURE DAYS
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Ontario Culture Days(ONCD) is proud to announce the return of its province-wide festival from September 19 to October 12, 2025. This annual celebration of arts, culture, and community spirit brings together hundreds of event organizers across Ontario, showcasing a diverse array of arts and culture events. From free family-friendly activities to professional performances across various artistic disciplines, this year’s festival will celebrate Ontario’s rich diversity and vibrant communities.
PROVINCIAL FESTIVAL HUBS
Since 2022, ONCD has led the highly successful Provincial Festival Hub program. These hubs serve as local epicentres of cultural exchange and creativity. This year, ONCD is thrilled to highlight 16 Provincial Festival Hubs, including:
Thunder Bay: Known for its Indigenous heritage and rich cultural landscapes, Thunder Bay will host the official opening of Ontario Culture Days on Friday, September 19th with a celebration of dance, music, art, food and more. In addition to being the provincial opening celebration, Thunder Bay will host hundreds of free events and activities throughout the month of art and cultural celebrations.
Toronto: The urban heart of Ontario, Toronto will offer an exciting lineup of art installations and performances across diverse neighbourhoods, including events along the city’s waterfront, at Toronto Public Library branches, the 401 Richmond building, and during the Queen West Art Crawl.
Niagara: Famous for its scenic beauty, wineries, and big-name venues, Niagara will feature programming that showcases the region’s unique cultural and historic landscape.
The full list of Provincial Festival Hubs is: Brant, Caledon, Gananoque & 1000 Islands, Guelph, London, Manitoulin Island, Milton, Niagara, Oakville, Sault Ste. Marie, Scugog, Temiskaming, Thunder Bay, Toronto, Vaughan, and Windsor. For more information, please visit www.onculturedays.ca/festival-hubs.
CREATIVES IN RESIDENCE 2025
Launched in 2020, the Creatives in Residence program has become an integral part of the festival, showcasing the dynamism of Ontario’s arts and culture scene. Each year, the Creatives in Residence program invites artists to develop new community-engaged projects for the festival, with creatives working across different disciplines and regions. Their results culminate in installations, performances, and activities presented during Ontario Culture Days.
The theme for this year’s Creatives in Residence series is “The Shape of Memory”, which invites reflection on how memory is preserved, lost, and reimagined into tangible works of art. This year’s projects will explore themes such as ritual, dreams, ecological interdependence, migration stories, cultural communities, and the reclamation of Indigenous and diasporic histories. The 2025 series is made possible thanks to the contributions of curators Dave Dyment and Farida Abu-Bakare. Here are the 2025 Creatives in Residence, their project locations, and what visitors can expect:
Shary Boyle (Oakville): Boyle will create a large-scale effigy sculpture titled “The Sleeper: What keeps you up at night?” at Oakville Museum’s Erchless Estate. Visitors will be invited to write down their fears and place them inside the effigy, which will be buried at the festival’s end, followed by the planting of a “Moon Garden” of white spring bulbs.
Oluseye (Niagara-on-the-Lake): Oluseye’s collaborative community installation, “CROWN ACT,” will respond to the history of the Underground Railroad with an installation created from an enlarged photograph of a young man’s braided hairstyle, inspired by escape maps hidden in the braids of enslaved African Americans.
Natalie Laura King (Temiskaming & Toronto): King will present two projects: “What I Forgot is Better Than Whatever They Remember” at Temiskaming Art Gallery, which explores themes of returning home and honouring ancestral histories, and “As the Flower Returns” on the shores of Lake Toronto, a collaborative drawing installation that grows with each participant.
Eunice Luk (Toronto): Luk will present “Small Things (that run the world),” an installation at Niagara Pumphouse Arts Centre, exploring ecological interdependence through large “critter” sculptures made from local plant debris. The work examines how humans and nature are intricately connected.
Roda Medhat (Guelph): “Hidden in Plain Sight” will feature Kurdish rug patterns displayed in Guelph’s urban landscape, inviting the public to reconsider the hidden histories embedded in their surroundings.
Catherine Moeller (Gananoque): Moeller will create puppets, costumes, and banners for a community parade on Gananoque’s main street focused on the theme of urban wildlife. “Fish Tales” will raise awareness about animals that once lived in the area and those that have returned.
Isabel Okoro (Toronto): Okoro’s “Magic Dreams (Gentle Grounds)” will be a sensory-rich, interactive space where dreams and reality converge, inviting participants to shape a living narrative in real time.
Richard Ashley Manitowabi (Manitoulin Island): Manitowabi will create “LAND SPEAKS”, a land-based installation guided by Indigenous values. The project will evolve throughout the fall, deepening connections to the land and fostering cultural awareness through community collaboration and storytelling.
“The Creatives in Residence program is at the heart of the Ontario Culture Days fall celebration, with eight incredible artists offering community-driven projects that explore this year’s theme, The Shape of Memory. From powerful installations to immersive performances, we invite Ontarians to reflect on how memory shapes our collective stories and connections. This year’s festival promises to be an inspiring exploration of art, culture, and the lasting impact of shared experiences.”
— Ruth Burns, Executive Director, Ontario Culture Days
For more information, please visit onculturedays.ca/creatives-in-residence.
Ontario Culture Days will take place from September 19th to October 12th, 2025. This festival offers Ontarians a chance to engage with dynamic, thought-provoking art that connects memory, identity, and cultural heritage, with artists from across the province sharing their powerful stories through new, immersive work.
For more information on Ontario Culture Days, visit our website at onculturedays.ca.
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