Ideas Forum: Community Care

DesignTO is a registered charitable arts organization that believes design can create a sustainable, just, and joyful world. From January 23 – February 1, 2026, the DesignTO Festival features 100+ free events across Toronto, showcasing hundreds of artists and designers. Known as Canada’s largest annual design festival, DesignTO has welcomed over 1 million attendees, reached 2.6 billion people through media, supported 7+ creatives, and generated $120 million in tourism impact.“DesignTO isn’t just a festival; it’s an anti-loneliness machine,” co-founder Christina Zeidler remarked, underscoring the organization’s power to foster belonging and spark vital conversations about design’s role in shaping a better world.

DesignTO

‘Ideas Forum: Community Care’ features five fast-paced and fun presentations on care in collaboration, creative practice and community. 

‘Ideas Forum: Community Care’ features five fast-paced and fun presentations (20 slides shown for 20 seconds each) exploring the themes and questions from DesignTO’s thematic exhibition on care in collaboration, creative practice and community. SPEAKERS &amp; TOPICS

Jennifer Chan has been working in the nonprofit sector for over 10 years. In her various roles, she is typically a designer, facilitator, and researcher. Jenn’s practice was built on a foundation of design principles infused with ongoing learning and unlearning of anti-racism, anti-oppression, and equity-based design. Jenn holds a Bachelor of Architectural Science from Ryerson University, and a Master of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation from OCAD U. Jenn currently has two jobs, one as Co-Founder and Director of Programming at the Department of Imaginary Affairs and one as the Innovation &amp; Experimentation Coach at North York Community House.Being an idea generator, fixer and idealist working in the nonprofit sector, Jennifer will talk about the role of care in the innovation process, participants and the designer's ego, while constantly adjusting expectations and pivoting on the fly.

Steve Hilditch is a principal in the firm of Hilditch Architect Inc. The firm has spent the last thirty years working almost exclusively with non-profit and government agencies on projects that help people break barriers to health and community services, and to affordable, supportive housing and emergency shelter. Much of the firm's work is in support of agencies delivering assistance to the most vulnerable members of our society, people who have been marginalized, often dealing with poverty, homelessness, and sometimes mental health and substance use issues.As author of the recently released City of Toronto Shelter Design and Technical Guidelines, Steve will discuss some of the thinking that goes into design considerations that helps promote care in this sector.

Tiffany Shaw-Collinge (Métis) is an interdisciplinary artist, curator and architect based in Alberta. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) University and a Master of Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), and is currently working at Manasc Isaac Architects. Oscillating between digital and analogue methodologies, Tiffany’s work gathers notions of craft, memory and atmosphere. Her practice is often guided by communal interventions as a way to engage a lifted understanding of place. Among her public art projects, Tiffany has produced several notable transitory art works and is a core member of Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective. Tiffany will explore community care at the intersection of public art and architecture from an Indigneous perspective. This involves community engagement through sustainable initiatives.

Graeme Stewart &amp; Ya’el Santopinto, ERA ArchitectsGraeme Stewart is a Principal of Toronto-based ERA Architects, a founding director of the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal, and the key initiator of the Tower Renewal Partnership, a non-profit cross-sectoral collaborative supporting policy and action toward more equitable and resilient urban regions including affordable housing renewal, green financing and community reinvestment.Ya’el Santopinto is a registered architect and Associate at ERA Architects, who specializes in affordable housing retrofit and the adaptive reuse of existing buildings. She has been Project Architect on the retrofit of more than 1,100 apartments, with specialized expertise in healthy housing and retrofit with residents in place. Ya’el is also Director of Research and Partnerships with the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal. Through the Tower Renewal Partnership initiative, she leads research on best-in-class practices in energy retrofit, green financing, and social and health outcomes of renewal.

Herb Sweeney is a Principal at Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA), an award-winning landscape architecture firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Brooklyn, New York. Herb’s expertise lies in the integration of environmentally sustainable technologies into landscape and urban design. Herb has taken a leadership role on numerous MVVA projects, including the new US Embassy building in Mexico City, Asian Cultural Complex in South Korea, and the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas. Herb is currently leading MVVA’s multidisciplinary team for the park and river components of Toronto’s $1.25 billion Port Lands Flood Protection project.Following years of abuse and neglect, a process of healing the land is underway in Port Lands. Herb will take us through an unprecedented engineering project to flood protect 240 hectares of Toronto’s downtown, post-industrial brownfields will be transformed into a naturalized riverine ecosystem that reconnects wildlife habitat from the Don Valley to Lake Ontario. By reintroducing nature into the urban environment, the health and well-being of the people downtown is improved through easy access to the City’s next great park.–‘Ideas Forum’ is organized by DesignTO in partnership with the Toronto Society of Architects (TSA).A certificate for 1 hour of OAA ConEd will be issued to registered attendees who request it with their RSVP for the event and sign in to the event.

Banner image: Tiffany Shaw-Collinge, pehonan, Indigenous Art Park, photo by Conor McNally

Our {communityGuidelinesLink} describe the sort of content we prohibit on Eventbrite. If you suspect an event may be in violation, you can report it to us so we can investigate.

To report other categories of prohibited or illegal content, submit {link}

Ideas Forum: Community Care

More events from DesignTO

Discover more events from DesignTO, from Community to other experiences you might love.

Still looking for the right event?

Explore all online events to browse and filter by date, category, and more.

Ideas Forum: Community Care

More events from DesignTO

Discover more events from DesignTO, from Community to other experiences you might love.

You might also like...

Browse more events with different dates, prices, and formats to find your next great experience.

Still looking for the right event?

Explore all online events to browse and filter by date, category, and more.