Join us for City Canvas, an interdisciplinary symposium that envisions the city as a dynamic playground, where public art and creative urban sports converge to create rich potential for urban play, with a special focus on the needs of young adults and other non-traditional users of public space.

Co-hosted by ART/PLAY/RISK, led by artist and academic Dr. Sanné Mestrom with Nadia Odlum, in partnership with the Skate, Create, Educate, and Re-Generate initiative, led by skateboarder and scholar Dr. Indigo Willing, this event challenges us to transcend traditional boundaries and reimagine our urban landscapes.

Building on last year’s symposium "Play beyond Playgrounds,” which focused on the child’s right to the city, we now turn our focus to the civic agency of young adults to ask: How can we harness the transformative power of public art and creative urban sports to empower adolescents and create more inclusive cities? And how can we use these mediums to address the underrepresentation of young women, non-binary individuals, and other non-traditional users of urban spaces?

With skateboarding's Olympic debut and the rising popularity of other creative urban sports like BMX, parkour, and break dancing, we stand at a crucial juncture. There's an urgent need to increase engagement, foster diversity, and create spaces that welcome all, especially as studies show a decline in activity levels among adolescents transitioning into adulthood.

City Canvas embraces an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together experts from public art, urban planning, landscape architecture, and creative urban sports to collaborate and innovate.

Through keynotes, panel discussions, and interactive workshops, we'll explore how public art can serve as a key methodology to transform typically unwelcoming urban landscapes into inclusive canvases for creative expression and play, particularly for young adults and non-traditional participants in urban sports.

By integrating the transformative power of public art with the dynamic energy of creative urban sports, we aim to create new urban environments that encourage creativity, social connection, and resilience among young people. This symposium is about reimagining spaces and empowering young adults of all backgrounds to thrive and grow in our increasingly high-density cities.

Join us in this vital conversation as we paint a new vision for our urban future.