Toronto Local Lab @ InterAccess
This session will convene artists, cultural organizers, and independent producers in Toronto to explore sustainable financial models for small-scale arts programming.
The objective is to identify practical strategies for recovering costs and supporting creative work without over-reliance on bar sales or traditional venue revenue structures.
Participants will:
Share experiences of organizing music shows, art exhibitions, and hybrid cultural events in a high-cost urban context.
Map challenges around venue affordability, licensing, and public space use.
Exchange alternative approaches to cost recovery, such as sliding-scale ticketing, co-op style memberships, merchandise and media bundles, and partnerships rooted in cultural rather than commercial value.
Imagine interventions that make small-scale cultural production more resilient, accessible, and connected to climate-conscious community practices.
Background:
This discussion builds upon the Cultural Technologies Lab's exploration of how cultural practices can move beyond consumption-driven models of arts events by grounding themselves in both local interventions and translocal, global networks.
Too often, festivals and exhibitions depend on spectacle and bar sales to sustain themselves, tethering artists’ livelihoods to cycles of extraction and short-term consumption. By centring works shaped by ecologies, histories, and communities, we ask how artists might create more sustainable financial models while rejecting spectacle as the primary mode of engagement.
Linking these practices across global networks allows for knowledge exchange and fostering arts experiences aligned with climate and environmental imperatives. Together, these approaches open pathways toward cultural shifts from consumption to reciprocity, care, and long-term resilience.
Facilitator: Luisa Ji
Luisa Ji is a creative strategist and cultural technologist working at the intersection of public imagination, digital transformation, and systems of care. With over a decade of global experience, she leads participatory programs that use storytelling, worldbuilding, and culturally-specific technological adaptations to help institutions navigate cultural and ecological volatility.
About Cultural Technologies Lab:
An Independent Initiative of UKAI Projects, a Canadian arts not-for-profit organization active since 2017
The Cultural Technologies Lab is made possible through the generous support of the Council for the Arts