By Kaori Fujishima and Riku Kaneko
Every fourth Thursday of the month, there is a Bar near Ossington Station in Toronto that brims with artistic talent. It is called the Creators’ Lounge!
Creators’ Lounge (CL) is a Toronto-based project that scouts next-generation artists and gives them a place to display their works. CL was last held on August 22nd and this was the 12th time of the show has taken place in the city since its debut in September 2012. Hiro Sudo, the show’s curator, wants to use his knowledge and passion for contributing to artist communities of Toronto.
“An artist is difficult occupation,” said Hiro. “Especially in Japan, we are usually thinking that they aren’t working steadily, but it’s a strange perception. I considered when developing Creators’ Lounge how I can help them with my experience.”
Hiro has studied finance and art management at the Schulich School of Business, and has an MBA at York University. He is also a contributing artist to organizations such as the Harbourfront Centre and the Sound Stream. Using his expertise, Hiro advises the aspiring artists of all different genres of artistic ability. There are illustrators, musicians, dancers, and photographers who play large and diverse roles at CL.
“When we started the CL, only Japanese artists participated,” Hiro said. “However, we had a chance to work with non-Japanese, so we were looking for people who are interested in performances as well as Japanese. To do so, we announced to the mass media such as Now Magazine. At the first time, 90% of participants were Japanese but nowadays a half of them are non-Japanese.”
He continued, “In addition we have to think of different ideas every time because if we don’t change content, it will be boring. This time, we just adopted Visual Jockey.”
Visual Jockey, or VJ, is a performance that broadcast movies to the music. The dance floor bustles with good music and amazing imagery from all kinds of films. Not only people who enjoyed with VJ. I was deeply impressed by it enjoying their drinks and talking about the art spiritedly.
At the end, we asked him what the future holds for Creators’ Lounge.
“We are gathering many kinds of creators and showing Canadian these are Japanese art. It is interesting, but it’s also a little chaotic. If I keep running this organization alone, it has limitations. We’d like to find people who have sense of art. Artists who have appeared on the CL so far are curious about where this is all going and they want to help.”
For more information about Creators’ Lounge, please visit their website: http://www.creatorsloungetoronto.com/
1 Comment