The City Beautification Ensemble (CBE) is an urban interventionist group fighting against the dullness of the Toronto cityscape by introducing blocks of colour into the city. CBE’s guerilla urban renewal project improves the psycho-geography of Toronto through "soft-spot" colour application to fight against the harsh greys of our concrete-centric society and produce "a calming place for the eye to take a breath." Through their self-designed process, a cross-pollination of colour therapy and graffiti art the group has made beautiful improvements to Toronto’s alleyways, bike parking and the York Quay.

The Red Light Project was conceived and promptly abandoned by Kelly Thornton in 2000. The idea was resurrected nearly five years later with help from Clinton Walker (organizer of the Queen West Art Crawl) who thought it would be a perfect fit for the former red light district in the Parkdale neighbourhood of Toronto. After approaching businesses on Queen Street to provide windows for performance spaces, Thornton and Walker began finding artists. These thoughtful, beautiful and sometimes subversive performances re-contextualize the idea of a red light district as a space for an artistic rather than commodity spectacle. The use of Parkdale as a backdrop both acknowledges the history of the area and recognizes the changes it has gone through in the last thirty years as a burgeoning art community.

Artist and activist Dyan Marie lives and works in the Lansdowne/Dupont area of Toronto, a neighbourhood fractured by issues of poverty, environmental damage, drug abuse, and an active sex trade. It is also broken up by major roads and three railway lines. There is a reduced tree canopy, and existing parks and other public spaces are perceived as undesirable due to criminal activity.