As the cold winter weather carries on, some of Toronto’s community skating rinks are set to get the place-making treatment previously only applied to more high profile rinks like those at Nathan Phillips Square, Harbourfront Centre, and The Bentway. The ‘Rink Social’ Project is first part of a larger initiative to bring more life to Toronto’s parks and recreation facilities. In partnership with national charity Evergreen and Montreal-based place-making firm La Pépinière, the City of Toronto is working to better activate its public spaces year round. 

Skaters at Nathan Phillips Square, image by Bryan Bonnici via Flickr

As a pilot project, the Rink Social Initiative will provide skate lending, social gathering spaces, and food and beverage vendors to the spaces. La Pépinière will be working to collect data on user interest to design further activations for Toronto’s public parks in the future

Rink Social will take place over the next four weekends at rinks across the city:

• February 9-10 at West Mall Outdoor Rink in Etobicoke,
• February 16-18 at the Regent Park Athletic Grounds, Downtown,
• February 23-23 at McCowan District Park in Scarborough, and
• March 2-3 at Mel Lastman Square in North York.

As further activations are announced as a result of this pilot project, we will keep you updated on the upcoming improvements to the public realm.

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