A third-time charm is the hope for Nuit Blanche 2008, since it marks the first year that the planning has been able to live up to the scale of the event, with the City of Toronto extending it to a more diverse swath of downtown than ever before.
Placement of the commissioned exhibitions will generally shift away from the main gallery drags — most spaces on which will remain open all night with independent projects — while the entire event has been mapped as much as possible around existing transit lines.
The reimagined three-zone grid also aspires to avert crowd scenarios that led to complaints last year about how the Yorkville, University of Toronto and West Queen West areas were too congested for those looking for a tranquility trip. This year Zone C, which encompasses the West Queen West area, has been divided into two, with one part located entirely in Liberty Village.
“We wanted to move as many projects as possible just slightly off the beaten path,” says Carole Boughannam, the special events programming director based at City Hall. “The galleries were already enough of a draw on their own.”
Overcrowded sidewalks were one of last year’s main issues, as well as the long lineups for indoor installations whose blurbs turned out to be more exciting than the finished products. Scheduled attractions shut down hours before the promised Sunday sunrise. All of this added up to an effective defusing of the buzz built by the inaugural Nuit Blanche.
“Discussion about how to make improvements started the day after,” says Boughannam. “But only now did we have enough time to work on enhancements with the production people, programmers and curators.”
In addition to Liberty Village, the Financial District and Queen’s Park areas will become new destinations, with artists taking advantage of the fact that the usual nightlife in these areas is scarce. This is a particular necessity this year, as Nuit Blanche coincides with even more art-related events: UpArt at the Gladstone Hotel and the Toronto International Art Fair.
As regards the TTC, the accessibility of the Harbourfront rapid transit streetcar is being exploited, while the subway will remain open past dawn. Trains will run from St. George to Eglinton and from Christie to Broadview until 7am (and then stop for two hours before re-opening at their usual Sunday 9am start).
None of this seemed fathomable in the period leading up to the first Nuit Blanche in 2006, when the concept was adopted from Paris.
“[That year] we told the TTC we were expecting 180,000 to 200,000 people to come out to see things on a Saturday night,” recalls Boughannam. “And their reaction was, ‘Well, how do you know?’” The attendance estimates ended up around 400,000.
Clicker counting calculated 800,000 people for round two — which spread to Bloor and Lansdowne, Church and Wellesley and Parkdale — though disappointment was fueled by the proliferation of movie-themed product pitches from title sponsor Scotiabank.
Still, there’s ample evidence of an audience for the effort. Nuit Blanche will take on added resonance with a federal government seeking re-election with the argument that creativity is often a waste of funding.
That said, any local bureaucrat remains careful in their choice of enthusiastic words, lest those who’d rather stay at home take issue with the nocturnal frivolity.
“We’ve proved that the city is ready to be up all night,” says Boughannam. “The mainstream audience is intrigued about contemporary art.”