The Open Field Collective began in 2014 as a handful of artists who wanted to bring contemporary art into outdoor spaces where art and community can interact. At our first meeting, Scott McDermid pitched an idea of miniature galleries located in peoples’ front yards that could be viewed from the sidewalk. We loved the idea of having accessible spaces to see artwork in neighbourhood settings and decided to build a mini-gallery and launch our first Open Field Street Project. The Open Field Collective was established with Scott McDermid, Erika James, and Christina Kostoff as core members, with Christina soon moving on to pursue her own practice. We opened our first gallery in a snowy, residential front yard gallery in December 2014 and as far as we know, it was the very first miniature gallery to be on display in a front yard. It became an instant hit in the neighbourhood and with enthusiastic community support and residential requests to create more mini-gallery sites, Scott and Erika continued to build on the Open Field Street Projects success. To date, we’ve curated over 150 miniature gallery exhibitions in public sites including 15 front yards, 8 along the King Street Corridor as part of the public realm art installations, 10 in Corktown Commons as part of Animating the Waterfront Festival, 4 in Guelph (with the gracious help of local writers and artists Madhur Anand, Karen Houle, Janet Morton, and Christina Kingsbury), and 3 in partnership with Scouts Canada, King Edward Public School, and Neilson Creative Centre for the Arts. Most of these projects operated on a volunteer basis and really speaks for the grass-roots nature of these community initiatives.

As a principle curator, Erika selected a wide range of contemporary artists to create work for our galleries which has included diverse programming from robotics to sculpture, painting, printmaking, textiles, photography, poetry, and miniature dioramas right into neighbourhood settings for anyone to see. Exhibiting artists have been artists such as Robert Hengeveld, Lise Beaudry, Heather Goodchild, Nathalie Quagliotto, Spencer Barclay, Janet Morton, Carlo Cesta, Lisa Neighbour, Jason Van Horne, Madhur Anand, and many more. We also partnered with KJ Bit and StreetARToronto in 2018 to curate and coordinate a live-paint jam that had over 35 graffiti and mural artists transforming a local laneway. 

In 2017 the Open Field Collective received the 2017 ArtBridges award for Innovation and Remarkable Work in Community-Engaged Arts in Canada in recognition of this work. Our projects have been featured in numerous press and magazine articles, in the news and in radio programming. Although we’ve received tons of requests to bring our gallery network to locations throughout Canada, it wasn’t feasible for us to do so. We’re delighted that communities across Canada and North America are now creating their own miniature gallery adventures.