Over the past decade, marginalized immigrant-based areas of Toronto like Scarborough have seen a renaissance in their public perception and interest, bringing a new light to the diverse culture, food, and arts of these communities. In many ways, it has felt like a sudden wave of attention towards uplifting these artistic and cultural voices, bringing opportunities that were never available just two decades ago when we were growing up.

But the wave was just as alive then as it is now. It was brought over from the shores of the Caribbean, South and East Asia, Africa, and the other places of origin that comprise the immigrant, first, and second-generation Canadian populations that flooded into neighbourhoods like Malvern starting around the 1970s. These communities, built on self-made and self-sufficient families who left, fled, or escaped
their home countries for a better life, have fed the voices and narratives of our generation of artists. That precedent of building from the ground up is the ethos that many of our own artistic careers were also built upon.
Growing up in an environment that was starved of artistic opportunities, our interactions as a group began in elementary school, where our collective yearning for an educational creative outlet led us to create comedic videos and raps for class assignments. In the two decades since those initial interactions, our post-secondary academic experiences and self-directed artistic careers have cultivated
a collective ethos that art, education, and advocacy form the basis of community growth. Thus, Wave Art Collective was conceived to serve as a conduit to drive arts opportunity and infrastructure in Scarborough.