Lost and Found, a York University professor’s public art project that created meaningful, sustainable and participatory experiences, has earned two major awards.
In 2023, Holly Ward, a visual arts professor in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design was contacted by the City of Markham’s public art program to develop a project for the Rouge Valley Trail in the Unionville neighbourhood.
Enlisting her frequent collaborator Kevin Schmidt, an adjunct professor at Sheridan College, the two visited the trail to gather inspiration. During these visits, the artists were struck by experiential, unplanned, everyday moments, such as hearing a musician practicing just out of sight. They had found their inspiration.
Ward and Schmidt, whose shared work emphasizes collaboration, community engagement and experimental artistic practice, have long questioned where art can happen outside conventional cultural centres. "Creating in this way is the essence of our work – and it feels so rewarding," says Ward.
For Lost and Found, they forwent a traditional public show or staged performance, instead creating an interactive art exhibit inviting residents to participate by walking, playing, listening and discovering art in motion.
"For this project, we wanted to activate the public imagination in regards to rethinking categories around artistic forms, and to experience art in public space in a very intuitive way," says Ward. "The message of this project really was 'art can be anywhere you find it.'"
Lost and Found did so through a series of subtle, unscheduled moments along the Rouge Valley Trail. Local amateur musicians were hired to practice – not perform – their instruments in public, without signage or explanation. Passersby could stumble upon fragments of music, uncertain whether it was intentional or incidental, encouraging attentiveness rather than consumption.
Other experiential elements included a lending library of brightly coloured slogan T-shirts bearing open-ended or contradictory messages. Trail users and local groups were encouraged to wear the shirts while walking together, prompting reflection on self-expression and public communication. The artists also incorporated two mobile sound carts with unconventional instruments designed for experimentation rather than expertise, as a means to draw people into spontaneous moments of conversation, collaboration and play.
The initiative helped to anchor intuitive art in the community and fulfilled a key goal for Ward: emphasizing sustainability in multiple ways. By taking place in a natural public space without exploiting it, the exhibit fostered social sustainability through chance encounters between strangers, musicians and place.
Ward says the project surpassed her and Schmidt's expectations. "This was a highly experimental approach to public art, and we were not sure how it might land with an audience. We received a lot of positive feedback from local community members and participants, which was amazing."
When Lost and Found concluded its outdoor phase in the Fall of 2023, it continued its evolution beyond the trail. A second phase was launched at the Varley Art Gallery in Unionville, where it was re-presented through objects, posters, benches borrowed from the trail, audio recordings and a newspaper of participants’ reflections. The components of the exhibit were recontextualized within the gallery, deliberately exposing how meaning changes when informal public actions are reframed as art.
Following the project’s conclusion, Lost and Found drew the attention of the Creative City Network of Canada (CCNC), which recently recognized its innovation with the Impact Award for Sustainability in Public Art.
CCNC, a national non-profit organization that supports arts and culture work in Canadian cities and towns, recognizes public art projects led by municipalities that demonstrate a strong, long-term approach to sustainability, such as caring for the environment, supporting community involvement and creating lasting cultural value. The jury commended Lost and Found as "an example of how we can celebrate everyday presence and civic participation over spectacle" and praised how it advanced the discourse of contemporary art in public space while contributing to Markham’s growing art ecology.
"Winning this award as a recognition of this project was very meaningful to both of us," says Ward. "It felt like a ‘best-case scenario’ outcome for this project to also have this recognition from the art world, which meant we hit our mark in terms of the legibility of concepts and aesthetic strategies within our specific field of research, as well as local community activation."
Lost and Found was recognized in another medium as well. The project was documented in the publication Lost and Found: A Public Art Project by Schmidt and Ward, co-published by Markham Public Art and the Varley Art Gallery of Markham. The book traces the project’s full trajectory from initial inspirations to public outputs spanning the outdoor trail, the gallery and the publication, offering another way for audiences to engage with the work. The publication was recognized with an Ontario Galleries Award for Best Catalogue Design.
In addition to these recognitions, Ward says there have been other benefits. "New opportunities are already coming out of it. It also provides us with the confidence to keep pushing the envelope in terms of what public art can be, and to continue to expand our thinking around who it is for, and what functions it might serve," she says.
That remains forefront in her mind and goals as she looks ahead. "We make art to be seen and experienced by others. We are very keen to reach people and find new ways to enrich peoples lives through our own artistic expression and vision," she says.
Those interested in learning more about Lost and Found can do so through the publication, the project's website or the gallery exhibition.
With files from Holly Ward