Free-standing accessibility ramps take on a new use at a skatepark featured at Nuit Blanche, Toronto’s all-night art festival, held this year on October 4.
Artists Atanas Bozdarov and A.S.M. Kobayashi are repurposing custom-built, Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA)- compliant ramps for play and learning.
Working together with the StopGap Foundation, an organization that builds portable accessible ramps in often bright colours across the city, the public art installation, ‘Rise Over Run’ was made.
These ramps are augmented with extra ramp offshoots and railings to encourage creativity and navigation of these spaces for skateboarders, wheelchair users and other community members alike to put these structures to the test.
Skateboard collectives in the city like Sisters of Shred and Queer Skate Toronto came out.
Bozdarov says the initiative calls for more storefronts in the city to include ramps as an entrance option.
