DREAM school is a star sparked by the Revitalization program to light up new horizons of Lawrence Heights
Our Story
What We Do
Our Services
The school was founded in 2019 as an experimental, community-based, Youth-Architects summer program. At the time, the resident-led Lawrence Heights Art Centre and North York Community House collaborated on engaging residents into the design process, inspired by hopes for new opportunities as an outcome of the revitalization. The three years of learning about local community life, as well as envisioning and designing spaces for potential grass-root programs, led to a transformation of the annual summer program into a co-op Architecture/Design school. Together with our mentors and partners from architecture field, we venture into the next level of the community exploration, improvement, and services.
We offer ways to the young residents to reach their professional and creative potential and fulfillment within their own community. The DREAM school provides a space where geographical and professional communities merge into one ideal neighborhood entity. Our program teaches skills and infuses participants with passion and pride, while letting to see an impact of their design on the local community. Local participants of the program enjoy the results from both angels, as customers and creators. Once their projects are realized, they can immediately feel whether their creation improves local landscape, their own life and life of others.
We offer a co-op Architecture/Design Program that focuses on resident-served-by-youth design projects. Our community-based learning process helps envision and design spaces for community-led initiatives. We also serve individual requests for custom-designed objects from residents of both, TCHC and private sector. Our participants work on design projects which are ranging from indoor/outdoor furniture and installations to developing a conceptual design for public spaces of Lawrence Heights.