May 13, 2026 Robyn Wilcox

Craft Ontario at 50: A New Home for Our Next Chapter

Lisa Creskey. Red-Winged Blackbirds. Porcelain, mixed media, tree seed pods, cattails, branches. 2016 Craft Ontario exhibition When Horses Walked on Water.

As Craft Ontario turns 50 this year, we are marking the milestone with a move that sets up our next chapter: a new home at 401 Richmond Street West, opening August 2027, alongside our continuing presence at the Distillery District.

Our location at 1106 Queen Street West will close at the end of July 2026, when our lease ends after ten years there.

These two events are interconnected, and we want to share the full story.

A New Home at 401 Richmond

401 Richmond Street West is a thriving arts and culture hub housed in a historic industrial building in downtown Toronto. Beginning in August 2027, our gallery, retail, programming, and operations will all live under one roof there. Combined with our continued presence at the Distillery District, the move gives Craft Ontario a stronger, more focused footprint in the city.

The new space includes a Lower Level retail location alongside the gallery we already operate at 401 Richmond, Unit 108. It is designed to deepen and expand what we do, with room for the kinds of programming, presentation, and connection between makers and audiences that we have been working toward for years.

Closing Queen Street, with gratitude

For ten years 1106 Queen Street West was home to our shop, gallery, and offices. It was a place where members' work was shown and sold, where the public was introduced to craft, and where the day-to-day life of the organization happened. We are proud of what we built there and grateful to the community that supported it.

Closing that chapter is a recognition that the organization has grown beyond what one storefront can hold. This decision was made strategically as part of a longer arc of organizational renewal. Like many arts organizations, Craft Ontario has navigated significant challenges over the past several years, and we have done so by making clear-eyed choices about where to focus our resources and energy. This major location change is one of those choices.

What stays the same

While we prepare for the new space, the rest of Craft Ontario continues without interruption:

The Distillery District shop remains open.
The Gallery at 401 Richmond Street West, Unit 108 continues to operate.
Online sales, membership, programming, and all of the services Craft Ontario provides to its members across Ontario carry on as usual.

The new Lower Level retail space at 401 Richmond opens August 2027.

50 years of Craft Ontario

The Ontario Crafts Council was formed in 1976 through the merger of two earlier organizations whose work championing handmade craft in Ontario reached back to 1931. At the founding meeting, Joan Chalmers, the new Council's first president, spoke for those present:

We look back briefly to salute the past with a sense of gratitude for all that was accomplished for crafts by both organizations. We have a new banner. Let us go forward with strength in our unity of purpose to work for the betterment of crafts and craftsmen in the Province of Ontario. Ours is a bright and challenging future.

- Joan Chalmers, founding president, Ontario Crafts Council, 1976

In every decade since, the organization has been sustained by the people who chose to invest in it: makers who joined, patrons who gave, volunteers who served, donors who saw the value of craft and acted on it.

Today, Craft Ontario is the province's only arts service organization dedicated exclusively to craft. Each year we deliver member services and professional development, including approximately 21 awards to makers at every career stage; exhibitions presented within the critical curatorial framework that has defined the gallery since 1976; retail spaces representing hundreds of craftspeople; and Studio: Craft + Design in Canada, a nationally distributed magazine.

Resilience in Craft

The theme of our 50th anniversary is Resilience in Craft: a recognition that making things by hand, sustaining a practice, and building an organization that supports craft artists across a province is not easy work. It requires adaptation and the willingness to change course when the path ahead asks for it.

This transition is, in many ways, a living expression of that theme. We are entering our next 50 years with clearer focus, and with honest work still ahead.

The 50th anniversary campaign runs from September 2026 through spring 2027. It includes a storytelling series featuring Ontario maker voices, public talks and panels presented in partnership with member organizations across the province, and an anniversary gathering in early 2027. This announcement, and the story behind it, opens that campaign.

Turning 50 is a moment to look back with pride and forward with intention. The new space at 401 Richmond is the most tangible expression of that intention we have to offer.

- Robyn Wilcox, Executive Director

Supporting the next chapter

A transition of this scale takes resources, and we are asking our community to help us bridge the moment.

Fitting out the new space, sustaining programming through the move, and carrying operations across the interim period all require support beyond what earned revenue and operating grants can cover.

There are three ways to help.

1. Donate to the 50th anniversary campaign

A matching gift is in place to double the impact of contributions at leadership levels. Every gift made this year, at every level, is part of the campaign and directly supports the transition.

DONATE