Timeline: 2008

Location: Richmond Hill, ON

Intent: To understand what creativity is, and what happens when utilizing the potential of a multi-disciplinary collaborative approach to everyday challenges.

The Makeshift Collective began in the summer of 2008 in the basement of Alex childhood home in the middle of a recession. The summer job opportunities were sparse for university students – so instead of dedicating our time to other companies, we gathered together to look inward and to understand how we can create a new way of learning and pushing each other for growth. As a small collective of hobbyist photographers, designers, and artists, we gathered together to find excuses to combine our skills together.

Before the collective disbanded at the end of that summer, they hosted a successful 48-hour film challenge; a challenge which launched the careers of numerous participants into motion design and cinematography.

Timeline: 2011 - 2013

Location: Carleton University, Ottawa, ON

Intent: Find new ways of learning. Think critically about what we were being taught. Build relationships with other students, band together, and seek out the knowledge we were curious about.

Makeshift22 was named after Carleton’s School of Architecture’s “Building 22” – which began operating as a discussion group founded by Alex to explore critical thinking and design philosophy with other students. From these discussions, we identified gaps in the educational experience that they were receiving and subsequently took learning into their own hands. We wanted to find new ways of learning and created a safe space to meet, discuss, and think critically to respond to what and how we were being taught. M22 became that space.

We ran our own extracurricular projects and challenges, created architectural interventions in our school, and built relationships with other student groups, both within our program and those adjacent faculties. The group gave us an outlet for experimentation, and it empowered us knowing that we could create that space ourselves if we could not find it within our faculty.

As Alex graduated in 2011 and moved away from Ottawa – the group became dormant as students focused on their schoolwork. Although M22 went through a quiet period; the spirit continued to live on in its members: the school projects produced by members continued to develop an unforeseen critical edge; friendships made were steadfast. Little did we know that M22 would prove to become the foundation needed to continue building upon in the future.

Timeline: 2014 - 2016

Location: Toronto, ON

Intent: Foster a community through shared learning, and build resources that empower our pursuits. Build an opportunity for ourselves to explore and experiment. 

In 2014, Alex was living on the 3rd floor above a restaurant in Toronto’s Kensington/Chinatown. He was craving the sense of community that was built at Carleton University with M22, and after returning from a 10-day silent meditation retreat had a strong desire to make it happen. The landlord informed him that the tenants living underneath him would be moving out, where Alex took the opportunity to propose a combination of the two spaces to recreate the environment of M22 in downtown Toronto.

The timing was perfect – members of M22 were graduating and migrating cities, and the lack of creative studio space for experimentation and exploration became the perfect excuse to call Makeshift back together. Alex found three more roommates, both original M22 members and new friends. Alongside so many other supporters, the new Makeshift Collective began to take form.

We started small, using our limited resources and borrowed tools to make the most of our humble space. Starting with a single power saw, we created loft spaces to maximize the usage of each space: raised beds made room for living space, a projector being thrown away at a workplace became our movie nights, and we opened our kitchen up to family-style dinners. Our apartment of four had regular drop-ins, and soon we began to take on small projects, competitions, and film challenges. Slowly, the energy of Makeshift came back to us.

Projects became larger until finally, the space could no longer hold those living there as well as the ambitions for the work we wanted to do at the same time. We felt empowered, our humble beginnings had procured us new tools and opportunities. Empowerment turned to curiosity and we began to ask ourselves: could we become a design agency?

Timeline: 2016 - 2020

Location: Toronto, ON

Intent: Discover agency in collecting our individual skills and in building a team. Share what we've built with others, and expand our community. Find other collectives, and in doing so broaden our perspectives on what impact we might have on the community around us.

Curiosity requires commitment, and so in Spring of 2016 we wiped the slate clean: the old living space was taken apart, the loft beds removed, and we renovated to fit all new facilities and tools. As soon as we gave our members the chance, they carved out the space in their image, and the direction of the studio was decided by us effecting change directly to the space. Our wood shop was framed in by Fall, and the sewing and photography studios followed soon after.  

Large projects started to come in, multimedia, design and build projects that required us to work as a team. By collecting our skills as a team, we discovered agency: in the work we took on, the clients we chose, and in our mission. Curiously, the more diverse skill sets we added, the larger the scope of projects we could take on. Two years went by, and we were humbled by all that we learned working as a team professionally. We count ourselves lucky to taste a bit of freedom in the work we chose, and the risks we took on made us feel capable. However, two years of learning and testing raised even more questions, and many of our core members returned to their respective fields or to academia in hopes of finding new perspective to bring back to Makeshift.

While we learned, the space and its facilities developed with us. Now we want to share what we are building with others, and expand our community. We opened up the studio for general rental, and in finding other individuals, other collectives, and other friends, we hope to broaden our perspectives on what impact we might be able to have on the community around us.

Update: At the end of 2019, Makeshift was presented with the difficult decision of continuing to operate our space despite a major rent hike from our new landlord. Similar to many artist collective spaces throughout the city we are community partners with, we had to shut down our doors in January 2020. Our community continues to go through cycles – and we consider this another necessary state of dormancy. The collective continues to work on projects today without a physical space – as you can continue to follow updates from our Instagram @makeshiftcollective.