The Media Event For Project T-Dot At Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport

DJ, Designer, Entrepreneur: Matthew Romeo, Professionally Known Aas DJ Romeo, Director, Producer, Social Activist, Entrepreneur: Neil Donaldson, Also Known As Logik, Talent Manager, Producer, Event Planner, Entrepreneur: Amol Gupta Also Known As Mr. Standout, Photographer, Director, Producer, Mental Health Advocate, Canon Canada Ambassador: Ajani Charles, Producer, Entrepreneur: Danell Adam, Visual Artist, Model: Andrea Bolley, Also Known As 6ix Mom, Location: Project T-Dot, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Year: 2024, Photographer: Brice Zhao

On Wednesday, January 24, 2024, I woke up at approximately 6:00 AM EST to prepare for the media event on behalf of my new solo Project T-Dot art exhibit at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, which showcases my 18-year-old documentary project on Toronto’s hip-hop culture, community, and history.

Over nearly an hour, I went through the routine I often engage in before speaking engagements, consisting of various forms of meditation, affirmations, and visualizations.

I was exhausted from the exhibit’s lengthy and complicated production process and many other responsibilities, and it seemed somewhat surreal that my new exhibit had come to fruition after numerous delays; I was ready to speak about it publicly for the first time.

When I arrived at the airport at approximately 9:00 AM EST, I was focused on the many interviews I would engage in that morning and throughout 2024. I also knew that my new exhibit’s production process was incomplete. There was more work to be done.

Project T-Dot at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport’s 60 large-scale vinyl prints had been successfully installed and on display for a few weeks, and we installed the exhibit’s 55-inch touchscreen was successfully installed soon after.

However, before the media event and until the end of March 2024, the screen had yet to be populated with much content. I was still creating the world’s first and most extensive publicly available database of a major city’s hip-hop community, specifically showcasing over 80 individuals and many organizations that define Toronto’s hip-hop culture, community, and history.

Location: Project T-Dot, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Year: 2024, Photographer: Ajani Charles

Nieuport Aviation is the primary sponsor of my new exhibit. The organization owns and operates the passenger terminal at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport.

I went to my exhibit after coffee at the organization’s modern office. I saw that not only were Nieuport Aviation and PortsToronto staff preparing the set for the media event, but CP24 and other notable news platforms had also arrived. They were either setting up their equipment or surveying the area.

Given how immersed I had been in bringing my new solo Project T-Dot art exhibit to fruition and considering the many psychological benefits of my routine before arriving at the airport, I was relatively calm. And considering the sheer volume of press I engaged in for my first solo Project T-Dot art exhibit at Toronto City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square in 2022, I was prepared to address the Canadian media, albeit in a slightly sleep-deprived. state.

Once some of my friends and colleagues began to arrive, I became far more energized, especially once my publicist, Randy Phipps, showed up. He has been a significant source of support for me since I began working with him in 2022.

I was also pleased to see my student Brice Zhao via the Canon FUTURES program, a 12-month mentorship journey designed to equip passionate, emerging creators and storytellers with the opportunity to broaden their creative spectrum, expand their knowledge of the business and their craft, create community with peers across Canada, and further develop their skills.

Brice was tasked with documenting the media event through photography, and some of his images are featured in this article alongside images I shot.

DJ, Designer, Entrepreneur: Matthew Romeo, Professionally Known As DJ Romeo, Visual Artist, Model: Andrea Bolley, Also Known As 6ix Mom, Location: Project T-Dot, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Year: 2024, Photographer: Brice Zhao

Some of the members of Toronto’s hip-hop community that joined the media event included Amol Gupta, also known as Mr. Standout; Andrea Bolley, also known as 6ix Mom; Matthew Romeo, also known as DJ Romeo and founder of My Dope Tee; Neil Donaldson, also known as Logik, who is the owner of Stolen From Africa, an arts education organization in Toronto that promotes the cultural and historical awareness of the African diaspora, and Danell Adams, who is the co-founder of Operation Prefrontal Cortex, a program and organization that I have been working with since 2018, which is based on harnessing the power of mindfulness and meditation to help reduce the incidents of gun, mass, and police violence in Toronto.

The event began promptly at 10:30 AM EST with an opening remark by Neil Pakey, President & CEO at Nieuport Aviation, followed by remarks by Roelof-Jan (RJ) Steenstra, President & CEO of PortsToronto, which the audience and I greatly appreciated.

Soon after, Joe Sellors, Policy & Program Planning Manager at the City of Toronto, spoke. As Joe talked, I was pleased to see my Sony Music Entertainment Canada colleagues in the audience. Their organization is one of my new exhibit’s sponsors.

I worked closely with Joe to bring my first solo Project T-Dot art exhibit to fruition in 2022; he was instrumental in its success alongside the ArtworxTO team on behalf of Toronto's Year of Public Art 2021–2022. He also helped bring my current solo Project T-Dot art exhibit to life at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, and his words moved me.

Without him, Toronto would be far less supportive of the arts and a far less beautiful city.

After Joe introduced me to the audience, I began to speak. As I did, I experienced brief flashbacks of the enormous amount of work that went into Project T-Dot at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport while reflecting on the fact that the project was nothing more than an idea introduced to me by Toronto City Councillor Michael Thompson during the summer of 2022, slightly before he and Joe introduced me to the team at Nieuport Aviation.

President, CEO: Neil Pakey, Location: Project T-Dot, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Year: 2024, Photographer: Brice Zhao

Without Councillor Thompson and Joe Sellors, having an art exhibit at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport would have never entered my consciousness, especially since I had never been there before the summer of 2022.

After addressing the audience, I was interviewed on behalf of many media platforms. I had poignant, albeit relatively short, conversations with various CBC journalists and Noor Ra’fat Ibrahim of Global News, among others.

As described in this press release via Canadian News Wire, the media event was a massive success. I received many calls and text messages from those who saw me live on television or heard me on the radio, and consequently, more media platforms covered it within 24 hours than my first solo Project T-Dot art exhibit at Toronto City Hall and Nathan Phillips Square during the project’s four-and-a-half-month duration.

Eighty-three days, or approximately 2.73 months, have passed between my new exhibit’s media event and the writing of this article (Monday, April 15, 2024).

From my perspective, it feels like more than a year has passed, given the volume of press and exhibit tours that I have engaged in so far, not to mention the approximately year and four months that it took for the exhibit to come to life, between my first meeting with Nieuport Aviation and the exhibit’s first installation phase.

I am grateful that Project T-Dot at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport will be available to the general public for approximately nine more months. The positive feedback I and the exhibit’s sponsors have received regarding the project has been overwhelming.

President, CEO: Roelof-Jan (RJ) Steenstra, Location: Project T-Dot, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Year: 2024, Photographer: Brice Zhao

Now that the exhibit’s 55-inch touchscreen features detailed profiles of over 80 members of Toronto’s hip-hop community and various notable organizations, specifically those that appear in the exhibit’s 60 large-scale vinyl prints, the general public can continue to learn about some of the most inspiring Torontonians North America’s fourth largest city has ever seen. New content will be added to the screen at the beginning of May 2024.

The exhibit can be viewed free of charge, without a plane ticket, in Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport's terminal atrium, past the airport’s underground tunnel, daily between 5:00 AM EST and 11:59 PM EST until January 2025. It is fully accessible and can be reached through the tunnel or the airport’s electric ferry.

The inclusion of the touchscreen and its content is vital at this point in Toronto’s history, as the city’s hip-hop scene includes some of its most influential, creative, shrewd, and resourceful artists and entrepreneurs.

Many artists and entrepreneurs featured in my new exhibit should be studied by those who want to make a living through their art and creativity while contributing to Toronto’s cultural and artistic dynamism.

The city’s arts sector is now experiencing an unprecedented downward spiral defined by a severe lack of funding and infrastructure, various insolvencies, poor leadership in many cases, and numerous prominent corporate sponsors cutting ties with many notable arts organizations and initiatives, including but not limited to one of my new exhibit’s sponsors, the CONTACT Photography Festival, which Scotiabank no longer supports.

Most of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s employees are on strike through the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) because their wages cannot keep up with the cost of living in Canada’s largest city (among other factors). The Art Gallery of Ontario, or the AGO, is one of my most prominent clients in Canada. They have been closed for weeks and are one of many art organizations that have experienced financial chaos and other forms of volatility over the last two years.

Policy & Program Planning Manager: Joe Sellors, Location: Project T-Dot, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Year: 2024, Photographer: Brice Zhao

The arts scene in Toronto is a shadow of what it once was a mere five years ago due to the previously mentioned variables and others, like the affordable housing crisis, the mental health crisis, and the rise in violence and addiction throughout the Greater Toronto Area. COVID-19 also undermined many organizations in profound ways that they were unprepared for.

2024 is likely one of the most challenging years for a young, up-and-coming artist in Toronto. The city seems far from recovering from the pandemic, at least within several key sectors.

Coincidentally, Neil Pakey of Nieuport Aviation recently wrote an article published in the Toronto Star entitled Toronto’s arts organizations are dying. The article outlines the dilemma that Toronto’s arts sector is now facing: it will likely lead to a massive exodus of talented artists and entrepreneurs this year, next year, and into the foreseeable future should it remain unaddressed.

Should this worst-case scenario play out, and private and public companies do not take the initiative to invest far more capital in the people and organizations that define Toronto as we know it, and should Toronto’s artists and entrepreneurs avoid the development of essential business skills like sales and pitching; skills needed to capitalize on rare and frequent opportunities, our city's artistic and cultural wealth, and our city’s innovation will be severely diminished, as will its international reputation.

Pablo Picasso once stated that “art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” Unless significant changes occur in the coming months and years, only the dust of everyday life will remain in Toronto; our city will lose its vitality, soul, and what makes it unique. It will no longer be fun, entertaining, creative, or inspiring, at least not to the same extent as before the pandemic. It will become nothing but Canada’s financial centre and a place to work ceaselessly.

Nonetheless, there is still hope; the talented individuals featured through Project T-Dot at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport are living proof, Toronto’s hip-hop community is living proof, and so am I.

Director of Artist Marketing: Carey Riley, Senior Manager, National Media Relations: Samantha Taus, Location: Project T-Dot, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Year: 2024, Photographer: Ajani Charles

Following a recent vacation to Mexico’s Mayan Riviera that I took to recover from high volumes of work this year and last year, I have a significant backlog of content on my new exhibit.

I look forward to sharing far more media on one of my most ambitious projects to date soon.

This project is a small part of Project T-Dot, which is held in one of the most prominent and innovative Toronto venues. It is also currently Canada’s largest and most publicized art exhibit on hip-hop culture.

Overseeing its production and promotion is a privilege and a blessing, and as such, I am highly motivated to tell the world about the most culturally diverse hip-hop scene.