Art groups had already been running for several years at CMHA Toronto’s east end location, led by case manager and artist Christella Pathmanathan. Clients gathered monthly to paint and make art together, working creatively with whatever materials were available. When Lindsey Desloges, Program Manager – East Case Management Services, RAP & Hospital to Homes Program, saw the groups in action, she wanted to find a way to build on them.  

Funding from the Toronto Arts Council, secured in July 2025, made that possible. It allowed CMHA Toronto to expand the existing program with more and different art supplies, visits to museums and galleries, and workshops with external artists. The grant also extended the programming to the newly opened Carlton House, where transitional housing worker Aisha Green was interested in doing arts programming with residents “from the moment I got hired.” 

As an artist and art therapist-in-training, it was a natural fit for Aisha. Carlton House clients are refugee claimants who are new to Canada, and she saw art as a way to support exploration, self-discovery, and emotional regulation while also helping clients build connections with one another and with their new city.  

Aisha involved clients in choosing what the expanded programming would offer, asking them about their interests and what they wanted to learn. She also made a special effort to find BIPOC artists and culturally relevant workshops that would resonate with and excite Carlton House clients.

For Aisha, the point is not to turn participants into artists or to make something “aesthetically polished or expert.” The value lies in the process: having room to explore experiences and emotions, connect with housemates, and express identity. “At a site like this, folks are coming with post-traumatic stress and other mental health challenges,” Aisha says, and having a space to create alongside others, with support from mental health professionals, can take on particular importance.  

While staff are helping clients navigate housing, employment, healthcare and other practical concerns, art offers a different kind of support. It can provide a way to process difficult experiences and emotions that clients may not yet be ready or able to put into words, while creating a sense of connection and rootedness as they become familiar with their neighbourhood, their housemates, and Toronto itself. 

There is an emotional regulation piece, too. Aisha sees people arrive at the table weighed down by the stress of looking for housing and work and managing their mental health. Carlton House arts programming gives clients “a safe, culturally responsive, supported way to feel human,” Aisha says. 

For Winnie, one of the first clients of Carlton House, that opportunity came at exactly the right time. New to Canada, without work or an established social network, she was eager for anything that could give structure and purpose to her days.

Winnie didn’t think of herself as someone who could make art. “I must say, I'm not an artist. I'm not talented at all, but I wanted something to take away my stress,” Winnie says.

When Aisha told her about the arts program, Winnie’s first reaction was “Wow, art!” and then she worried that she could not draw. But the invitation was simple: sit down, choose from the art supplies on the table, and make whatever she wanted.

One of the first things Winnie drew was a butterfly. Staff pinned it to the Carlton House notice board.

Winnie's butterfly

“Creating something and having it pinned up — I felt like one of the best performing students in class, you know that satisfaction that you get,” Winnie laughs. She adds, more seriously, that when she first arrived in Canada, she “felt powerless. I felt not in control of anything.” With the arts program, she says she “felt empowered” and found an avenue for releasing her stress and emotions, and a place where she could regain a sense of control over her life.

The butterfly came from a deep and personal place, Winnie explains. She was thinking about the stages of life before a butterfly emerges and is finally free.

“I felt freedom in that moment, as the butterfly flies off with beautiful colours.”

For her, the process of putting an internal experience onto paper and then letting it go became one of the most important aspects of the program. Art did not require her to explain everything she was feeling or to make a polished final product. She could simply put colour on paper and let the process carry some of what she was holding.

The Toronto Arts Council funding has also taken the programming beyond CMHA Toronto’s walls. At the east office, clients have visited the Royal Ontario Museum and the Clark Centre for the Arts in Scarborough, where artist Kanna Anigbogu gave a guided tour of his exhibition, The Black Experience: Vol. 1. The group discussed immigration and cultural adaptation, explored the exhibition, and gathered afterward for lunch and conversation. 

Other CMHA Toronto East sessions have ranged from watercolour and neurography — a drawing technique that combines mindfulness and relaxation with drawing using free-flowing lines and shapes — to a Pride-themed painting group focused on acceptance, diversity, inclusion, equality, and respect. Clients have also taken leadership roles themselves, including leading Zumba warm-ups and presenting information about artists. 

At Carlton House, the expanded program has included visual arts workshops, music and dance, and visits to artists’ studios and galleries. Groups have taken part in an exhibition tour and painting workshop led by critically acclaimed artist Kamplex; learned how to do block printing with mixed-media artist Malcolm-Emilio; and explored poetry with poetic writer, community organizer, and cultural curator Farhia Tato. These experiences offer a chance not only to try something unfamiliar, but to explore Toronto together. 

For Winnie, the trip itself can be part of the experience. 

“We had to walk sometimes, take a bus together, and even before you reach the art session, it's already so much fun. You are communicating and talking with the people in the house who you sometimes don't meet. During the art sessions, we really talk. You sit at the table, you talk while you draw.” 

After attending a King Street gallery and portrait-drawing session with Elicser Elliot, a Canadian artist who recently won the prestigious Mayor's Purchase Award at the 2026 Toronto Outdoor Art Show, Winnie was able to return to work the next day with a story to tell. “I had something to share with my friends. It was just so much fun to share. Everyone wished they could also participate. They're like, ‘I've never visited a gallery, I can't draw.’ I said, ‘same for me!’” 

For someone who had often kept to herself because she worried that conversation would lead to questions about her past, talking about art felt different. It gave her an easy point of connection — and the confidence to deepen new friendships.

That sense of connection is also central to the CMHA Toronto East arts groups. Lindsey says the groups create community and routine, while giving people opportunities to contribute and lead. They are designed to be accessible whether someone has an arts background or has never considered themselves creative. 

The Toronto Arts Council funding has widened what is possible. Instead of gathering supplies wherever they could find them, the program can offer different materials, bring in professional artists, and help clients get to cultural spaces they might not otherwise know about or feel comfortable visiting. This includes easy and inexpensive things that remove barriers, like subsidizing and accompanying people on public transit. 

At the same time, the heart of the program remains simple: people gathering around art, making something, talking, and discovering what the experience opens up. 

Winnie is now working and no longer lives at Carlton House, so she has less free time than she did when she first moved in. But an interest in art has stayed with her. If an invitation arrives on a day she is free, she says she would gladly return — to see the staff and clients, sit down at the table, and let her creativity flow. 

And art is now inseparable from the person who first invited her to pick up the paper and colouring materials and “draw anything you want, feel free.”

“When I meet Aisha, I just see art, I just see happiness. It just makes us happy.”