Duct tape can fix everything. So why not use it to bring a community together?

Mark Reinhart wasn't sure if it would work in Toronto. Since March, he'd been leaving mysterious messages around the towns of Chatham-Kent, the western Ontario municipality where he'd been born and raised, slapping phrases like "This Is Our Moment" and "We Don't Need To Do What We Have Done" on schools and houses and bridges using strips of neon duct tape. 

"It was something fun to do, a way to communicate to the Chatham-Kent population," says Reinhart. "It was a way to speak to the community; it was about being connected. I didn't really have any ambition for it to leave the city."

But after he'd completed about 60 of these Health & Safety Notes (that's the name of the project, by the way, and you can follow it on Instagram) an old friend, Laura Nanni — artistic and managing director at Toronto's SummerWorks Festival — approached him with a pitch. What would he think about trekking into the city for a month, and bringing his duct tape with him?

The short answer is: he said yes. 

For SummerWorks's new "Public Works" series, which drops performance and visual art programming in public spaces, Reinhart is presenting Health & Safety Notes all August. In practice, that means big, fluorescent phrases will be popping up in mystery locations throughout Toronto's Parkdale neighbourhood. As of writing, seven installations are already up, and plenty more are planned to appear before the month is over. (This map plots out their locations, which could make for a quick, if erratic, bike ride through west end streets and laneways.)

And yes, to the artist's relief, the idea has translated to the city. "The big takeaway for me has been how charming and curious people in Parkdale are about it — how willing they are to ask, like, 'What are you doing?'" he laughs. "It feels a bit like a small town."

An idea that stuck

On first glance, the project's a bit like a scaled-up version of those rainbow drawings families started been taping in their windows this March — a community art project borne of that "keep calm, and stay the f*ck at home" zeitgeist from the early days of the pandemic. 

Reinhart and a friend were brainstorming ideas for some kind of art intervention around that time. "We were kind of banging our heads together, figuring out a way to encourage people to stay physically apart while finding interesting ways to come together." 

Back in his university days, Reinhart started doing graffiti with duct tape. "I never really fancied myself a painter," he says. But tape? It's colourful. It's easy to put up (and tear down). It has a certain rustic, Canadian je ne sais quoi, he says. And, most importantly, it's cheap. 

And that meant he was able to stick message No. 1 —"#beapartstaytogetherck" — on Chatham's Civic Centre in no time. 

Since then, the project's morphed into something involving more community outreach. When Reinhart's local library got wind of what he was doing, they approached him about collaborating. "They had a message they wanted to put up," he says ("Books bind us together").

"After that I thought, 'Oh, this is the real project.' It's working with institutions, community groups, cultural spaces."

"It took it away from just me telling my own story," he says. "Health & Safety Notes was collecting the stories of a community, to document how we were experiencing this unprecedented time."

'What does a community want to say to each other?'

Before a piece goes up, Reinhart spends some one-on-one time with whoever lives, or works, at the installation site. "We kind of have a conversation about what they're experiencing," he says, especially as things pertain to the pandemic-y here and now. And they also discuss their vision for the future. Together, they'll decide on a phrase that more or less nails their current hopes or fears — something they want to share with everyone in town.

It's the same M.O. for the Toronto extension of the project. "It's curious about the same things," says Reinhart. "What does a community want to say to each other?"

Many of the Toronto locations have long-time ties to the SummerWorks festival, and according to Reinhart, they were selected so these "existing partners could stay connected and engaged with the festival in a pandemic reality." During his weekend trips to the city, he also made some new, grassroots connections that have been added to the map. 

Shaunt Tchakmak, owner of Antikka Records on Queen Street, was put in touch with Reinhart about a month and a half ago through a mutual friend at Artery, one of the other collaborating partners on the project.

"I saw the messages that had been posted thus far, and I connected to a lot of them," says Tchakmak, who invited Reinhart over to his music/coffee shop to talk. Out of their conversation, they hit on the phrase "Small wins and silver linings," which is now taped up on the back side of the building. 

"That's what my life has been all about in the last three months," says Tchakmak, talking about his Health & Safety Note. "We were a week away from launching another space when the lockdown hit. And nine weeks ago we were actually able to open that business." That bar, The Oud and the Fuzz, is now up and running in Kensington Market. 

"That idea of 'small wins and silver linings' really, really came to the forefront for me," he says. "By focusing on those things, I'm able to keep my spirits up. I'm able to stay positive and just — just keep going." 

Conversations, like the one Reinhart had with Tchakmak, are what's driving the project, and what he's heard from people in both Chatham-Kent and Toronto is coming from the same place. 

"People are looking for hope," he says. "People are looking for inspiration."

Follow @healthandsafetysocial to see where the project goes next.