Context > Chabanel

As the Mile End has become progressively less affordable, and buildings that held long-standing artist’s studios have been sold and the artists evicted, artists have founded new studios at Chabanel, the district more where many of the garment manufacturers had moved fifteen years earlier. Chabanel offers light-industrial space at affordable rental prices. It is, however, more peripherally located relative to the city core. These displacements are fundamentally disruptive: they interrupt artists' capacity to do their work, uproot longstanding cultural communities, and compromise the support structures that artists depend on to make their work. As artists bring cafés, restaurants, and other shops that service their tastes in their wake, Chabanel is consequently also undergoing several of the transformations that took place previously in the Mile End.