Kids’ Main Street: Gingerbread Workshop Recap

Tuesday December 05, 2023

We had the tastiest of weekends this past week as we held our second annual Kids’ Main Street workshops, a program that invites the youngest designers in the family to showcase their creativity (and of course learn something too!) through edible architectural creations.

Held over three different sessions at the Centre for Social Innovation: Spadina, Kids’ Main Street saw 48 children and their families join us to build an edible main street, with each participant designing and building their very own mixed-use, multi-storey building. The event was as fun as it was educational, as we encouraged the kids to think about what makes a vibrant street experience and to translate their initial table sketches to built cookie realities using the design process. The end result is a riot of colour, textures and imagination with just about every use you can think of: from a library to a snake store, as well as cafes, toy shops and pizza joints! And of course, plenty of apartments for all the gingerbread citizens that live in this tasty, walkable metropolis. 

Now that the icing is all dry, these creations are being stitched together into a digital main street that will be featured in this year’s TSA Gingerbread City showcase launching later this month.

But for now, while we all wait for the big reveal, we want to take a moment to say thank you to all those who have made this initiative such a sweet success, specially our hard-working volunteers and staff who not only ran this weekend’s workshops but also did all the planning, baking and whipping required for this program!  We also want to give a big shout out to the Centre for Social Innovation for hosting us again this year and providing the perfect main street setting for this event.