ACO Toronto 2024 Symposium on Intangible Heritage

Every year, the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario’s Toronto Branch hosts a symposium exploring current heritage ideas. Past themes have included Housing and Heritage, Main Streets, Modernist Schools, and Demolition. This year’s symposium will examine the phenomenon of Intangible Heritage or heritage that is distinct from built form.

Intangible Heritage can relate to traditions, activities, commerce, communities, identities, and storytelling. There’s a sense in which all heritage has intangible elements. While it certainly has relationships with physical spaces, what makes Intangible Heritage different from built heritage is that its significance lies outside traditional evaluations of architectural merit. It is use, not aesthetics, that defines Intangible Heritage.

Or is it? The narratives of Intangible Heritage are complex, intersectional, and in motion. Looking more closely at its presence across Toronto—from Kensington Market to Little Jamaica to Suburban Banquet Halls—this year’s symposium will highlight some of the things the term Intangible Heritage can and should mean and why.

THE ARCHITECTURAL CONSERVANCY OF ONTARIO

For 91 years, the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario has protected, documented, and conserved culturally and historically significant sites throughout the province and created educational programming that makes that heritage more accessible. Through enterprises like TOBuilt, our public database of over 15,000 buildings, structures, and human-made heritage landscapes across Toronto, the ACO works to inform and stimulate discourses about built and intangible heritage and advocate for its recognition and stewardship. A registered charitable organization and one of Canada’s largest heritage nonprofits, the ACO operates 17 local branches across Ontario, including in Toronto.