YouTube Opens Canadian Creator Space In Toronto

YouTube’s north-of-the-border creator hub is open for business. The video site has launched YouTube Space Toronto, where its Canadian community can meet, produce videos, attend workshops, and participate in tentpole events that unite YouTube Spaces around the world.

“YouTube Space Toronto will offer workshops and programming at no cost to Canadian creators who are looking to build their channels,” reads a YouTube blog post, “giving them tools and guidance to remove barriers and enable them to innovate and experiment.”

Unlike the YouTube Spaces in cities like Los Angeles and London, the Toronto hub is not a standalone facility. Instead, as with the Spaces in Berlin and São Paulo, it is hosted by a local organization. It can be found at George Brown College’s Centre for Arts, Design & Information Technology, a public college located in downtown Toronto.

Toronto mayor John Tory, who seems significantly less interesting than his predecessor

, stopped by the new Space in a video release on the City of Toronto’s official YouTube channel:

YouTube Space Toronto was announced during the video site’s presentation at VidCon in 2015. Now that it is open, there are nine active YouTube Spaces around the globe, and a tenth is expected to open in Rio de Janeiro in the future.

The Toronto space isn’t the only north-of-the-border initiative undertaken by YouTube and its community. In 2013, Canadian creator Corey Vidal launched Buffer Festival, a YouTuber-led film festival that returned to Toronto in 2014 and 2015. Vidal is one of several prominent Canadians on YouTube; others include Lilly “Superwoman” Singh and the guys from Epic Meal Time.