{"id":357328,"date":"2025-12-20T09:21:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T09:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/357328\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T09:21:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T09:21:10","slug":"52-canadian-artists-predict-the-hottest-talking-points-of-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/357328\/","title":{"rendered":"52 Canadian artists predict the hottest talking points of 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2025 CBC Arts Trend Forecast heralded the return of the dumbphone<\/a>, and if you didn\u2019t swap your iPhone 17 Pro Max for a Motorola Razr, a lot of folks are convinced this will be your year. <\/p>\n

Artists Leif Low-Beer<\/a> and Lauren Pelc-McArthur<\/a> say people will toss their devices in 2026, and Anna Binta Diallo<\/a>, Amalie Atkins<\/a> and Toronto industrial band Slash Need<\/a> are convinced flip phones and landlines will achieve icon status. But a gadget upgrade (downgrade?) doesn\u2019t address the root of the issue. We\u2019re on our damned phones because we\u2019re desperate to connect \u2014 with people, culture and any weird slop that entertains us. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Illustration by Franziska Barczyk<\/p>\n

What could convince us to look away from the feed? Artists Laura Findlay<\/a> and Maria Simmons<\/a> believe people will be done with the fad consumerism driven by social media, and graphic designer Aless Mc<\/a> hopes we\u2019ll leave 2025\u2019s TikTok covetables \u2014 \u201cLabubus, Dubai chocolate and so forth\u201d \u2014 on the trash heap of history. The emphasis on overconsumption has turned them off scrolling, and the sameness, the flatness, of what we\u2019re seeing in our feeds is a major ick.<\/p>\n

That problem applies to the streaming experience too. Have you ever opened up Netflix, only to groan when you see the series they think you care about? Artist Caitlind r.c. Brown<\/a> and performer Srutika Sabu<\/a> expect more people will break up with their subscription services in 2026. <\/p>\n

In November, as everyone\u2019s predictions were rolling in, Pope Leo<\/a> (not a trend forecaster, please note) gave an address at the Vatican to filmmakers, actors and Hollywood execs. As he said in that speech, \u201cThe logic of algorithms tends to repeat what \u2018works,\u2019 but art opens up what is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

People still want to find new music, movies, chili-crisp recipes \u2014 you name it! \u2014 but they\u2019re tired of letting an app play gatekeeper. In her prediction for the must-have experience of 2026, Findlay reflected on one of her favourite discoveries, Dua Lipa\u2019s Service95 Book Club<\/a>, a phenomenon that harnesses the singer\u2019s enormous community on social (88.8M on Instagram; 11.2M on TikTok). <\/p>\n

As an international pop star, the \u201cLevitating\u201d singer seems like an untouchable figure, but it\u2019s the intimate and innately human quality of the project \u2014 access to her opinions and insights \u2014 that gets people engaged. Findlay says she loved making trips to the library to borrow the club\u2019s monthly picks, and she wasn\u2019t the only artist who believes people will seek recommendations from an actual person who\u2019s willing to share their passion and expertise.<\/p>\n

Some trend forecasters mentioned a renewed love for over-the-air radio (coincidentally, in November, the New York Times declared college radio to be thriving against all odds<\/a>). They want personalized movie recos, too, for titles you might not find on streaming. <\/p>\n

Mitchell Cushman<\/a>, artistic director of the Toronto theatre company Outside the March<\/a>, predicts the rise of \u201cvideo stores that curate content for you\u201d in 2026. The era of the neighbourhood Blockbuster is dunzo, but Cushman says he\u2019s noticing a lot of decision fatigue out there. (\u201cI do know someone who gets hired every year to curate people\u2019s TIFF screening list for them,\u201d he says.) <\/p>\n

In 2019, Outside the March staged a theatrical escape room in one of the former locations of Toronto’s Queen Video. The production, The Tape Escape, was a love letter to the lost art of browsing<\/a>. <\/p>\n

As Cushman explains, he had that show on his mind when he made his predictions for the Trend Forecast \u2014 and not an actual store he\u2019s been frequenting. But as it happens, there are several shops keeping the \u201990s dream alive, and they\u2019ve survived because they offer what streaming and the algorithm can\u2019t: human curation \u2026 and just a place to hang out. <\/p>\n

The term \u201cthird spaces\u201d gets thrown around a lot, and a new wave of video stores is providing just that: a place beyond the home where people can get together. Some are run as non-profits and community hubs. <\/p>\n

Unlike the golden age of VHS, when you\u2019d grab your stack of new releases and retreat to the solitude of your rec room, these stores host screenings and other public events. They\u2019ve evolved in a way that fits our desire to cut back on scrolling, discover a new favourite \u2014 and spend some actual face time with fellow nerds.<\/p>\n

We reached out to a few such places around the country. Read that story below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2025 CBC Arts Trend Forecast heralded the return of the dumbphone, and if you didn\u2019t swap your…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":["post-357328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}