INSTITUT. Finally.
PRESS RELEASE — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New speakeasy INSTITUT opens under 620 Spadina
ONE NIGHT A WEEK only in its pilot season, INSTITUT boasts highly curated cultural programming (music, cinema, literature and art) every Thursday from 5pm until late in the basement auditorium of St. Volodymyr Institute.
TORONTO — Remember the time you got lost in the streets of Berlin, or Seoul, or Bogotá — and found yourself following the sound of a muted accordion through a dark alley to a loading dock beneath a flickering neon light where a man in a leather trench coat swung open a weighty steel door and invited you down a staircase to a room of surprises that taught you things about yourself (and the world) you never could have dreamed of knowing?
That off-the-beaten-path, third-space feeling has become increasingly trendy in Toronto. Following suit, St. Volodymyr Institute (SVI) has lent its basement auditorium at 620 Spadina Ave. to a rotating cast of musicians, cinephiles, thespians and academics to bring new life to the walls that have been home to the Ukrainian Diaspora for decades.
Led by SVI Creative Director Oksana Hawrylak and Programming Director Mark Marczyk, INSTITUT will present dynamic live music, film screenings, panels, interviews, readings, and art events on a PAY WHAT YOU CAN basis every Thursday evening from May to September (5pm until late). Each week pulls audiences through the parking lot entrance behind the main building into the depths of an institutional basement for a different program animated by a rotating cast of curators and co-curators drawn from across Toronto's diverse cultural landscape.
The walls have been painted, the cabinets flipped, and the room reimagined using storage room relics and archival gems in unconventional ways to colour the space. Without any storefront signage, part of the experience is that “hunt” for that muted accordion through yellowing institutional halls, down the stairs, past the mechanical room, through the swinging wood laminate door… What's waiting on the other side is not what you’d expect: gourmet kanapky (open-face sandwiches), film noir with live scores, vintage vinyl, dramatic readings, and speakers with scotch in their hands.
It’s not a club, not a bar, not a lecture hall or a street party. It’s a space built to institute a new way of encountering cinema, literature, music, and art — with food and drink, church basement-style kitchen, an impressive 18-foot wide, floor to ceiling projection screen, strangers, silence, and real conversation.
May 7 launches the first official program. Consider it Volume 1: a pilot season. Every Thursday, a new hypothesis.
THE PROGRAMMING
Toronto street-folk pioneer Mark Marczyk (Lemon Bucket Orkestra, BLOK festival) takes the lead on INSTITUT’s program, calling on a wide array of co-curators and presenters to execute his vision for mixed media in this new space.
Notably, the space boasts an 18-foot wide, floor-to-ceiling screen, which will be home to Ukrainian Poetic Cinema nights led by Pylyp Illienko (ex-head of Ukrainian State Film Agency), as well as live scores of film noir classics from around the globe, selected by performers from those countries.
The format of INSTITUT’s panels is decidedly more casual than the stuffy lecture halls people are used to. Think of them more as three-beers-in conversations with smart people. REALLY SMART people: historian MarciShore, painter NatalkaHusar, and playwrights AndrewKushnir and LiannaMakuch.
Other interesting programming features include Ukrainian theatre salons/dramatic readings, livepainting, and vintagevinyl from 11 pm til close.
Co-presenters/partners for INSTITUT’s inaugural season include Luminato, Wavelength, Pyretic Productions, Strawbell Media and SonicSancocho
THE TEAM
Mark Marczyk INSTITUT programming director
Award-winning Ukrainian Canadian musician, writer, and cultural agitator. Founder of the Lemon Bucket Orkestra — Toronto's lauded “Balkan-Klezmer-Gypsy-Party-Punk-Super-Band" — and East European showcase festival BLOK. A global advocate for Ukraine on the cultural front and a provocative community activist at home, Marczyk conceived INSTITUT together with SVI creative director Oksana Hawrylak and brings his cross-cultural curatorial instinct and concept-driven producorial expertise to a basement that has been only seldom used for decades.
Oksana Hawrylak SVI creative director
Responsible for the artistic vision of St. Volodymyr Institute as a whole, Hawrylak co-conceived and developed INSTITUT together with Marczyk, leading the project from vision to reality — shaping the space, the identity, and the community that makes it possible. As creative director of SVI, she is part of the team behind the institution's broader development project: building a new Ukrainian Canadian cultural hub in Toronto. INSTITUT is both a chapter of that future and proof that it's already underway.
Pylyp Illienko Cinema curator
Lianna Makuch / Andrew Kushnir Theatre curators
Alexandra Shkandrij Speaker series coordinator
EVENT DETAILS
Opening night: Thursday, May 7, 2026
Season: Every Thursday, May – September 2026
Hours: 5pm until late
Location: 620 Spadina Ave, Toronto (around the back, through the lot — steel doors, down the stairs)
Admission: Pay-what-you-can
ABOUT INSTITUT
INSTITUT is a new underground cultural speakeasy living in the basement auditorium of St. Volodymyr Institute at 620 Spadina Avenue — a space that has always been there, right underneath, below generations of students, archivists, curators, and librarians. In its pilot phase (May–September 2026), it runs every Thursday from 5pm until late, featuring music, cinema, literature, and art. Ukrainian and beyond.
We are instituting the PWYC (pay-what-you-can) model — which basically means RSVP asap, because it's gonna fill up.
Website: stvolodymyr.org/institut
Instagram: @institut.to
