Working as an artist in Toronto offers a lot of benefits: there's an active scene, great art schools and galleries, and increasing attention from international collectors and press. But if you need somewhere to actually, you know, make and display your art, things can get challenging. Rent is skyrocketing, and many long-time studio spaces have been demolished to make room for luxury condos.

Thankfully, Toronto's tight-knit artistic community has found a solution to these problems: the artists collective. By working and exhibiting together, members don't just save on rent: their newfound group also provides them with constant inspiration and input on their work, in addition to greatly broadening their audience.

Toronto has an amazing variety of active artistic collectives, but for this list, we're focusing specifically on those that have their own publicly-accessible studio or gallery spaces.

So many galleries tout their commitment to the up and comers, but with the exception of a few true "incubators" — LE Gallery comes to mind — few make good on this commitment. Not so at this OCADU funded art space that was once located at the foot of Ossington. Forced westward by rising rents, the change in location hasn't altered the degree to which this gallery supports emerging artists.

Read my profile of XPACE (Lansdowne) in the galleries section.

The 2013 CONTACT Photography Festival is once again set to land in Toronto. After its official launch tomorrow night at the MOCCA, the city will be dotted with exhibitions at virtually every gallery — not to mention cafes and billboards. Now in 17th incarnation, this year's fest will include public installations, films, lectures and workshops, mostly accessible free of charge and presented to an audience of nearly two million (it's still the largest photography festival in the world).

With more than 1,000 artists showing at 130 venues, finding a theme vague enough to encompass the incredible diversity of work sounds like a difficult undertaking. But the festival organisers once again hit it out of the park with "Field of Vision," which supposedly "explores the photographic medium as a way of seeing." Hard to argue with that.

Last year's festival was defined by the wonderfully ambitious joint exhibition between the MOCCA and UTAC. Entitled "Collective Identity | Occupied Spaces," the show was the absolute centrepoint of the event. Though there may not be a single dominating show this time around, there are still plenty of must-sees at CONTACT 2013.

OK, "hidden" might be pushing it a bit, but this multi-purpose art space isn't exactly conspicuous either. Housed in an old industrial building on Dufferin north of Queen, the gallery has already garnered a reputation for late night parties and its commitment to fostering the careers of up and coming artists.

Read more in my profile of Brockton Collective in the galleries section.

Last Thursday, 99 Sudbury hosted the graduation exhibit for the Sheridan College Illustration Program, and the massive event space was quickly packed with excited students, supportive family members and friends, and banquet servers relentlessly hawking trays of potato chips in what was perhaps the most bizarre choice of food I've seen at an grad show in the city. But other than this one small misstep, the exhibition offered up some real delights.

Sheridan offers the only dedicated Bachelor of Arts Illustration degree program in Canada, and its students leave the program with an incredibly well-rounded education. With mandatory classes exposing them to both traditional disciplines (such as painting and drawing) and digital technologies (like Web design and motion graphics). A 14-week work term is also offered, ensuring that students graduate with valuable real-world experience, as well as instruction on how to create a workplace-ready portfolio and website. This is definitely evident in the grad show, as savvy artists included cards, posters, and buttons to ensure their work stayed fresh in the minds of the attendees.

Traditionally, art fairs have little to do with artists. Tense gallery owners and dealers display one or two pieces from an artist in their roster without context, and then attempt to explain to the masses just what it is and why it matters. Now in its sixth year, the Artist Project(TAP) subverts the typical art fair format and places the artists themselves within the booths. And with over 200+ artists participating, it's a great way to get acquainted with a full spectrum of styles and skill levels.