BY AFROTORONTO TEAM

How Andrew and Juli-Anne James built a creative home for 1,800 young people in Shelburne

October 2, 2026

Ten years ago, Andrew and Juli-Anne James opened Streams in Shelburne with almost no local arts programming to build on. Today the Black-founded charity has served more than 1,800 young people, funded itself through a T-shirt social enterprise and kept fees within reach for many local families. On October 6, a live telethon aims to sign up 1,000 monthly donors to power the next decade.

Juli-Anne James still remembers the first registration that landed in the inbox at Streams. It was 2016, and she and her husband Andrew were trying to launch a youth arts organization in Shelburne. It's a fast-growing town in Dufferin County where consistent, high-quality arts programming for young people barely existed. One family signing up meant someone else believed the idea could work. According to the Shelburne Free Press, that first family paid the full fee and covered a second family's enrolment too. That small act of generosity set the tone for everything that followed.

A decade later, Streams Creative Hub (still known to many locals as Streams Community Hub) has worked with more than 1,800 children and youth. It has handed out over $180,000 in scholarships and subsidized spots. It has moved from borrowed school classrooms into its own building and launched Town Tees, a custom apparel social enterprise that has put more than $250,000 back into programming.

The couple did all of it on a tight budget, in a rural town, as a Black-founded and Black-led charity with very little institutional backing. On Tuesday, October 6, they're marking the milestone the way creatives would, with a live three-hour telethon on Rogers TV Dufferin and online.

Getting a town to imagine with them

Persuasion was the first big task. "One of the biggest hurdles was simply getting people to imagine with us," Juli-Anne says. Families in Shelburne hadn't seen this kind of programming locally. The early years became an exercise in building trust while solving practical problems one after another.

Those early problems will sound familiar to anyone who has tried to build something from scratch in a small community:


  • Finding affordable space to run classes and camps
  • Attracting skilled instructors willing to work outside a big city
  • Raising money with no track record to point to
  • Proving there was real demand for what they were offering

Streams ran seasonally out of local schools until March 2022, when it opened a permanent 3,600-square-foot centre on Colonel Phillips Drive. That building changed the rhythm of the work. Year-round after-school classes now run under one roof. So do camps for ages four to 17, private lessons in piano, guitar, vocals and drums, and weekend workshops for adults.

Juli-Anne is honest about how far local attitudes have shifted. Community perception of youth arts has improved, and she credits Streams' steady presence with some of that change. "But we still have a long way to go," she adds.

Two young men, two turning points

Numbers like 1,800 can blur together. When asked what the work looks like up close, both founders reached for individual stories, using pseudonyms to protect privacy.


Juli-Anne thinks of Brian, who arrived at 14. He had dropped out of high school while struggling with depression and anxiety. "There was ability there, but ability alone doesn't create opportunity," she says. Streams works hard to remove barriers to access. Thanks to that, Brian joined first as a participant, then as a volunteer, and gradually took on leadership. He's 24 now and works as general manager of a local organization. "He has told us countless times, 'I don't know where I would be if you didn't move into this town,'" Juli-Anne recalls.


Andrew's story is about Luke, who first came to Streams around age nine. Years later, after the move into the new building, his mother enrolled him in Thrive, a 12-week program, even though he didn't want to go. Luke had been suspended twice and was struggling in school. He showed up for 11 of the 12 sessions, missing one for a dentist appointment.

Andrew invited him back to volunteer that summer. That fall, he offered Luke a paid job at Town Tees, the print shop that helps fund Streams. Over the next couple of years his grades climbed. He finished high school, completed a co-op placement with the military and has since enlisted.


"Luke didn't change because of a program," Andrew says. "He changed because he was seen, affirmed and encouraged in a safe place."


Juli-Anne describes the arts as a mechanism. Some alumni may go on to creative careers, and that's welcome. The real aim is a safe environment where a young person can find a sense of self and purpose.

Ten applications, one grant

Running a rural charity means competing for the same limited grant dollars as much larger organizations in bigger centres. Streams has applied to the Ontario Trillium Foundation 10 times and received one grant, a COVID-19 response grant awarded in 2021. Most of the declines have come since that single award, often with little or no feedback.

"It is excruciating to continue to receive negative responses," she says. She keeps going because she sees proof every day that the work matters, as children move from anxious and shy to confident and free.

Leading Streams has also given her a critical view of how philanthropy works. She believes the sector is broken in important ways. She hopes to eventually share what a Black-led organization in rural Ontario has learned about fixing it. For now, her priority is simpler. Kids in Shelburne shouldn't fall through the cracks for lack of a safe place to gather.

Town Tees and the business of belonging

Rather than wait on funders, the couple built their own revenue stream. Town Tees started in 2018 almost by accident. Juli-Anne's brother had apparel printing equipment and needed help growing his business, and Andrew had a graphic design background. "The moment I pressed our first shirt, I got a strong impression that this could be something much bigger," he says.


Andrew spent about four years running the operation out of his basement, printing shirts for landscaping companies, sports teams and schools. The business eventually moved into a Shelburne storefront, and in 2025 it opened a second location in Alliston. Today Town Tees offers custom printing, embroidery, heat transfer and promotional merchandise, and a portion of every sale supports Streams.


For Andrew, hiring young people was the obvious choice. He spent more than 20 years in youth work, first as a youth pastor and later in communities like Rexdale and Mississauga. Printing shirts is easy to learn, so new hires succeed quickly, and that early win builds confidence. "A first job matters more than people realize," he says. It's where a young person learns to show up on time, work on a team and serve a customer, with a real paycheque attached.

The split in leadership helped too. Juli-Anne stepped into the executive director role, unofficially at first and then formally. That let her steer the charity's growth while Andrew focused on the business.

A telethon built around young people

The 10th-anniversary celebration takes an unusual form. Juli-Anne says the telethon idea "sort of fell from heaven" while the team was looking for ways to reach beyond the region. Galas had taken a lot of work without matching returns. They also kept the spotlight on donors rather than the kids.

The Good Old Fashioned Telethon airs Tuesday, October 6, from 6 to 9 p.m. on Rogers TV Dufferin, with a simultaneous stream on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. Over three hours, viewers can expect a lively mix of programming:

  • Youth performances, including Streams' Sing Club
  • Local artists painting live on air
  • Alumni sharing their own stories
  • Celebrity appeals and community testimonials
  • Prize draws all evening, with a grand prize trip for two to Saint Lucia
  • A live donor counter tracking progress toward the goal

That goal is 1,000 people giving $10 a month. "It's not about a few people giving more, it's about more people giving a little," Juli-Anne explains. The Shelburne Free Press reported that Streams had about 99 monthly donors heading into the campaign. Reaching 1,000 would cover roughly a third of the operating budget.


Steady monthly support would reduce Streams' dependence on grants and let the team say yes to families without scrambling to cover the gap. It also pays for the unglamorous essentials. "Music class has to happen in a building where there are lights on and there is heat in the winter," she says. Supporters can donate during the broadcast, share it with their networks and join the Streams Greenroom community in advance through streamshub.org.

What the next decade could hold

Looking toward 2036, Juli-Anne wants Streams recognized as a regional creative hub. She wants young people to have access to arts education, mentorship, performance opportunities and creative career paths without leaving home. She pictures a child walking in at eight for a class and returning years later as an artist, educator, entrepreneur or mentor.

Her wish list includes deeper school and community partnerships and more local work for artists. It also includes wider access for families who would otherwise be priced out, plus a permanent home that matches the scale of the vision. Eventually, she'd like to see the model copied in other underserved communities. Her advice for rural leaders attempting the same thing comes straight from experience:

  • Start before everything feels ready
  • Build with the community rather than for it
  • Pay attention to what people keep showing up for
  • Adapt the model without abandoning the mission
  • Don't measure your work by how quickly institutions validate it


A decade of showing up, and the next one starts Tuesday

Streams began with one family registering and another family's spot covered on day one. That spirit of neighbours lifting neighbours has carried the organization through rejected grant applications, a basement print shop and the long climb to a building of its own. Along the way, more than 1,800 young people found a place where their creativity was taken seriously. Some of them, like Brian and Luke, found much more.

The October 6 telethon asks for something modest from a lot of people. Ten dollars a month from a thousand supporters would give Streams the stability to plan, to keep fees low and to keep the lights on for the next generation of young artists in Dufferin County. As Juli-Anne puts it, "Sustainability is not only about money. It is about trust, relevance, leadership and whether the community begins to feel that the work belongs to them too."