Ottawa locals already know about Silver Spring Farm’s garlic sales on Bells Corners’ Robertson Road.
Tucked quietly behind the sign reminding passers-by about the fresh produce is Silver Spring Studio, a former greenhouse turned art and cooking space for individuals 16 and older with developmental disabilities .
A developmental disability is one that is present at birth or develops before 18 years of age, affects a person’s ability to learn, is permanent and can be mild or severe, according to the Government of Ontario’s website .
On a July afternoon, a handful of individuals were laughing so hard from inside the barn that you could hear them when approaching the door.
Kim Dupuis sat close to the entrance, beaming with excitement from what she would later say was her 64th birthday.
The studio is a place of choice — customers choose to spend time there — which is special for those who might not have a lot of choice in other areas of their life, said Rosemarie Ferguson, who runs the place.
Ferguson is also a service development consultant for the Ottawa-Carleton Association for Persons with Developmental Disabilities, which the studio is a part of.
But, without any kind of funding or grants, as well as barriers to provincial disability supports, she said it was difficult to keep the studio afloat with only herself, two employees, and volunteers to run it.
Because Ontario’s disability support program offers far below what is needed, people on it must choose between basic needs and things that make life worth living, like arts and community building, says Alexis Shotwell, a Carleton University professor who studies disability and social theory.
“Disabled people are only supposed to want to survive. They’re not supposed to want art. Even if you get ODSP, it’s laughable,” said Shotwell, adding that individuals on the program often received about $900 a month.
Sixteen per cent of people with disabilities in Canada, or about 1.5 million in total, lived in poverty in 2023, which was nearly double the 9.5 per cent level among non-disabled people, according to a 2025 “Report Card” by the non-partisan group Disability without Poverty.
While the Canada Disability Benefit began its rollout in July 2025, that $200 per month payment remains too little for too few, said the report, which raised Canada’s grade from an “F” in 2024 to a “D” in 2025 only for the CDB.
“Programs where people find disability support through an artistic community really matter because they push back against that idea that only able-bodied, able-minded people deserve beauty,” Shotwell said.
Barriers, despite changes
OCAPDD opened Silver Spring more than four years ago, but the organization itself has been around since 1953.
In the 1960s, when OCAPDD entered a long-term lease with the NCC, the property hosted group homes and community programs for individuals with developmental disabilities.
Ferguson said 22 of the studio’s 250 or so customers lived on site in one of its three group homes: Moffatt House, Campbell House and Charette House.
Ontario closed its last institutions for people with developmental disabilities in 2009 after 133 years of “housing people with disabilities in institutions, away from their families and their communities,” opting for group homes instead, according to an article by academic Ivan Brown in the Journal on Developmental Disabilities.
Some argue that this change hasn’t changed much.
Kendal David, a PhD graduate from Carleton with a research focus on ODSP barriers, said that group homes were still institutions despite being perceived as different.
“They are often smaller. They’re run by non-profits instead of the government. The conditions within them tend to be different. But they are still places where you don’t get any choice over where you live or with whom you live or other facets of your day-to-day life,” David said.
Even those who live independently or with family don’t have easy access to their benefits.
The funding usually comes through either the ODSP or Special Services at Home, another provincial support for families of children under 18 with developmental disabilities, Ferguson said.
“A lot of our individuals don’t have credit cards or any means of potentially putting up a few hundred dollars. It’s not a lot of money for daily life,” Ferguson said.
David agreed. “If you’re struggling to afford food and rent, spending money on art class or a social program is probably low on your priority list,” she said.
The amount of ODSP funding one receives is based on their level of need, said Heather Williams, the studio’s director of supports and services.
But Shotwell believes that this funding — which, according to the provincial government’s website , can be up to $1,436 a month, but often isn’t — as well as barriers to accessing it, reinforces poverty among people with disabilities.
One of the barriers, she said, is a monthly requirement to prove you still need support by re-certifying your disability.
“When their funding gets cut for the next month, they have to figure out what to do. The sheer amount of time that people with disabilities have to spend to access benefits and to keep them is a full-time job,” Shotwell said.
When you add chronic pain or cognitive processing difficulties on top of that, it seems like a near-impossible feat, she added.
Community support
It’s been difficult for the studio to access funding, too, said Ferguson, who is only paid for 35 hours a week, but works closer to 60 hours.
Though she wants to pay volunteers and offer direct billing rather than reimbursement, classes currently cost hundreds of dollars.
So, she said, community support is essential to keeping the studio afloat.
Support has come through the infrastructure of their entire garden-in-progress, which was built by students from St. Paul High School’s Elite Skilled Trades Academy, in collaboration with Local 93, a carpenters’ union.
The garden’s cedar trellises, benches and tables still smelled fresh — the students completed the project at the end of the 2026 school year.
The picnic tables had spaces for wheelchairs in the middle, rather than at the ends, and planters were raised for wheelchair access.
This is all part of the studio’s five-year plan — Ferguson laughed, sitting on a built-in planter bench, that she initially thought of it more as a 25-year plan — to create an entirely accessible garden.
Though it’s only Year 2, the harvest is already part of the studio’s programming.
Glancing over to the onions in their raised, accessible planters, Ferguson noted how well they were doing despite the adapting they did.
The same is true for those inside the studio.
Outside Silver Spring, Ferguson said, customers often need much more support than they do inside it.
Dupuis has been coming to the studio since it opened and now attends every Thursday.
“I like to get out of the apartment so I’m not sitting at home, looking at the four walls,” she said, blushing after her happy birthday serenade.
Her favourite activity is painting, and, though customers can sell their art online and on event days, she prefers to keep hers.
Silver Spring offers two classes per day on weekdays, in three-hour sessions, in hundreds of disciplines.
Ferguson, who has worked in the sector for 45 years, has seen a lot of change.
What she sees now, she said, is the government not supporting social services.
But still, because of community support, she believes the studio is rich regardless.
“I’m getting older. I don’t know if I’m going to be around to see the end of it, but I’m going to try.”
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