Where the quiet work of growing begins.
Spore Symposium is a community mycology lab — a calm, shared place with the equipment, the supplies at cost, and the people to help your cultures thrive.
Not sure yet? Day passes and hardship rates keep the door open for everyone.
A makerspace, but for mycelium.
Sterile technique, good equipment, and community are the three things every home grower eventually hits a wall on. We put all three under one roof and split the cost.
Equipment you can't justify alone
A laminar flow hood, autoclave, and lab-grade microscopes cost thousands. Split across members, they cost a membership.
Materials at cost
Grain, substrate, agar, jars, filters — bought in bulk and passed on at cost, with no markup. You pay what we pay.
People, not just forums
Someone in the room has already contaminated the plate you're about to. Ask them. Workshops, open benches, shared notes.
Where land meets water.
We're setting up in Toronto's Port Lands — a quiet, half-wild edge of the city where the harbour meets the sky and a new island of parkland is rising from the mouth of the Don. It's the kind of place fungi belong: on the threshold between the built world and the growing one.
Our first home is part of the Port Lands' interim community — an affordable, characterful launch site while the waterfront transforms around us. Come grow at the edge of the water.
We're a mission-driven community lab. Membership goes back into equipment, space, and access — supplies at cost, not marked up.
Spore Symposium exists so curiosity about fungi doesn't stop at the price of a flow hood. We run as a social enterprise: what we take in keeps the lab open and the door wide.