Event: Upcoming Conference hosted by Common Weal Community Arts Inc. May 14-16

“Connect: towards a socially-engaged aesthetic”

Click here for the brochure!

Register by mail before April 30, 2010

Common Weal is a community arts organization in Saskatchewan.

Why “ArtBridge?” : An Art Student’s Perspective

I’m a Drawing and Painting Student at Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, and I’m the Youth Social Network Assistant at ArtBridges. From my perspective ArtBridging is a valuable tool. In fact, being a part of ArtBridges can be a metaphor for attending an art college or university.

As an artist, whether or not I go to school, I’ll be able to develop my talents and create. But learning in a vacuum is pretty inefficient, not to mention boring. Without my professors, my peers and the supplies that an art school can afford when we pile all our resources together, I wouldn’t have been able to reach the level of art-making that I’m at now.  When creating at school I’m aware of myself in terms of a group, and only then can I be an individual. When you’re alone you always think you’re original but when you end up seeing what everyone else is doing it’s shockingly similar to what you thought was original to you. Great minds think alike, sometimes a group of people have similar innate ideas but they’re only powerful if you work together to take these ideas to the next level and put them into action.

The starving, isolated artist is a very old and tired cliche that doesn’t hold up any more. Art wouldn’t be able to blossom

Profile: Common Weal Community Arts Inc. (Saskatchewan)

Common Weal Community Arts Inc. is a charitable community arts organization founded in 1993 with Rachael Van Fossen as Artistic Director.  Its mandate is to engage artists collaboratively with communities to promote social change and cultural identity.  Common Weal works with many different communities throughout Saskatchewan and does not maintain a studio space on a regular basis.  Offices are based in Regina and Prince Albert. The participants of programs often come from marginalized communities.  Common Weal helps to give them a voice through artistic practices.

Common Weal’s language of service is primarily English.  They work with people of all ages, with an average number of participants in all programs of 800 per year.  Hours of operation are flexible, depending on the project.  Common Weal works in all disciplines including drama, visual arts, video, photography, with the art practice geared towards the best way of working with the community and the discipline of the contracted artist.

Common Weal has three full-time permanent staff. Depending on budgets, they often hire two part-time staff, and will contract with approximately 25 artists per year depending on the projects undertaken.  Approximately 20 volunteers are involved on a yearly basis.

Profile: Arts Network for Children and Youth (ANCY)

Arts Network for Children and Youth (ANCY) was founded in 2001 by Linda Albright. It is a national community arts resource, specific to children and youth arts based programs in the community and primarily outside of the school.   Its mandate is to 1.  conduct community development, 2. influence policy and affect change within the children’s and youth art sector  3. be an arts service organization in order to enable cultural progress.

ANCY has been instrumental in getting small pockets of funding for the arts sector for children and youth ( for example: ArtReach Toronto.) It has numerous active collaborative partnerships. ANCY sits on several national and provincial boards where it shares reports about what’s happening in the sector; the challenges, as well as progress. ANCY reaches politicians, elected officials, and policy staff.  It networks people so that they can connect with and mentor each other within the sector.  Reports and case studies can be found on the ANCY website.

ANCY’s outreach mandate is to source resources in order  for children and youth to get more access to arts at the local level. It also seeks to facilitate greater awareness in the field. As an established community art resource with years of knowledge and experience, it is interested in partnering or doing outreach with other community arts projects/programs/organizations/resources. ANCY’s catchment area is national in scope.  It  actively contributes at forums, conferences, round tables and meetings both federally and provincially.

Bonjour d’Alexa de la part de ToileDesArts

Bonjour à tous et bienvenue à notre site!

C’est ma cinquième semaine ici à ToileDesArts et nous avons déjà trouvé au Québec environ 25 projets, programmes et organismes et 15 répertoires d’information francophones en art communautaire. Montréal, la ville innovatrice, tient la plupart du compte, mais nous avons aussi trouvé plusieurs histoires intéressantes aux alentours de la plus grande ville du Québec, ainsi qu’au nord du Québec, Nunavik.

Un projet qui m’a marquée est le Wapikoni Mobile, une caravane qui part 12 fois par année à voyager à travers une douzaine de communautés aboriginales à l’intérieur du Québec. Les voyages durent un mois chaque et aident les jeunes aboriginales à apprendre la création de vidéo et de musique.

Comme étudiante à l’Université York à Toronto, Ontario, en arts communautaire, arts visuels ainsi qu’en études de l’environnement, je trouve que c’est incroyable qu’il y a tant de projets formidables tels le Wapikoni Mobile qui se passent à travers notre pays mais qui passent sans connaissance à nous tous. Nous avons tant à apprendre.

Puisque je suis née à Ottawa et ma langue maternelle est le français, je trouve que c’est surtout important de connaître ce qui se passe en arts communautaires au Canada afin de préserver notre langue et notre culture.

Présentement nous continuons notre chemin virtuel à travers le Canada pour explorer le Nouveau Brunswick, la seule province qui est officiellement bilingue. J’ai hâte de voir ce que nous allons trouver!

ArtBridges’ first year activities and achievements: Happy 1st Birthday!

· On January 29^th, 2009 ArtBridges was accepted as an official project of Tides Canada Initiatives.

· We visited the founders and directors, Steven Durland and Linda Frye Burnham, of the Community Arts Network (USA) in North Carolina to research and learn about the resources they provide with their similar service.

· We audited a second-year course at York University: Community Arts for Social Change to learn the academic influences and perspectives of the field. We also formed a community partnership between ArtBridges and York’s Community Arts Program.

· We developed a multi-phase strategic plan for the creation of the ArtBridges website.

· We formed an Advisory Board.

· 7 part-time contract positions were created and filled to carry out the first phase of activities of our strategic plan.

· We have begun conducting needs assessments and surveys through site visits to community art centres in Toronto.

· We spent five months mapping (telephoning and researching) community arts centres/programs/projects/resources across each province and territory of Canada. We identified over 300 community arts centres/programs/projects/resources across the country in under-resourced communities.