ArtsBuild Ontario and the City of Waterloo are pleased to announce the relocation of ArtsBuild Ontario offices to Waterloo City Hall.
“We are thrilled to have ArtsBuild Ontario at City Hall,” said Mayor Brenda Halloran. “When a city is rich in culture, it is attractive to all who work, live and play there. ArtsBuild Ontario’s presence in Waterloo will help solidify and grow our cultural identity.”
[W]elcome to the brand new ArtsBuild Ontario blog! We’re really excited to finally have the chance to write, as we’ve been incredibly busy with several exciting projects. You may be thinking “What exciting projects”? Well, we’re glad you asked because we have a lot to tell you about.
First off, we’re proud to announce the ArtsBuild Ontario Facilities Portal will be launching in early 2012! The Facilities Portal is the first comprehensive and interactive online advocacy tool to centrally house current information about non-profit arts organizations’ current facilities and facilities needs. This is essential information in advocating lobbying for both public and private investment in cultural infrastructure projects. We here at ArtsBuild Ontario will use this information to report accurately on the state of arts facilities in Ontario, thus strengthening and supporting the case for improved arts facilities. That means that the information you and others provide in the Portal will be used to work on your organization’s behalf for more funding from both the public and private sectors!
Stay tuned for announcements about how to register on the Portal — coming soon!
Next up, we have PLAN IT / BUILD IT ready to roll out in March 2012. A capital project is often a once in a lifetime event for an arts organization, so the process of designing and building a new facility is often overwhelming. To help organizations navigate this foreign territory, we’ve developed PLAN IT / BUILD IT as an all-inclusive guide to the planning and implementation of capital projects. It can be used as a big picture way of understanding projects, but also as a very detailed guide to the steps and timings essential to successful projects. Plus it offers a multitude of reference and sample documents such as RFPs, contracts, budgets, proposals, and more for you to use as templates for your own project… extremely helpful stuff!
And last but certainly not least, we’re currently exploring the possibilities of new services and programs, including a natural gas collaborative. Essentially, how this works is the natural gas collaborative would supply members with well-priced gas and cost stability. Revenue generated by the collaborative would be re-invested into the arts sector in the form of a granting fund.
Preliminary results of the recent survey we sent to over 800 arts organizations, arts councils, municipalities, and arts service organizations tell us that the arts sector is very interested in the natural gas collaborative and other programs. Throughout the next few months, we will continue testing interest and demand. We anticipate that by this spring we will have completed our due diligence and final decisions will be made. We’ll keep you posted on this exciting new venture!
As you can see, we’ve been very busy researching, planning and developing new tools to help you meet the facilities needs of your organization in a variety of different ways. We’ll have more good news to tell you about in the coming weeks, so visit us here again soon!
