Having your community behind your facility project is essential and there are a number of ways to get them engaged. Jeremy Freiburger, Chief Connector at CoBalt Connects, explores innovative ways to get the conversation going in Engaging Your Community In Your Creative Space, the fourth module of LEARN IT | BUILD IT | MANAGE IT.
CoBalt Connects is a nonprofit organization based in Hamilton, Ontario. CoBalt acts as the connecting element for creative communities and helps organizations interact successfully with their municipalities.
Jeremy has been a leader in Hamilton’s creative community for almost 15 years. After studying theatre and music at McMaster University and the American Music and Dramatic Academy (NYC), Jeremy returned to Hamilton and has worked at a number of the community’s major arts institutions. His experience ranges from touring the country as a musician to producing international calibre ballet, to developing studio facilities, to writing policy, plans and funding applications for municipalities and organizations. At CoBalt Connects, Jeremy focuses primarily on regional and municipal partnership development and creative sector development.
In the workshop, Jeremy will present new ways to engage your community before, during and after your facility project so that community support and involvement is built in from the ground up.
Jeremy explains a few ways creative spaces can engage their community:
You can hear Jeremy’s presentation at the LEARN IT | BUILD IT | MANAGE IT workshops in Town of Blue The Blue Mountains, Orillia, London and Pickering.
For workshop dates, registration and information, visit us here.
Tons of great workshops and webinars from ArtsBuild are coming your way this fall! So open up your schedules – here’s a complete list of what we have in store for our arts organizations over the next few months.
Is your creative space on SpaceFinder? Join us for this free one hour webinar on SpaceFinder’s online booking features. This is an opportunity to learn how the online calendar, booking request forms and booking engine can compliment your space booking process and get your space noticed!
Nov. 4 & 5 – LEARN IT | BUILD IT | MANAGE IT: Town of The Blue Mountains Workshop
All arts nonprofits in Town of The Blue Mountains and the surrounding area are invited to attend the two day workshop. Hosted by The Blue Mountains Public Library, the workshop will take place at the Leonard E. Shore Memorial Library (173 Bruce Street South). Registration includes access to both workshop days, catered lunch, online workshop materials and post-workshop Q&A sessions.
Covering the same material as the webinar, this free workshop is a great chance for SpaceFinder Toronto users to learn in-person how the site’s online booking features work. Discover how you can take advantage of SpaceFinder’s online calendar, booking request forms and booking engine.
Nov. 17 & 18 – LEARN IT | BUILD IT | MANAGE IT : Orillia
Thanks to the generous support from the County of Simcoe, the first 20 registrants for this workshop receive a $30 discount on their registration! All arts nonprofits in Orillia and the surrounding area are encouraged to register for this valuable two day workshop. The workshop will take place at the Orillia Public Library (36 Mississauga Street West). Registration includes access to both workshop days, catered lunch, online workshop materials and post-workshop Q&A sessions.
Dec. 1 – Dollars to $ense: Energy Conservation Workshop
Designed specifically for arts facilities, nonprofits can learn energy basics and discover cost-saving opportunities from the experts. Whether you’re involved in a new build, renovation or ongoing maintenance in your facility, Energy Conservation can help you realize potential savings – and this workshop will help you understand how!
Part of Ontario Present’s Webinar Series for Arts, this free one-hour webinar will focus on what energy efficiency changes/strategies would be most relevant to the performing arts sector in Ontario. Facitators include ArtsBuild’s very own Director of Programs, Lindsay Golds and Andrea Dwight, Principal with BLUE SKY Engineering.
But why should your arts organization know about more about facilities? Other than learning about the tools and resources you need to build, finance, manage and win community support when it comes to your creative space, here’s our top five reasons we think you should attend a LEARN IT | BUILD IT | MANAGE IT workshop this year.
You asked and we delivered. This two day workshop is designed based on the needs expressed at our Sustainable Creative Spaces Sessions. These sessions were held in eight Ontario communities in 2013 and involved local leaders in conversations around creating spaces they needed for vibrant cultural activity in their community. We also discussed the challenges they faced in developing and maintaining these spaces. In response, LEARN IT | BUILD IT | MANAGE IT is centred around four key topics: Building New Facilities, Financing Options for Non-Profit Spaces, Managing Sustainable Facilities, and Engaging Your Community in Your Non-Profit Space.
It’s a great networking opportunity. Meet other non-profits in your community and share experiences. One participant said that “it was relaxed, gave us time to talk to other arts groups…the chance to network was priceless.” Gain perspective on your building projects through the stories of others in addition to the examples provided by our topic experts. Speaking of experts…
Knowledgeable and approachable experts. Our four presenters cover everything from financing projects to winning community support. While you’re grabbing a morning coffee or eating lunch, feel free to sit down, chat up an expert and gain further insight about your creative space projects.
Online resources. Following the workshop series, ArtsBuild Ontario will post all workshop materials online. You’ll get access to all topic areas covered in the workshop, so when you present facility ideas to your organization or revisit your workshop notes, these online resources will be there to help.
It gets you excited about the future of your creative space. Your creative space is a hub unique to your organization and its services. Each presentation will open up new ideas and resources to help you make your space more sustainable, manageable and engaging to the community around you.
LEARN IT | BUILD IT | MANAGE IT is coming to five more cities between now and 2016. We’ll be travelling to Sudbury, Town of Blue Mountains and Orillia this fall, and announcing dates for Pickering in the coming weeks.
Have you been thinking about your arts facility lately? Exploring Resource Library is a great way to get the wheels turning. Resource Library is a living library, which means we’re always adding new articles, case studies and guides about arts facilities for your arts organization to access in one location. Whether you’re planning an entirely new build or making a small upgrade, Resource Library is a free and reliable place to start.
This is an incredibly valuable guide for directors and managers of arts organizations developing capital projects. The Fit for the Future Guide will help you integrate environmental sustainability into your capital project plans. It focuses mainly on larger capital projects and the redevelopment of existing buildings and infrastructure, but it’s also relevant to smaller capital projects and new builds.
A great discussion about questions often asked when tackling building projects in city-owned arts facilities — and in this case, theatres are in the spotlight. This article covers five different approaches (and their respective perks and challenges) when it comes to building operations. Take a look and see what’s working for independent nonprofits, government run facilities, user-run facilities, school and college run facilities and fee for service facility managers.
Looking to learn more about reserve funds for your building? This article is a great place to start. With the constant need for arts organizations to secure financing, facility repairs often fall through the cracks. Planning ahead for the future needs of your facility over a long period of time can prevent financial strain when surprise building repairs come up. This article will definitely get you thinking about the benefits of creating a capital reserve fund.
ArtsBuild is very excited to be project partners with CoBalt Connects and Fractured Atlas in bringing SpaceFinder to Hamilton, Ontario. Following the success of SpaceFinder Toronto, Hamilton is the second city in Canada to offer this proven tool to its creative community. We thought we would share local leader CoBalt Connect’s latest blog post on what inspired them to invest in SpaceFinder for Hamilton.
If you are interested in bringing SpaceFinder to your city or region, feel free to contact our Director of Programs, Lindsay MacDonald at lindsay@artsbuildontario.ca.
Culture + Space
Cobalt Connects was originally founded as the Imperial Cotton Centre for the Arts back in 2004, and the work that informed our inception was started well before that as a project of the Hamilton Arts Council. After dozens of interviews with artists we created an artist-specific shopping list of space needs at the time.
How high do you like your ceilings? Do you use 3 phase-powered kilns? What makes a passable sprung floor? Do you require ventilation? Are you noisy? What neighbourhoods do you care for? What can you afford?
Out of this research we created an organization to address a physical space gap for the arts community – which led to focusing our attention on one address (270 Sherman) for the better part of 7 years. Here, we learned a lot about making space, activating it, and the amazing people (artist and not) who would engage in this environment.
Our learning has taken us in some pretty exciting directions over the years. We continued to develop spaces here in Hamilton (4 buildings and counting), but also act as advisors to community builders in other cities and towns throughout Ontario.
After spending 5 years getting the Studios at Hotel Hamilton on its feet we decided it was a time for change. Cobalt would no longer be an organization interested in a single space. We would now focus on what we call a continuum of space in Hamilton for creative people.
This means we need 300 square foot studios on James, and 4000 square foot shops on Sherman, theatres in the North, retail on Locke and Ottawa, church basements across the city, and stadiums… we won’t go there. For our sector to thrive we need cheap and dirty, swank and polished, free and weird, secular and sacred, and all points inbetween. Artists and creative people thrive uniquely – so we need a continuum of space that allows you to choose your moment and the space that matches it.
This is why we’ve brought SpaceFinder to Hamilton. In partnership with the City of Hamilton,ArtsBuild Ontario, and a super cool organization called Fractured Atlas from the US – it’s finally real. A project we’ve been watching since its beginnings in Philadelphia has now crossed the border and Hamilton is the second city to hop on with Cobalt at the helm.
SpaceFinder is building right now. It’s a free (and always will be free) online directory where space that is open to creative use can be listed, searched, and even rented on the spot. Presently we have about 40 published spaces that range from dance studios to store fronts, churches to historic sites. Another 20 are being worked on in the background. Our goal is 100 by September, 200 by December.
If you have space this is an amazing free tool to help you increase revenue, engagement, and creative output. If you’re hunting for a next festival venue, need a place to paint that next mural commission, or have a Fringe play to rehearse – this site is for you. It’s for all of you.
Having your community behind your facility project is essential and there are a number of ways to get them engaged. Jeremy Freiburger, Chief Connector at CoBalt Connects, explores innovative ways to get the conversation going in Engaging Your Community In Your Creative Space, the fourth module of LEARN IT | BUILD IT | MANAGE IT.
