The City of Guelph is excited to be one of only five communities selected to participate in the 2011/12 artsVest Ontario program.
The program will offer free sponsorship training to help Guelph’s cultural organizations build mutually beneficial partnerships with the business community. Cultural organizations will also be invited to apply to artsVest for a total of $50K in matching incentive grants. When matched with sponsorship from the local business community, artsVest has the potential to flow more than $100,000 in funding to Guelph’s cultural sector.
“We see great value in this program as a means of further strengthening our municipal cultural planning and development,” said Mayor Karen Farbridge. “With the support of the Guelph Chamber of Commerce and the Guelph Arts Council, we can develop valuable partnerships to connect business and arts in our community.”
“From a business perspective we see a huge benefit to supporting arts and culture in Guelph,” said Lloyd Longfield, President and CAO, Guelph Chamber of Commerce.
Guelph’s participation in the artsVest program builds on a series of cultural capacity-building initiatives launched by the City in the last year. Some of them include the Artscape Creative Spaces project, a Public Art Policy, and support of Canada’s Culture Days activities in Guelph this fall.
“We know that artsVest has been a transformative experience for many other communities and we’re thrilled for the opportunity to bring this program to Guelph to help vitalize our community’s cultural assets,” said Colleen Clack, the City’s General Manager of Arts Culture and Entertainment. The City established the Arts, Culture & Entertainment division to consolidate and advance cultural planning and initiatives, and to bring together the resources, programming and management of River Run Centre, Sleeman Centre, Guelph Museums and the new Market Square.
artsVest Guelph will launch officially at City Hall in Guelph on July 14 at 5 p.m.
About artsVest
artsVest is a flagship initiative of Canada’s Business for the Arts, a national non-profit organization of business leaders dedicated to increasing partnerships between business and the arts. The program sparks business sponsorship of arts and culture and bolsters municipal cultural planning.