Collaborate with Other Community-Engaged Arts Initiatives
Why collaborate with other community-engaged arts initiatives in Canada? You will
- Help build a Canada-wide community of arts for social change enthusiasts
- Be inspired by others in different cities, provinces or territories
- Discover new ideas, lessons learned, reasons for success, how others overcame challenges, and promising practices
- Share resources, such as studio space, policies, forms, procedures, toolkits, etc.
- Pool strengths and talents and come up with stronger, more cost-efficient creative projects
- Connect with established initiatives to learn from their experiences and successful practices
- Learn new approaches and trends in community-engaged arts practices
- Capitalize on the belief that there is “strength in numbers” and “two heads are better than one”
ArtBridges/ToileDesArts’ can help connect you with community arts initiatives across Canada. Contact us to start making those connections!
Ways you can collaborate:
- As a startup community arts initiative, connect with an established initiative that’s similar to yours
- Become a mentor for a startup community arts initiative and share your expertise and material
- Create an event, art exhibit or multidisciplinary performance with other community-engaged arts initiatives
- Share a studio space with another community arts initiative and defray rental costs
- Create a ‘sister’ community with another community arts initiative in a different province/territory to share ideas, issues and mutual guidance
Collaboration in action
RaY (Winnipeg), the Murphy Centre for Community Youth Arts, (St. John’s) and ArtHeart (Toronto)
- RaY, a street-level agency working with homeless youth in Winnipeg, asked ArtBridges/ToileDesArts’ who to talk with for advice about setting up an arts-based pre-employment program for street-involved youth. We led them to: The Murphy Centre for Community Youth Arts in St. John’s, Street Culture Kidz Project in Regina and ArtHeart in Toronto –- all agencies that had experience in providing this kind of service.
University of Ottawa’s Education Students (Ottawa)
- Students at the University of Ottawa needed to conduct a fundraising benefit event for their studies in Education. They reached out to ArtBridges/ToileDesArts’ and asked what community-engaged arts initiatives worked with at-risk children and youth in the Ottawa area to be a recipient of the event. ArtBridges/ToileDesArts directed the lead student to four initiatives and shared fundraising event planning information with her. The benefit raised over $1,000.
Artscan Circle, Mamow Sha-way-gi-kay-win: North-South Partnership for Children (Ontario)
- “ArtBridges/ToileDesArts’ has connected us with Aboriginal Organizations and other connections to art stores, etc. Cora-Rae connected us with Michael Cywink, who attended and created a mural with the youth at our showcase. ArtBridges/ToileDesArts’ also connected us with ArtsCan Circle who lended [sic] 20 paintings to showcase at our event. ArtBridges/ToileDesArts’ has even offered to continue posting about SYiM on a monthly basis and update on the work that our youth are doing. We could not be happier with our relationship with ArtBridges/ToileDesArts’ [they] have really gone above and beyond to support our campaign and especially support our youth in the north. Miigwetch.” - Lauren Akbar, Youth Engagement Coordinator, Mamow Sha-way-gi-kay-win: North-South Partnership for Children
