Happy New Year community arts partners, friends and blog viewers!

While I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, I do make commitments to new activities periodically through the year whenever inspiration strikes!

Inspiration did indeed strike at a few points last week—even in between bouts of a side-splitting cough (no joke, I tore a muscle!), a rerun of Mrs. Doubtfire and hikes up Turkey Roost Road in knee-high snow with my dog jumping up all over me. Nothing like a good Canadian winter to get the creative juices flowing!

Anyhow, one of my new commitments is to write a blog post each Friday that summarizes the activities and new things we learn about here at ArtBridges/ToileDesArts over the week from our community arts friends and partners from across the country and to ask you for your thoughts too!

I talked with my colleagues, Cora and Lisa, about this the other day and they think it’s a great idea—in general, we’d like to post more stories from the field!

So, here we go!:

• This week in the ArtBridges/ToileDesArts office we are picking up where we left off before the holidays. First priorities!: turning on the heat, watering plants and buying coffee and cream. So with coffee in hand…
• Cora is back reaching out to First Nations groups that are doing community arts-based work and asking for organizational profiles to share on our blog. She heard from ArtCirq—a truly amazing arts group up in Igloolik, a communty of about 1500 people. Check out Thursday’s blog.
• We are meeting with VIUU Inc. – our web development team and nailing down the wireframe and navigation for the new ArtBridges/ToileDesArts website we are working on. This is a huge learning curve for us, it’s challenging, but, it will be worth it!
• We posted an ad for a development officer on CharityVillage to help us with setting up fees-for-service/membership fees and the beginnings of an association. Yes, we have to go this route, to supplement revenue.
• We re-hired our fundraiser—as this piece can never afford to rest for an emerging organization.
• We found out that ArtBridges/ToileDesArts will be used in a case study for an OCAD-U Masters Program project this winter!
• We got our 100th daily blog subscriber on Wednesday! (I know, small potatoes—but, you have to celebrate the small stuff too! And we do value our blog subscribers—you! In fact, if you haven’t subscribed, as thousands of readers haven’t, please do! See top right corner of our blog).

How about you? Are you inspired with any new commitments in your community arts work or in art-making this new year? Write in and tell me!: sconnell@artbridges.ca

-Seanna Connell,
Project Director of ArtBridges/ToileDesArts