ArtBridges presented at Arts Network for Children and Youth: Creative Communities for Children and Youth Symposium at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto.

ArtBridges’ Project Director participated in a week-long session at Wasan Island with a “group of approximately 20 cultural workers, artists, resiliency thinkers, funders, and socially engaged individuals (…) to share knowledge, and to build greater awareness of socially engaged artistic practices, drawing on examples from around the world; and to draft a position paper on the role that the arts must play to increase resiliency in cities” by the Musagetes Foundation, The J. W. McConnell Family Foundation, and The Breuninger Foundation.

ArtBridges conducted two presentations at York University to 2nd and 4th year Community Arts Practice students about the ArtBridges hub and its resources and services, to raise awareness with students.

ArtBridges facilitated an “ArtBridging” interactive workshop and was on a panel at a conference: Dream Big Northern Conference for the Arts in North Bay, ON. The conference brought together artists and arts organizations (community-engaged initiatives, councils, galleries, etc.) from across northern Ontario. ArtBridges was part of panel (Making Connections Through Technology) and facilitated a workshop for “increasing your network.” The workshop also provided valuable insight into the issues and topics with which initiatives in northern Ontario need support.

At the Michaelle Jean Foundation’s 3rd Annual Power of the Arts National Forum at Carleton University in Ottawa, ArtBridges delivered a bilingual presentation called “New Technologies and Social Change.” Attendees included the US Ambassador to Canada, Cultural Envoy, and Jean Daniel Lafond.

ArtBridges was invited to be a on panel about being a project that is both a client of a shared platform and providing platform services to other arts projects. This was hosted by a consortium of arts funders — the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Trillium Foundation, and Metcalf Foundation and held at the Arts and Letters Club.

ArtBridges presented in a webinar for the Ontario Arts Council in both French and English about the value of having an online presence and how to write about and document your arts education project for the web, tips and strategies about amplifying impact, leveraging your work and examples of how ArtBridges shares stories about community-engaged arts and arts education projects from across Ontario and Canada.

ArtBridges conducted a presentation to students in OCAD University’s Art and Social Minor Program.

ArtBridges presented about current priorities and trends in the field at the Art of Changing the World Conference on: knowledge-sharing and dialogue on the landscape of community-engaged art in Canada (Ottawa); and at CAPACOA: The Culture of Community – Hand in Hand: Community Engagement and Community-Engaged Arts Practice, Ottawa. ArtBridges staff also participated in a roundtable discussion with Mélanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage (Montréal), and presented to the Fine Arts Society of Milton (Milton).

ArtBridges’ Project Director was the notetaker at the Mass Culture Gathering in Thunder Bay about Impacts, Challenges, and Collective Capacity of Community-Engaged Arts/Artists Working in the Rural, Remote and First Nation Contexts of Northern Ontario.