Dear ArtBridges community partners, friends, readers,

Happy New Year!

Hoping that you have had a chance to rest, replenish, reconnect, and reset!

We look forward to connecting this year! and learning and sharing more about community-engaged arts and arts for social change going on across Canada.

Last year was an exciting one for ArtBridges! Some highlights were:

• ArtBridges changed its organizational model! After 10 great years of growing and developing with the strong support and mentorship of Tides Canada, ArtBridges was designated as a Registered National Arts Service Organization and became a registered charity by Canadian Heritage and the CRA. Thank you to Tides Canada for incubating and building ArtBridges from charitable project, a seedling, into a new organization!
• ArtBridges staff went on 55 site visits in Ontario (marking over 250 site visits across Canada in past 3 years!) to meet community partners and see community-engaged arts initiatives in action. This provided us with enormous insight into how regional location, availability of resources, community needs & issues, culture, and leadership affects why an initiative comes to be and how it is sustained. There are so many inspiring projects and organizations out there! Call us to learn more or connect you!
• We connected with over 395 (and growing!) community-engaged arts initiatives across Canada and added over 40 initiatives to the Map and Profile Directory. Learn more about these amazing initiatives from coast to coast to coast on the Map and Profile Directory (artbridges.ca) and update your initiative’s organization profile any time.
• We uploaded over 250 resources on artbridges.ca – Learning and Resources, and commissioned community partners to write about their unique experiences to share in our Tips and Tools series: “The Stuff of Community Engagement” by Annalee Adair; “Training for Artists Working with Seniors in the Deaf or Disability Communities” by Peter Wolf, H’Art Centre; Creating Indigenous Art Spaces in the City” by artists Aura and Chief Lady Bird.
• We worked hard to keep the information flowing on a daily basis about what’s going on in the field via artbridges.ca, with daily blog posts, Facebook & Twitter, and helped people with special requests—assisting with finding mentorship, connections, supplies, and resources, and writing letters of support, all year!
• As a community partner, ArtBridges assisted the ASC! Project! (Arts for Social Change) with research about community-engaged arts across Canada, so that they could conduct advocacy to increase visibility and resources for initiatives working in the field.
• ArBridges held its 4th Annual Recognition Awards for Remarkable Community-Engaged Arts! There were over 75 submissions for this juried award.

Happy new year!
Please call or write to connect, share stories, ideas, or events.
-ArtBridges team

photo by suppenkasper