Wednesday, Jan. 31
Catherine Shepertycki with the city's Arts Development Cultural Services has been kind enough to keep me in the loop on some developments with incredible potential to boost municipal spending on culture.
The recently developed Arts Investment Strategy and Festivals Sustainability Plan will be presented to the powers that be tomorrow. The wise people who developed these hugely important reports will be urging that the Community and Protective Services Committee recommend that City Council:
- increase municipal arts, festival, fair and special event funding
- expand advocacy directed to senior levels of government aimed to increase provincial and federal funding for local arts and festival organizations
- increase cultural partnerships that include the local arts and festival sector, the National Capital Commission, the City of Gatineau and federal cultural institutions in Ottawa
- increase partnerships between local arts, festival, fair and special event organizations and the private sector
- analyze the feasibility of developing an Arts Stabilization Project for Ottawa, and an Ottawa Arts Investment Service including an Arts Endowment Fund
- increase integration of Ottawa’s local festivals, fairs and special events into Ottawa Tourism’s annual destination marketing program
- develop a policy for “in-kind” and invoiced services provided to festivals, fairs and special events
- amend the City of Ottawa’s current sponsorship policy to accommodate community requests.
And, more specifcally:
- Consider, during the 2007 budget process, an increased municipal funding plan of $2.5M for local arts, festivals, fairs and special events over a four-year time period
- Reistate the Festival, Fairs and Special Events funding program ($713,000) be reinstated, as identified in, and subject to approval of, the 2007 Draft Budget
Tony
