Great news!  After months of research, planning and development, the ArtsBuild Ontario Facilities Portal is almost here!  We’re so excited about this helpful tool and the possibilities it holds that we’ve arranged sneak previews across Ontario over the next few weeks.

Just like the Portal itself, the previews are FREE, so if you are an arts organization, municipal employee or stakeholder, come out and join us as we show you how to explore and best take advantage of this dynamic tool.

January 20, 2012 – Wellington, Ontario

3pm to 4:30pm

Wellington and District Community Centre
111 Belleville Street
For more information and to register for free visit http://aboprinceedwardcounty.eventbrite.ca/.

January 26, 2012 – Wawa, Ontario

2:30pm to 4pm

Michipicoten Memorial Community Centre
3 Chris Simon Drive
For more information and to register for free visit http://abowawa.eventbrite.ca/.

February 3, 2012 – Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario

2:45pm to 4:30pm

Waterloo Region Museum
10 Huron Road
For more information and to register for free visit http://aboregionofwaterloo-efbevent.eventbrite.ca/.

February 8, 2012 – Caledon East, Ontario

3pm to 4pm

Caledon Community Complex
6215 Old Church Road
For more information and to register for free visit http://aboheadwaters.eventbrite.ca/.

February 16, 2012 – Elora, Ontario

3pm to 4:30pm

75 Melville Street

For more information and to register for free contact http://abocentrewellington.eventbrite.ca.

More locations will be added shortly, so check back soon.  We look forward to connecting with you at these demonstrations!

On Thursday, February 2, 2012, we’ll be attending a very exciting event in Brampton.  The city is hosting a Creative Economy Summit to promote awareness of the creative economy and Brampton’s role within it.  The goal is to educate and define the creative economy by sharing information and best practices and creating a networking environment for its members.

As if that isn’t already enough incentive to attend, there are also two very interesting keynote speakers confirmed: Jian Ghomeshi and Tim Jones. Jian Ghomeshi an award-winning broadcaster, writer, musician and producer. Tim Jones is the President and CEO of Artscape, a non-profit organization that makes space for creativity and transforms communities.  Additional speakers are set to be announced shortly.

You might have noticed that this Summit and our upcoming Facilities Portal have a common goal of bringing the arts world together to engage in knowledge sharing, so of course we are eager to participate.  We’ll have a booth set up in the Atrium during breaks, so be sure to stop in to learn more and to catch a sneak preview of the Facilities Portal in action!

For more information and to register for FREE, visit http://www.brampton.ca/en/Business/edo/Pages/CreativeEconomySummit.aspx.

Welcome to the brand new ArtsBuild Ontario blog! We’re really excited to finally have the chance to write, as we’ve been incredibly busy with several exciting projects. You may be thinking “What exciting projects”? Well, we’re glad you asked because we have a lot to tell you about.

First off, we’re proud to announce the ArtsBuild Ontario Facilities Portal will be launching in early 2012! The Facilities Portal is the first comprehensive and interactive online advocacy tool to centrally house current information about non-profit arts organizations’ current facilities and facilities needs. This is essential information in advocating lobbying for both public and private investment in cultural infrastructure projects. We here at ArtsBuild Ontario will use this information to report accurately on the state of arts facilities in Ontario, thus strengthening and supporting the case for improved arts facilities. That means that the information you and others provide in the Portal will be used to work on your organization’s behalf for more funding from both the public and private sectors!

Stay tuned for announcements about how to register on the Portal — coming soon!

Next up, we have PLAN IT / BUILD IT ready to roll out in March 2012. A capital project is often a once in a lifetime event for an arts organization, so the process of designing and building a new facility is often overwhelming. To help organizations navigate this foreign territory, we’ve developed PLAN IT / BUILD IT as an all-inclusive guide to the planning and implementation of capital projects. It can be used as a big picture way of understanding projects, but also as a very detailed guide to the steps and timings essential to successful projects. Plus it offers a multitude of reference and sample documents such as RFPs, contracts, budgets, proposals, and more for you to use as templates for your own project… extremely helpful stuff!

And last but certainly not least, we’re currently exploring the possibilities of new services and programs, including a natural gas collaborative. Essentially, how this works is the natural gas collaborative would supply members with well-priced gas and cost stability. Revenue generated by the collaborative would be re-invested into the arts sector in the form of a granting fund.

Preliminary results of the recent survey we sent to over 800 arts organizations, arts councils, municipalities, and arts service organizations tell us that the arts sector is very interested in the natural gas collaborative and other programs. Throughout the next few months, we will continue testing interest and demand. We anticipate that by this spring we will have completed our due diligence and final decisions will be made. We’ll keep you posted on this exciting new venture!

As you can see, we’ve been very busy researching, planning and developing new tools to help you meet the facilities needs of your organization in a variety of different ways. We’ll have more good news to tell you about in the coming weeks, so visit us here again soon!