History of the Awards

Community Development Programs

We offer services, such as strategic planning, board governance, building leadership capabilities, fund development and grant writing, evaluation, public and stakeholder engagement, developing partnerships, and collaborative relationships that are tailored to your community groups, non-profit organizations, and volunteer teams.

Marketing Beyond Your Core Audience

How do you sell a product few people have heard of, many don’t think they need, and that costs a lot? What happens when your core audience is shrinking and lots of your content is available for free online? Where do you look for new audiences… and how would they find you?

IBPOC Digital Strategy Series

We are excited to announce Phase II of the Digital Strategy for IBPOC Artists and Arts Organizations with support from the Canada Council for the Arts. The Digital Tools Professional Development sessions will bring IBPOC artists and arts organizations together online to develop their digital tools, capacities and strategies with a focus on navigating through and preparing post COVID-19 strategies using digital tools.

3 Steps for Developing a Passionate Nonprofit Board

Your board members are the face of your nonprofit. They’re instrumental ambassadors and advocates within the community, and they ultimately pave the way for your nonprofit to thrive. In other words, keeping board members engaged is imperative to your success.

Arts & Culture Planning 2020 Comeback Sept results

Positive containment and infection reduction in the U.K. reveal more optimism for a 2020 in-person return to performances, while flaring cases in some provinces of Canada decreased optimism as described in Table 1.

Research Findings

In May 2020, Calgary Arts Development undertook a survey of arts organizations in Calgary to better understand and plan for the COVID-19 disruption to the arts, culture, and creative industries. Read the Report.

COVID Confident: Effective Forecasting

September 17, 2020 Whether your venue, tour, exhibition or attraction is already open, or if you are modelling for the future when that moment comes, you may feel that your ticketing, membership/subscription and ancillary forecasts are built on ever-shifting sands. This free webinar will explore different approaches to forecasting, help you to build confidence in your models, and effectively monitor sales trajectories.

Arts Research Monitor Vol 19 no 2 September Issue

In this issue: Insights into the potential return of audiences to cultural activities, based on recent Canadian reports. Note: There are many more Canadian reports on this topic than could be included in this issue, as well as many interesting international studies. Priority was given to the most reliable and most recent Canadian reports at the time of writing.

The September Experience Economy: Understanding consumer behaviors to pivot experiential offerings

Tuesday, September 22, 2020 10:00 AM America/Edmonton As the non-profit sector looks ahead to plan fall events and experiences, leaders in the sector need relevant, timely and actionable data to help guide their planning in our new normal.

New Series: Audiences During the Pandemic

My goal as guest editor of Lynne Conner’s ‘We the Audience’ blog for the next six months is to share and respond to what I’m seeing happening during this Coronavirus/COVID-19 crisis through the lens of the audience.

Arts Leaders Discuss New Cornerstones for Success in a COVID-19 World

On August 13, 2020, SMU DataArts, in partnership with The Wallace Foundation, released a report that suggests the cornerstones of success for arts organizations lie in the alchemy between high-quality programming standards and community relevance. While this deceptively simple statement may reflect universal intentions, executing on it, according to these organizational leaders, takes humility and an intensive investment of resources and time.

The New Experience Economy Wave 1 Results

Stone-Olafson, in collaboration with community partners, developed a long-term research investigation to evaluate how current conditions will reshape Albertans’ attitudes and behaviours towards social and group activities, across a variety of sectors. The purpose of this work is to give leaders of community sports, recreation, arts & culture, professional sports, active living, heritage, tourism or hospitality sectors relevant facts about local audiences that they will need to bring life back to our communities.