Stakeholders

Sustainability Offerings from ARTSBUILD ONTARIO

AB_logo_clrArtsBuild is the only organization in Ontario dedicated to realizing long-term solutions to building, managing and financing the sustainable facilities – like theatres, galleries, concert hall and museums – needed for vibrant cultural activity to flourish in Ontario’s communities.

If you are an arts organization that owns or leases space on a full time basis, or have aspirations (or a firm plan) to create your own space, ArtsBuild can help you with tools, resources and services

A recent focus for ArtsBuild is energy conservation and sustainability. We know many arts organizations want to reduce their energy. To help you achieve that goal, ArtsBuild has partnered with leading nonprofit and private sector organizations to provide you with a new suite of tools, resources and services that can help you to achieve greater energy and cost savings. We invite you to take part in our current offerings.

Online Carbon Footprint Measurement Tool: Free Access, Register Now

Measuring and tracking your facility’s utility usage and emission profile allows you to better understand and report your carbon footprint. ArtsBuild has partnered with CarbonCounted, a nonprofit organization, to offer Ontario’s arts organizations a free subscription to an easy-to-use online Carbon Footprint Measurement Tool.

Developed by CarbonCounted, specifically for the arts sector, the Carbon Footprint Measurement Tool will help you to measure and track your facility’s utility usage and emission profile. It will allow you to identify opportunities for energy efficiencies, compare your facility with others across the province and get the data you need to report your progress in reducing your carbon footprint to key stakeholders.

Through ArtsBuild’s partnership with CarbonCounted and the Government of Canada, this tool is free for Ontario arts organizations for two years. (The regular CarbonCounted subscription fee is $100 per year.)

Register for the Online Carbon Footprint Measurement Tool here

Energy Savings Assessments: Call for Interest

Reducing energy consumption – and our utilities bills – is top of mind for many of us. And every dollar saved can go to our programming!

ArtsBuild has partnered with GLOBE, the energy management subsidiary of our nonprofit partner Housing Services Corp, to deliver an in-person, energy savings assessment tailored to the needs of the arts sector.

GLOBE energy auditors will analyze your utilities bills, make a site visit to assess your facility and help you register for the many incentive programs offered through the Ontario Power Authority and your local utilities providers.

Your personalized energy savings opportunities assessment will show you the things you can do today to reduce your energy consumption, and also the improvements you could make that have the best and fastest paybacks.

With the support of the Government of Canada, ArtsBuild is pleased to offer a subsidy for the Energy Savings Assessment to a limited number of organizations.

Register your interest here for more information so you can benefit from this program.

Sustainable Action and Practice in the Arts with Ian Garrett: Register Now

Join your peers and Ian Garrett, one of North America’s most respected voices on sustainable practices in the performing arts, on April 4th, in an online conversation about operational ecology. By looking at current research and examples, Ian will guide participants through this very timely topic.

By joining this free session, you will learn how to identify key performance indicators around sustainability and the cost/benefit analysis for tackling the low hanging fruit by making simple changes in how you operate will improve your energy efficiency.. Ian will also address some of the possible misconceptions about the ecological impact of the creative sector.

This session, and all of ArtsBuild’s Communities of Interest are intended for those who manage cultural facilities and coordinate across departments.

For more information, please contact Lindsay MacDonald>

About ArtsBuild Ontario

ARTSBUILD ONTARIO
ArtsBuild is the only organization in our province dedicated to realizing long-term solutions to building, managing and financing the sustainable facilities needed for vibrant cultural activity to flourish in Ontario’s communities.

We are involved with over 700 arts organizations across Ontario and together with our industry, nonprofit and government partners, we jointly and cost-effectively develop and deliver innovative tools, services and resources to help arts organizations construct and operate the facilities they need.

www.artsbuildontario.ca
 | @ArtsBuildON | Facebook | LinkedIn

ArtsBuild Ontario
100 Regina Street South, Ste. 325
Waterloo City Centre
Waterloo, Ontario
N2J 4P9

Publication: EUROPE-CHINA CULTURAL COMPASS

This post comes to you from Cultura21

Orientation for Cultural Cooperation Between China and Europe

Free download link at the end of this post !

As a result of the project EUROPE-CHINA CULTURAL COMPASS, a publication is now available, addressing the question of intercultural communication and cooperation. In the framework of an ongoing dialogue between China and Europe, the project was generated from an initiative by partners of EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture) in China, the Goethe-Institut, the British Council, and The Danish Cultural Institute.

Alongside with a glossary with selected intercultural key-vocabulary, the Compass includes  knowledge about the way of working and the cultural background of both countries.

It is intended to make a contribution to the understanding of cultural differences in order to facilitate and improve the cultural cooperation and is targeted both at European and Chinese readers. Exchanges and co-productions between European and Chinese practitioners in all fields of creative culture are supposed to be fostered.

The publication EUROPE-CHINA CULTURAL COMPASS can be seen as an essential tool for further collaboration and as a prelude to the coming Sino-European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. It makes relevant perspectives for cultural cooperation available for European and Chinese stakeholders serves as a knowledge base for cultural managers and players.

Instead of intending to be a ready-made toolkit, it is rather aimed to give an impulse for further exchanges of experience.

EUROPE CHINA CULTURAL COMPASS was commissioned by EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture).

You are able to download the publication for free here:
http://www.eunic-online.eu/node/445

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

ASEF: Publication of the Connect2Culture dossier

This post comes to you from Cultura21

Arts. Environment. Sustainability. How can Culture Make a Difference?

There is a growing awareness that culture and the arts can help dealing with global challenges by means of alternative, creative approaches to pressing problems. Therefore society as well as governmental stakeholders start to see culture as an important value for sustainable development, environment, education, health and social cohesion.

After a four years program investigating the role of arts and culture in society, the Asian Europe Foundation (ASEF) published and presented the Connect2Culture dossier: Arts. Environment. Sustainability. How can Culture Make a Difference? at the ASEF-supported roundtable at the 5th World Summit on Arts and Culture in Melbourne, Australia.

The Connect2Culture programme was initiated in order to answer the question which role culture plays in the global debate on environmental sustainability. In the course of the program, Asian as well as European experts from all fields addressed issues related to art and environmental sustainability through artistic projects, workshops and policy meetings. The program has facilitated bi-regional dialogue and collaboration on the value of culture and the arts.

The resulting dossier is a summary of  ASEF’s work with arts and environment in the last four years and a reflection on the issues raised by the people involved. It constitutes the reaffirmation of culture as the fourth pillar of sustainability and is expected to serve as inspiration for further discussions and cooperation, especially with the imminent United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Brazil in June 2012.
The dossier includes discussion papers from two Connect2Culture projects: Arts, Culture and Sustainability: Visions for the Future and The Art of Sustainable Living: A Creative Approach to Global Social and Environmental Crises. Furthermore it contains a collection of visions for the future, an overview of the ASEF projects as well as a directory of cultural professionals and ASEF partners.

Culture has an instrumental part connecting many areas of human development such as education, human rights, economy, sustainable development, health awareness and environment, as well as science and technology. For David Haley and Jaya Iyer, who held the workshop Climate Leaders: Release Your Creative Powers – How can art enhance our ability to think and act differently? in Bangkok in 2009, it is of high importance to include artists in the global debate: “A dialogue is not so much about generating new knowledge, as it is about changing the way we think.”

As a result of the Connect2Culture programme a strong network of almost 100 professionals in arts and culture was established, which is committed to strengthen the voice of arts and culture. These experts share the belief that the arts and culture sector can play an active role to support the identification of, engagement with and positive adaptation to important changes in our societies.
Ada Wong (politician, environmentalist, educationalist and cultural advocate) is one of the experts that took part in the workshop Arts, Culture and Sustainability: Building Synergies between Asia and Europe held in Copenhagen in 2009. She states:
„While the environmental lobby targets and criticizes governments and vested interests, the arts and cultural sector can work with the people and start,bottom up, from the community. The cultural sector is a natural change agent, instigator and provocateur in paradigm shifts and mindset changes.“

Sacha Kagan (founding coordinator of the international level of Cultura21) points out the challenge that society has to face in dealing with complexity:
“The deep and qualitative complexity of the world does not fit with the clear, coherent, uni-dimensional logic of theories and world views we have learned to design. We have to engage in an unprecedented creative leap towards complexity, which will require giant transdisciplinary advances in all cultural sectors (and especially in arts education and education through art&science) or we will miss the 2050 mark for an “ecological age”.”

As Rosina Gomez-Baeza Tinturé, director of the LABoral Centre for Art and Creative Industries (Spain), stated during the 2009 Connect2Culture project, “The mission of artists is to inspire, educate and engage themselves with society. Creativity is the capacity to produce things that are new and of value; it is the capacity to reach new conclusions and come up with original solutions to problems.”

You are able to download the dossier at:
http://asef.org/index.php/projects/themes/arts-culture/1999-connect2culture-at-the-world-summit-on-arts-and-culture

Further information can also be found here.

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

Rio+20: Ideas for culture

This post comes to you from Cultura21

From the 4th until the 6th of June 2012 the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development or Rio+20 will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It has been 20 years since the first Earth Summit took place and the international community’s attention towards the Rio+20 Summit is growing steadily.
In order to influence the documents for the negotiations, activists and stakeholders have the possibility to participate and send proposals to an „idea box“ that the Secretariat of the Rio+20 Conference has established. The deadline for these submissions is the 1st of November.
Then the Secretariat will elaborate a compilation of the proposals that will be the basis for the zero draft in the negotiations at the Rio+20 Conference.
UCLG (United Cities and Local Governments), the world organization of cities, is preparing a contributions document, which will include (among other issues) the idea of making culture the fourth pillar of sustainable development. The Committee on Culture has been invited to participate in internal meetings to prepare UCLG’s document. The Agenda 21 for culture (2004) and the Policy Statement of Mexico on “Culture: the Fourth Pillar of Sustainable Development” (2010) build the basis for this process.

In order reinforce the message of the UCLG’s Committee on culture, cultural activists, networks and stakeholders on the relation between culture and sustainable development are encouraged to send a message with their ideas to the Secretariat too. The UCLG offers a document that can be used or can give ideas for preparing such a submission. This document can be found here: http://www.agenda21culture.net/docs_circulars/Ideas%20for%20Rio+20%20-%20ENG.pdf
Ideas can be submitted to the Secretariat of the Rio20+ Conference here:
http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/index.php?menu=83

For further information see
http://www.bcncultura.com/agenda21cultura/circular/circular54.html or contact the Secretariat of the Committee on culture: agenda21cultura [at] bcn [dot] cat and +34 933 161 009

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21