Hello fellow creatives! My name is Pat Forrest and I am a volunteer with artPontiac. I help by maintaining our membership list, and I also help with some of the website maintenance as well as sometimes assisting in sending out some of our email communications.
I’m writing to you today to provide an update on a few things happening at artPontiac. As you know this year has been a transitional year. Our President, Stephanie Pete, has been working hard on the organizational aspects of our association and so this newsletter is primarily devoted to that work.
Our most important news is that we have received financial support from Culture Outaouais to engage a consultant to help us restructure artPontiac to be able to meet the current challenges facing arts organizations in todays’ realities. Jane Needles is a well-known arts consultant who specializes in Board Management and Governance, Administration, Marketing, Finance and other areas and has already begun working with us. We are encouraged by her guidance and have now submitted a major grant application to the MRC to further support this restructuring. We will hear the results of this grant in September. In the meantime, we are examining our operational structures and looking closely at all programing areas. Hence the decision was made to close the Stone School and halt all programming for the summer in order to address the problems of how all our programs can run efficiently, and have enough people to manage and oversee the programs, ensuring the maintenance of professional standards and values artPontiac is known for.
At this point, our board would like to take this time to thank two of our past board members that have had to step down due to their own artistic careers taking off so successfully! Thank you to David Perret for being our Vice President. It takes many hands to make an organization work successfully and you will be missed David, but congratulations on your successful endeavours with your sculptural artwork! We also thank Bryan Chen for the incredible work that he has done to create a smoother workflow to the email and cloud storage areas for the association’s committee and board members’ communications. He has also been working incessantly on the financial side which includes our banks, our books and all payments. This has been invaluable work that has not been easy to achieve. Thanks again for all you have done Bryan – your massive effort is greatly appreciated! Congratulations to you as well on your multi-media and instructional art facility that has taken you away from us!
With Bryan’s departure I have now been nominated and accepted onto the board and I sit as your new treasurer. I am working closely with Bryan to get fully up to speed in this role and assure you that things are coming along very well!
A FEW ADDITIONAL THINGS OF INTEREST:
- Here is the bio for Jane Needles, our Arts Administration Consultant:
Jane Needles’ wide experience in the arts covers all disciplines of the cultural world, primarily arts administration and teaching administrative techniques. Her deep involvement with both official language cultures has increased her awareness of their complex diversities.
Currently she is a consultant for the Cultural Human Resources Council, President of the Board of the Dollard Centre for the Arts, Secretary to the Board of the Arts Consultants of Canada, Treasurer of le Centre d’art Rozynski amongst many other involvements with the arts in general. She is the Past Executive Director of the Quebec Drama Federation where she was for seven years and was also President and Treasurer of its Board over the previous fifteen years.
She taught Arts Administration at Bishops’ University over 27 years. She also taught an on-line Arts Management course for the University of Windsor for five years. She is a mentor for Business for the Arts (Mentoring groups across the country), and also for Futurepreneur, Academos, La Machinerie, Diversité artistique Montreal, En Piste and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales, as well as others and acts as private consultant to many entrepreneurial organizations.
We are very pleased to be able to work with Jane!
- artPontiac is made up of many members with many different interests and activities in the field of art. We’d like to help promote our members’ activities in upcoming newsletters. If you will be attending an art show/event, having a solo show, or if you have a studio or teach an art class we’d like to hear from you. Please send your info to members@artpontiac.com.
- We’re looking for a volunteer to act as a gathering point for info received from our members that relates to info they’d like to share with our membership in our future newsletters. Once info is forwarded (unformatted) to the communications person it is then formatted and sent out via our email service. This is an easy and straightforward task and if you have some time to volunteer we would greatly appreciate it!
- Let’s make art! On Saturday August 10th let’s get together in the Stone School kitchen and make art! This is simply a gathering of artists that would like to get together and create and network with each other. Make sure to bring everything you need (art supplies, coffee or tea, snacks and a positive creative attitude!) This event will be for members and anyone that may be interested in becoming a member in the future. So join me in this activity starting at 10am until 12pm or so, and create or just network together for a few hours. No reservation required – just show up at 10!
- We are looking for more Board members to join us as we move forward into our restructuring phase. A love and passion for the arts is the major qualification we seek, and also a desire to see artPontiac thrive and flourish as a flagship organization for our mission of promoting, defending and developing our membership and beyond.
- Consider adding your name to our volunteer list – many hands make light work. Please visit https://artpontiac.com/en/volunteerwithus/
artPontiac has been a catalyst for artists of all levels over the past 30+ years and our major goal now as a Board is to examine the structure and address issues that have evolved over the recent past, and in doing this, rekindle the interest of the community to rebuild and recreate the respected mission of artPontiac. Let us not forget that we have committed to promote, defend and develop the social, artistic and professional interests of its members and to contribute to the cultural development of the Pontiac.
We need you to help and support us in this work. Please contact me or Stephanie Pete to let us know what you can do – we cannot do it alone. Our newsletters will be more frequent now, to let you know what we have accomplished. This period of time is one of restructuring so artPontiac can serve you all better and more consistently,
Creatively Yours,
Pat Forrest