PHILOSOPHY
Our philosophy endorses the Earth Charter as an ethical framework for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society in the 21st century. It seeks to inspire in all people a new sense of global interdependence and shared responsibility for the well-being of the whole human family, the greater community of life, and future generations. It is a vision of hope and a call to action.
APPROACH
Our approach is social networking to attract, build and connect Creatives & Changemakers to gather at community centers, co-working spaces, incubators and accelerators for referrals to training programs.
The Art Party has grown an audience of +10,000 social media contacts with +1000 Mailchimp contacts for workshops and talks. We have a track record of audience / volunteers / partnerships development since 2010.
PROGRAM
The Art Party has co-produced and co-promoted over 30 workshops, talks, networking events and group exhibitions with our Facebook Page (2013-2020). Speakers and trainers had backgrounds in sales, marketing and copywriting. Examples of the speakers are on our Facebook Group Learning Guides (2019-2021).
The Art Party has been promoting group exhibitions / fundraisers of local artists from Golden Brush Art since 2013. We collaborated with Digital IMPACT Festival in July 2020, with a reach of 1.7 million and over $23,000 raised for good causes. Our speakers included Earth Charter® representatives. Fundraising included Artist Relief Impact Fund to support artists who perform at Impact Festival and its associated streams.
There are almost 20,000 cultural workers in Vancouver, of which almost 5000 are artists, the highest per capita in Canada. There are not enough collectors locally. Artists need skills training in digital technology to reach a global audience. We refer to qualified / certified third parties will be delivering the skills training workshops:
COMMUNITY
The Art Party has a history of promoting the Main Art Drift, an annual event of local small businesses supporting local artists along Main Street, Vancouver. This resulted in over 10,000 attendees visiting local artists at small business storefronts and studios in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood (2010-2012).
The Art Party co-produced and co-promoted Coinfest at an 8,000 sq. ft. media hall with an art auction to benefit a local charity, as well as other art events. We’ve shared and promoted over 400 live local art and music events on The Art Party Facebook Group since 2010 to help build our community.
Example of Community Training: The Art Party co-produced and co-promoted Crowdfunding Success Workshop to Help 270 Creatives & Changemakers get their projects funded at The Tribe (sponsored space), FundRazr (keynote speaker), and support from Groundswell, Spring.is, Conscious Living Radio and Blackbox Print. Crowdfunding has a successful track record funding artistic and creative projects, or community-oriented social entrepreneurship projects.
NEED
There is a need for skills training to help creatives to “cobble together a living” with various side gigs to supplement their creative practices. Creatives include artists (painters, sculptors and other visual artists (NOC 5136) have an annual BC median salary of $24,304. Source: 2016 Census (Full-time full-year median employment income).
British Columbia has the highest number of artists in Canada, and Vancouver has the highest concentration of artists per capita among Canada’s major cities. In Vancouver, artists make up 2.3% of the labour force with the broader category of cultural workers representing 9.7% (almost 20,000). Regrettably, 65% of artists (approx. 3,000) in Vancouver report a total income under $40,000 per annum and are living below the poverty line (Statistics Canada, 2011). This amount is way below the average annual full-time income of $54,000 in BC. In 2015, British Columbians working full-time earned an average weekly wage of $1,054.47 with an average hourly full-time wage of $26.58.
An arts education provides academic studies and practices for art-making, but does not provide adequate skills training in business and digital technology to enhance income. The Art Party has co-produced and co-promoted over 30 workshops.
Digital Training Examples: Facebook Group Learning Guides
ACCOUNTABILITY
Our Program will leverage the best practices of the Tribe in Gastown from 2016-17 and the S.E.A.R.C.H. Program, Alliance for Arts & Culture Program (SEARCH) in Downtown from 1997-07. We will be seeking regular advice from the founders of the Tribe and S.E.A.R.C.H. Program, Mike Nabavi and Judi Piggott respectively for the development of the Skills Training Program.
The Tribe in Gastown was an accelerator and a co-working space focused on Vancouver’s technology startups. It offered services such as office space, management advise, marketing support and connections for startups to the right investors. It had an excellent exit and sold to 7 Gate Ventures Lab, backed by 7 Gate Ventures VC.
SEARCH helped unemployed and under-employed artists and cultural workers create sustainable income. With funding from the Federal Canada as an employment assistance program for artists, over 1600 individuals participated in the month-long process, many of whom remain connected through a list-serve. (Sustainable Livelihood Systems: A Framework for Understanding the Economic Role of Artists in the Creative Economy, 2008
SUSTAINABILITY
Pursue a diverse portfolio of funding sources as an organizational policy. That includes grant writing for governments, foundations and corporations grants. We applied for the Google Ads Grant through TechSoup Canada. Google Ad Grants works just like Google Ads online, by displaying our message to people who are searching for nonprofits like ours. As a qualifying nonprofit, we receive up to $10,000 USD in Google Ads / month.
Build a network of supporting partnerships. Our program involves a number of different organizations committing resources in the event some of the responsibilities of the program can become regular parts of everyone’s work, even after the funding is not available.