Recently, the Allied Arts Council of Lethbridge (AAC) held its Annual General Meeting.
Executive Director Steven Foord says it was a successful year for the AAC overall.
A highlight of the past year was the Pop-Up, Get Down and Upside Downtown events.
“We had our biggest year, best attendance for that series yet,” Foord adds. “We capped it off with that big street concert at the end, the Pop-Up, Get Down at an integrated artist market. We had over 1,700 people come to that concert alone.”
According to Foord, the market had close to 20 unique local vendors. “We’re excited to bring that back. In general, our events, I think we had a phenomenal and successful year.”
Foord notes Casa also had a higher attendance, as well. “Strong rentals and growth in the education program. Just overall things going quite well.”
The AAC was happy to have been involved in a number of different advocacy avenues over the past year too.
“Reintegrating with the Performing Arts Centre Advocacy Group, our Mayor’s Luncheon, and we hosted a mix and mingle candidate event during the municipal election to keep our arts people connected to the municipal politics side of things,” says Foord.
The AAC also won a few awards this past year, including the Bridge Builder Award from the Lethbridge Chamber of Commerce, and the Upside Downtown concert series was recognized as the Downtown Event of the Year.
In terms of the continuation of partnerships, the AAC worked with the BIPOC Foundation on Black History Month and a few other events throughout the year.
The AAC recently launched a shared woodshop tech position, Foord explains. “The LSCO has a wonderful wood shop. We entered in a partnership with the LSCO and Casa to have a wood shop tech position shared between those locations. That’s a fun community partnership we’ve got started this year.”
Another big focus for the AAC this past year was raising money for an endowment fund.
“Which is going to help build some sustainability around a couple of programs we do through Casa. One being the Real Artists Working program or RAW. That program basically has awesome community impact, where we provide drop-in art classes for people that might be coming out of situations where they’ve experienced homelessness. They’re referred to it through their social worker, and we give them the safe creative space to do art,” adds Foord.
The Accessibility Modified Art Program for Adults or AMAPA is a bursary program that offers support and access to classes for uniquely abled people.
“All those folks are finding ways to access art, as sort of their recovery journey. With the endowment fund, we put a focus on trying to raise money around that. We set a goal of $10,000. We ended up actually raising $19,000. We nearly doubled our goal, which is wonderful,” says Foord.
Foord notes the AAC launched a new artist studio space, located directly across from the organization’s offices on 7 Street South. “It’s a total cost recovery model. We’ve got eight individual artist spaces, which was a need we identified in the community. It’s relatively low cost, as low cost as we can make it with making it cost recovery. We’re happy to report we got it at full occupancy already.”
Next month, the AAC is launching its AAC Sounds Around program for members through funding from the Community Foundation of Lethbridge and Southwestern Alberta.
“That’s a program where artists in the community can access a professional grade PA system for no charge for events, and we’ll also teach them how to use it,” Foord adds.
“We look at it as a way we can hopefully activate some new spaces downtown, whether that be live music, stand-up comedy or what have you.”
Foord says the AAC is just trying to find ways to expand on what the organization can offer to the arts community. “Through whatever avenue we can.”
