Simone Georges from 4th Line Theatre was on the line during the tele-round table on Community Organizing on June 22, 2010, part of a series of bi-weekly tele info sessions which you and all others are most welcome to join. (Topics rotate from session to session. Check here for info.)
Simone called in to represent the Peterborough Culture Days committee. The local working group has applied for some funding from the Community Futures Development Corporation in Ontario (a federal fund administered municipally) and has already been granted approval. The funds will be used to hire a part-time coordinator who will coordinate, archive and chronicle Culture Days activities in Peterborough until the end of September.
How did this happen, and so quickly?
Well from what we observed at the national office via a flurry of cc’d emails, 4th Line Theatre was alerted to the Culture Days opportunity by Ontario Task Force member Warren Garrett, who heads up CCI-Contact Ontario, a network of performing arts presenters. Simone at 4th Line Theatre re-circulated the information to her contacts, among them a tourism official for Peterborough who forwarded it on to her contacts. This alert led Ray Marshall from Showplace Performance Centre to call for a community lunch at a local café on a Thursday afternoon in May to discuss “options for Culture Days” in Peterborough. The message was circulated to other cultural groups and artists, and was picked up by the Peterborough Examiner – you can read the story here.
Needless to say, a great deal of momentum has been building. Interest in working with the Peterborough group has come from communities as far away as Whitby, Ontario. Some items that the group is considering include partnering with Doors Open which operates a bus service to take the public from one site to another, publishing a map of activities in the local newspaper to help people get around, and working with the local municipal department of economic development. Two open community meetings will be held to galvanize community involvement. The Peterborough Culture Days committee meets every two weeks. Interested? Email the national office; we will make sure the good folks in Peterborough receive your message.
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