Toronto Arts Foundation: The Art of Investing in the Arts

Award Excellence

Arts Awards

Each year, with the help of our funding partners, the Foundation celebrates artists, cultural professionals and arts supporters from every creative discipline who have made significant contributions to Toronto’s artistic and cultural life. In addition to the profile accorded by this recognition, cash awards also have an important impact on the lives of the recipients.

Currently, Toronto Arts Foundation Awards annually distributes five high profile awards to individuals and organizations at the Mayor’s Arts Awards Lunch each October. Totaling $40,000, the awards are variously supported by gifts, endowments and sponsorships and range in value between $5,000 and $15,000.

Opportunities exist to increase both the value and number of awards offered by the Foundation, whether presented at the Mayor’s Lunch or through other unique recognition vehicles. .

Presented to Toronto’s artistic leaders and champions, the Toronto Arts Foundation Awards provide the Foundation with the opportunity to build awareness and to celebrate the incredible contribution artists make to the City of Toronto.

For more information on the Toronto Arts Foundation Awards click here.

Mayor’s Arts Awards Lunch

The Mayor’s Arts Awards Lunch is a unique annual occasion to celebrate the arts within the context of city building. Recognizing that it takes an ecology of artists, city builders, politicians, volunteers, media, leaders of business and nonprofit agencies to advance the vibrant arts scene and cultural life of Toronto, this celebration brings these elements together in an event designed to foster recognition and collaboration. All of the guests at the lunch are present because of their important contributions to the life and vitality of Toronto.

Sponsors play a significant role in making the Mayor’s Arts Awards Lunch a success. In-kind donations, sponsorships, benefactor and patron level gifts enable the Foundation to invite and recognize a wide variety of people and organizations each year to the Lunch. For more information on the Lunch, please click here.

Gifts to Arts Organizations

The Foundation offers donors who wish to support the arts in Toronto an effective, inexpensive, and important opportunity to do so. Our association with Toronto Arts Council sets us apart from any other foundation in Toronto. TAC’s sophisticated peer review system and ever-evolving understanding of arts issues throughout the city, provides us with unique perspectives. Together, the Toronto Arts Foundation and the Toronto Arts Council understand the breadth, depth and scope of art-making in Toronto, and can quickly respond to its needs and challenges in a responsible and informed manner.

We know which artists are producing excellent work, which arts organizations would benefit from additional resources, which arts organizations have developed best practices working with youth , which neighbourhoods are in real need of arts programming and effective ways to deploy individual artists to great advantage whether it be through community centres, health centres or arts organizations.

Gifts of $2,500 or more may be designated to specific artistic disciplines including Dance, Music, Theatre, Opera, New works, Community Arts, New Media, Literary or Visual Arts. Gifts of $5,000 and more may be applied to programs such as new creation, arts education, or programs for youth.

Partnerships with other agencies such as the United Way and Heritage Canada have resulted in funding increases to Community Arts and Arts for Youth programs throughout Toronto, which allow for collaboration between professional artists, youth, and other community members.

If you are interested in contributing through this program or require further information, please contact Jason Maghanoy, Community Investment Manager, at jason@torontoarts.org or 416-392-6802 ext. 204.

Gifts to Individual Artists

Through the same process as directing gifts to arts organizations, Gifts of $2,500 or more can be directed to helping independent artists. Funds may be designated to programs designed to assist artists working in the Visual and Media Arts, Dance, Music or Theatre disciplines.

If you are interested in contributing through this program or require further information, please contact Jason Maghanoy, Community Investment Manager, at jason@torontoarts.org or 416-392-6802 ext. 204.

Cultivate Potential

Incubate

Launched in 2008, the INCUBATE Program is the first partnership funding program between TAC and TAF. INCUBATE is currently funded through a $25,000 grant from the Toronto Arts Council and a $50,000 contribution to the Foundation by Luminato, Toronto’s Festival of Arts and Creativity. Donation opportunities exist for individuals, corporations and other organizations to increase the scope of this highly successful program.

A juried program, INCUBATE awards financial support at the early stage of innovative and exceptional ideas. In order to maximize international presentation opportunities for Toronto artists, the program provides seed money (up to $10,000) to facilitate the planning, development and “pitching” of extraordinary projects to international presenters and festival partners. The program has distributed $175,000 to music (2009) and theatre organizations (2010) and in the years to come, other disciplines will get a chance to benefit from the program. To date, a number of supported projects have already been selected for production by World Stage Festival and Luminato. For more information on this program, please click here.

If you are interested in contributing directly to the Incubate program or require further information, please contact Jason Maghanoy, Community Investment Manager, at jason@torontoarts.org or 416-392-6802 ext. 204.

Engage Community Members

Creative City: Block by Block

Donors have an important opportunity to contribute to revitalizing Toronto’s neighbourhoods through the arts by becoming part of a new vision for the arts in Toronto; the Creative City: Block by Block initiative.

Projects of this ambitious initiative will engage current and new partners and donors, leverage existing resources and collaborate with agencies and organizations with shared values. We will convene and catalyze so that opportunities for people to enjoy the arts all over Toronto will be dramatically increased.

For more information on Creative City: Block by Block, please click here.

Neighbourhood Arts Network

The Neighbourhood Arts Network actively works to enhance quality of life through the arts at the neighbourhood level by supporting groups and individuals which provide community-engaged arts programming.

The Network raises the profile of under-the-radar art and is the place to go for information about community-engaged art-making. Through our website, www.neighbourhoodartsnetwork.org, Network members will be able to connect with others who share their interests, post their own profiles, access a wealth of information about the field, share information about events, and offer practical tools to help strengthen the work.

In addition, the Neighbourhood Arts Network sponsors in-person training sessions, neighbourhood meet-ups and symposiums. The group is a growing voice and advocate for community arts and links local work with similar-minded work being conducted in communities around the world. By creating services and support for community-engaged artists, the Network makes it easier to connect individuals, libraries, community and health centres, business improvement associations and many others with the transformative power of art.

The creation of the Neighbourhood Arts Network has been made possible by support from the Government of Ontario, Ontario Trillium Foundation, City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council, and by the many Friends of the Foundation.

For more information on the Neighbourhood Arts Network, please click here.

Research and Mapping

Toronto Arts Foundation is working in partnership with other agencies, the city, foundations and academic institutions to analyze the impact of arts funding, map arts programming activities and determine the most effective policy and funding opportunities. By monitoring outcomes of arts investment, the Foundation can increase the efficacy of arts reporting and advocacy. Toronto Arts Foundation is committed to sharing information and documenting best practices in Toronto and around the world.

Funding for individual projects has been committed by Heritage Canada, the Ministry of Culture and the Ontario Trillium Foundation and through partnership with other arts organizations.

To view our Reports and Publications, please click here.

Metcalf Arts Policy Fellowship

A two-year fellowship to explore the connections between arts policy and practice, the Metcalf Arts Policy Fellowship was inspired by the need to foster new thinking about the future of the arts sector. The Fellowship was created with support from the George Cedric Metcalf Foundation, the John D. McKellar Foundation and Business for the Arts. For more information, please click here.

Create Lasting Legacy

The Foundation offers opportunities to leave important legacies for Toronto, for the best of today’s artists and for the next generation to come.

Foundation Board and staff work with donors to design unique legacy programs. Whether it is a specific award or fund honouring individuals, such as the current Rita Davies and Margo Bindhardt Leadership Awardor the Tracy Wright Memorial Fund, or a donor program designed to support classical music, contemporary dance or youth arts opportunities, the Foundation will ensure that exceptional individuals and organizations are at the receiving end of bequests, legacies and endowments.

To discuss your personal legacy gift, please contact Jason Maghanoy, Community Investment Manager, at jason@torontoarts.org or 416-392-6802 ext. 204.