Call For Proposals for Joint Heritage BC And ArtsBC Conference

Two leading BC cultural organizations, Heritage BC and ArtsBC, have issued a call for proposals for their joint conference, Placemaking: Where Arts and Culture Collide, taking place May 5 - 7, 2016 on Vancouver’s Granville Island.

Granville Island's unique industrial history and successful transformation into a vibrant arts community and tourist attraction make it an inspirational setting for this collaborative conference. The conference that will explore the role of the arts and heritage in forming and sustaining 'places'.

Places are geographic spaces that are defined by the meanings, sentiments, stories, and shifting articulations that exist around them; by nature they are dynamic and contested. Life is lived in spaces and experienced through place. One of the roles of arts and heritage is to bring meaning and value to those places by capitalizing on a community's assets, inspiration, and potential. 

Placemaking explores leveraging community spaces to create inspirational public places.

Conference organizers are inviting proposals that explore the range of intersections between the arts and heritage. Conference themes include:

Building Places for the Arts and Heritage. Proposals could include topics such as:

• Cultural Landscapes
• Industrial Heritage and Design
• Adaptive Reuse

Contesting and Caring for Places. Proposals could include topics such as:

• Community Engagement Strategies
• Interpretation of Place through Arts and Heritage
• Arts, Heritage and Places influence on Health and Social Well-being
• First Nations Heritage, Arts, and Culture

New Frontiers and Collisions. Proposals could include topics such as:

• Heritage and Cultural Tourism
• Technology in Heritage, Arts, and Places
• Sustainability: Cultural/Social, Economic, and Environmental
• Imagined Places, Imagined Pasts

Organizational Capacity and Partnership Building. Proposals could include topics such as:

• Creating a Community Heritage Register and Writing Statements of Significance
• Fundraising and the Funding Dilemma
• Developing Municipal Heritage Policies
• Communications, Promotions, and Social Media
• Not for Profit Board Development
• Changes to the Societies Act and Impact for Not for Profits
• Collaboration and Partnership Building across Arts, Culture, and Heritage
• Advocacy and Awareness Raising

Further information and a proposal template are available here. The deadline for proposals is February 15.