Changes to the website

As part of our ongoing commitment to provide leading-edge service to our community, the Alliance for Arts & Culture is proud to present the first phase of our ambitious plan to transform our website into an online nexus for arts and culture activities in Metro Vancouver.

What’s different?

Well, first of all, you’ll notice that it looks a bit different. The design has been streamlined and the interface has been changed to allow us to add more features. In addition to our astoundingly popular job board and call for artists, we now also offer a call board for volunteers. We all know how much the health and wellbeing of our community depends on people who so generously donate their time; well, now you have a chance to seek them out directly.

Posting on the job board, calls for artists, and volunteer board is still completely free for members; however, we have implemented a small charge for non-members who wish to access these services. We are hoping that this will convince more organizations to join the Alliance. After all, at $25 per posting (which is still very competitive!), you can pay for an annual individual membership for the cost of just five job postings. Membership also entitles you to access to our downtown boardroom, join our benefits package for artists, take advantage of our E-Net member promotion service, and access the Artist Legal Outreach… among other things. For more information about member benefits, access our membership page.   

You’ll also notice something called the Vancouver Arts Map. This is a new tool designed to help access arts and cultural opportunities in Metro Vancouver. For now, this searchable arts map will only flag the location of our member organizations and the locations of jobs on our job board. However, in the future, the map will be central to a venue matching service we are developing, which should help artists find available space for rent in the Metro Vancouver area. We are hoping this tool will be invaluable in addressing the venue challenges vexing cultural workers.

What else can I expect in the future?  

We are aiming to launch Phase II of our development in 2010. Phase II will separate the website into two distinct parts: our current site, which largely serves the artistic community, and a public portion of our website, which we hope will become the online hub for information on cultural activities in the Metro Vancouver area. It will include a calendar of events, which will promote upcoming events and exhibitions by member organizations, and a cultural concierge service that will provide recommendations and help patrons make informed choices and leave feedback. This service was inspired by Diane Ragsdale's excellent keynote address at the Vancouver Arts Summit, and will hopefully become an invaluable component of our programming and services. 

Special thanks to Leif, Richard and Reed at Hired Guns Creative, who have done an exemplary job turning our crazy dreams into a reality.