Festival Place Society was first incorporated in 1999. The Society’s original function was to oversee all aspects of Festival Place. In 2010, Strathcona County Council exercised a clause in the contract with Festival Place allowing it to take over the running of Festival Place.

This left us with a Board and a Society that was a registered charity, and a need to refocus our purpose.

The Festival Place Society Board does still have a role with Festival Place. There are many grants that Festival Place has received over the years that cannot be given to municipalities; only Societies can apply for them. We will continue to do this to ensure Strathcona County only gets the best of programming through such support.

We are clearly in a state of change. We have a small, dedicated Board and are looking to increase our Board to a maximum of 15 members.

Currently, our Objectives are:

2.01 To educate and increase the public’s understanding and appreciation of the arts by facilitating performances of an artistic nature in public places, senior citizen’s homes, churches, community centers, facilities for the arts and educational institutions in Strathcona County and the greater region.

2.02 To provide assistance, both financial and educational to other charitable and/or not-for-profit organizations with similar objects in the community.

2.03 Generally to advance the performing arts in the community.

With such objectives, there are many things that the Festival Place Society Board can do within Strathcona County. At our strategic planning retreat it was determined that the key focus would be to promote youth involvement in arts programs within Strathcona County.

Under such as open-ended objectives and a focus on youth our board has come up with several topic areas that will be pursued in the coming months including workshops for youth, supporting Masters workshops/artist in residence programs and supporting the black-and-white fundraiser. To achieve these goals our board will be connecting with schools, obtaining input from youth and looking at methods to “get the word out” regarding the new Festival Place Society.

Our goal is to start a membership program for the society as early as January 2013 and we look forward to a close collaboration with Gavin Farmer, Festival Place, and Strathcona County.

Our board currently has 10 directors although our bylaws allow for a maximum of 15 directors and we are currently looking for 5 motivated Strathcona County residents to help us with their existing goals and to generate further ideas. Appointed directors will have a relatively brief term (until our next annual general meeting) but at that point are able to submit their name for formal election to the board.