The Sudbury Arts Council is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2014.

One of our core values is the ARTS play in a vital role in a healthy livable community. Without the arts, a city has no heart or soul.

SAC is delighted to announce a new arts event, the Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts.

The Sudbury Arts Council, with the co-operation of the city’s Creative Coalition of 21 Arts organizations and ROCS, a group of eight Francophone arts and culture organizations that are working to establish Place des Arts, want to establish a way to honour Sudbury artists and heighten the profile of the arts in the community while raising money for arts bursaries. Mayor Marianne Matichuk has kindly added her name to this event to increase its profile.

There are TWO cash awards: One is a lifetime achievement, the other is for an emerging artist age 35 or under. 

The Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts will take place Thursday, May 1, at the School of Architecture Thank you to Laurentian University for donating the use of this beautiful building, which as many of you know has been built on the bones of one of the city’s oldest buildings and is located on Sudbury’s first four corners.

The organizers hope the Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts will become an annual event and is modeled on similar successful events across Canada. The first year will be a simple event of food, friends and music.

Tickets are $50 each, available at the TNO box office.

Some artists have asked about how the first two awards will be presented in 2014. Here is the background:

The SAC sub committee  (three SAC members, Lynne Reynolds, Mark Mancini and myself with Creative Consortium member Callam Rodya and ROCS members Paulette Gagnon and Martin Lajeunesse) felt there was not enough time in Year One of this event to have a nomination process which would take about six months (to promote, process and judge based on my experience with the Community Builders Awarda).  That is of course, in addition to the work it takes to raise money, plan an event, etc,

So, we arranged for an independent jury of five people who are have broad knowledge of the arts community to met, put forward names, vet and then make select three finalists in each category. The SAC representative is Paddy O’Sullivan. He is also the facilitator of the process.d.

No one on SAC, except Paddy, and no one on the SAC subcommittee has any input or information on the winners.

I would stress, that the “lifetime” achievement award is as much about one’s contributions to the community and arts community if not more than about the “quality” of one’s work.

Next year, or perhaps in December 2014, there will be a call for nominations to the Celebration awards for the 2015 event, and perhaps there will be enough money raised May 1 to have several more cash awards. The money for the awards is not coming from SAC, the mayor’s office, or the city hall. It is being supplied by Corporate donations.

I hope that you will attend the May 1 and support this initiative and help us raise money for artists. This is a fundraiser for artists. The tickets are $50 and I would love to sell you one or two.

If you would like to donate work to the silent auction at the celebration, the organizers are returning HALF of the bid paid to the artist. Please email me at vgilhula@gmail,com,