The Town of Minto’s Cultural Roundtable Committee has moved into the implementation stage of its cultural plan, which includes elements ranging from business innovation to higher education.
Business and Economic Manager Belinda Wick-Graham updated Minto Council on the cultural action plan, for 2012 at the July 3 council meeting.
The committee was divided into strategic action groups, each responsible for one of four areas of the plan:
– Creative Identity: Telling Our Story;
– Creative Capacity: Cultivating Talent and Innovation
– Creating Enterprise: Connecting and Leveraging Assets;
Creative Places: Enhancing Quality of Place.
The Creative Identity group’s activities will include enhancements to an existing Culture Days event in September. Last year, a bus tour was organized to convey participants to sites where local groups were hosting Culture Days events. This year, a “story-teller” will be engaged to ride the bus and share stories about local culture and history with those on the tour. The group will also be organizing the collection of stories of “creativity, culture and dynamic rural identity,” to be featured on the town’s website.
The Creative Capacity group is organizing a “Sip and Chat” session to bring creative minds from Minto together “to foster an environment for networking and collaboration,” on October 13.
The group has also planned a series of seminars aimed at culture-related businesses and organizations to be held Tuesdays at the Norgan Theatre in Palmerston.
Also at the Norgan, the group will host monthly video and movie screenings geared toward local youth. This program will offer young people the opportunity to watch movies, including documentaries, outside of the mainstream Hollywood fare, which don’t always get screened outside of major centres, said Wick-Graham.
The Creative Enterprise group is working with a local website developer to create a Cultural Asset Website. The site will utilize Google Maps technology to highlight assets in the categories of: heritage, nature, industry, agriculture, culinary and events. The website will include social media access and be “mobile friendly.”
The Creative Places group is setting up a “Creative Business Incubator” program. Wick-Graham said this could involve providing a currently-vacant commercial building as office space for a number of small business at an affordable rate.
“We’re looking at a building in a downtown area that would have, for example, six small start-up businesses in the creative industry. We would provide space at an affordable rate to get them started,” said Wick-Graham, adding the businesses could share equipment, such as a photocopier, to keep costs down. Mentoring and other services would be provided to the fledgling business through a network of community partners, she explained. The roundtable group is currently talking to potential partners and working on the creation of a business plan for the project and is aiming to have a grant application prepared for November.
This group is also creating a plan to develop relationships with post-secondary institutions, educators and students to create educational and business opportunities in Minto.
Activities would involve encouraging professors from post-secondary institutions to offer summer courses at a facility to be provided by the Town of Minto.
“We also want to find a way into the schools to talk to students about what a good, affordable place we are and possibly they would consider starting a business here or moving here after they graduate,” said Wick-Graham.
The roundtable group has been working on the plan since February. Wick-Graham said the 2012 plans will be implemented within the $15,000 budget approved in April for year one of the plan.
“Now it’s a matter of making it all happen. This is the fun part,” she stated.
