Spotlight on 2016 Annual Report Highlights

Sherman Downey performs at the Deer Lake Airport piano, sponsored by Humber Motors.

Since its inception, Business & Arts NL has strived to foster mutually beneficial partnerships between the business and arts communities across the province, strengthening our cultural industries and promoting economic growth along the way.

Through our suite of programs (including Business Volunteers for the Arts; Business Workshops for Artists; Creative Matchmaking; #ComePlayWithMeNL Public Pianos; We are #CreativeNL; and the Arts to Business Catalogue), along with our Spotlight On Partnerships blog, we aim to connect these two sectors in a spirit of collaboration, camaraderie and creativity.

Our newly-released Annual Report confirms our commitment and shows what can be achieved when the business and arts communities work together.

Some of the highlights of our Annual Report include:

The staff of Howard House enjoy a painting workshop with visual artist Brenda Rowe.

- Facilitated $128,977 worth of cash, pro bono and in-kind engagements between arts and business.

- Connected lawyers, accountants, marketing and strategic planning professionals to deliver $35,745 worth of pro bono services.

- Recruited over 1,500 skilled volunteer hours pledged to the arts community, worth an estimated $235,800; and provided public engagement and professional development opportunities for 23 businesses.

- Produced21 workshops serving more than 350 cultural workers through donated preparation, teaching time and space worth an estimated $62,750; and provided public engagement and professional development opportunities for 17 businesses.

- Increased creative matchmaking transactions by more than 318%, with a total of $30,482 paid to artists.

- Featured 80 opportunities to hire artists across all disciplines for entertainment, team-building and creative thinking exercises, and much more in our online catalogue.

- To date, our 5 public pianos have fostered over 67 planned public performances and brought in $64,000 in sponsorships for Business & Arts NL. (In fall 2016, Sherman Downey released a new song in a video recorded at the Deer Lake Airport piano. This video was seen by over 30,000.)

- Increased our social media reach by over 300% to an average of 130,000 impressions monthly

Participants take in a workshop with Katrina Rice of ArtsNL as part of the Business Workshops for Artists Series.

.- Increased our overall membership by 232% this year.

- Highlighted28 business/arts partnerships, published 16 interviews with local businesspeople who support the arts and shared 7 stories about our organization. Estimated annual readership is 10,000.

- Hosted 7 co-productions with Cox and Palmer, TD Bank, MUN Harris Centre, Artistic Fraud, ArtsNL, and MusicNL. (One of these co-productions was a 3-day workshop featuring Camilla Holland from the Royal Manitoba Theatre Company.)

- Enjoyed 40 meetings with our Executive, Membership, Governance, and Communications Committees.

It is clear that the arts are good for business, and vice versa. As we look ahead, we will continue to unite the business and arts communities to help grow our province in creative and unexpected ways.