What am I rambling about? For me, today was a rare opportunity to take advantage of a free schedule. It was so amazing to walk in whatever direction a streetlight directed me. It provided a let the sights and sounds draw me in one direction to the next in a city I really like.

Winnipeg is awesome. While it often gets so much bad press, it has way more good things going for it than most people give it credit.

On the Thursday before the 2nd Winnipeg Timeraiser, Amanda and Anil visited with Erin Bartlett from United Way Winnipeg. While waiting in the lobby, we picked up a copy of the 2nd edition of Eagle’s Eye View: An environmental scan of the Aboriginal Community in Winnipeg.

One section stood out in particular: Contributions to the arts by Aboriginal People. The research highlighted one very startling economic fact. Aboriginal artists earn 30% less than the average Canadian artists ($22,700); a level that is near or below the poverty line.

Just before the meeting, Amanda and Anil purchased three works of art from Wah-Sa Gallery, dedicated to promoting Aboriginal artists. As we wrote about in a previous post, one of the artists we selected was Ted Oster. He is a self-taught artist living in Winnipeg. Of the $11,900 we invested in the careers of artists, 15% was earmarked directly for Aboriginal artists. Taking a moment to re-read Eagle Eye View on Saturday, one paragraph stood out in particular:

“Aboriginal people in the arts face many challenges, including lack of resources, limited recognition, preconceived notions and they are navigating between artistic practice and cultural expectations.” (pg 19)

Well, here is our response: we are going to – just as we have in our printing and catering social procurement strategy – explicitly ensure that a specific amount of money we raise is allocated to help Aboriginal artists make their careers financially sustainable. (You can read about our social procurement strategy here.)

Specifically, we are going to set a base line of how much of the art we purchase nationally will come from dedicated outreach from Aboriginal artists. While this isn’t the first time we’ve thought about doing this, we have now reached a particular size and scale, especially with our corporate partners, to make this a cornerstone in the development of the Timeraiser program.

If you haven’t had a chance to read our social procurement strategy, you can view it here. We’d be interested in what you think. Are we on the right track? Are we missing something? Do you know of any Aboriginal artists that we can connect to?

We’ll be writing about our new art strategy in the next blog post. In the meantime, below is the list of the winners from last night. And the team is already starting to plan our 3rd Winnipeg Timeraiser.

Were you at the Timeraiser? What did you think of the artwork and volunteer opportunities? Any ideas about where we could do this next year? Keep the comments coming.

We also want to thank all our other friends, collaborators and sponsors for making the evening so much fun: MTS, Investors Group  Quantum Graphics, The Winnipeg Foundation, Volunteer Manitoba, CIBC, PWC, RBC, and TD.

Recognition must be made to Amanda Lanoway (United Way Regina) Ida Leruyet (SaskEnergy) and Christina Attard (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Regina) who were a massive and consistent help in all of our planning efforts.  A big thank you to our Local Founding Partner SaskEnergy and Lead Community Partner United Way Regina as well as to our other amazing sponsors and volunteers who made the evening possible.