Toronto, ON – On November 15, Work in Culture celebrated the work accomplished with the support of a $142,800 Resilient Communities Fund grant awarded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF) in 2022 that was used to redesign the organization’s arts and culture job board and website, workinculture.ca. The website will launch on November 28 and will give arts and culture job seekers, workers, and organizations across Ontario improved access to a vibrant hub of cultural career resources, including Work in Culture’s popular job board.
“The Work in Culture Job Board is vital to the organization’s financial health,” said Diane Davy, Executive Director of Work in Culture. “This grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation has allowed us to rebuild and improve it post-COVID to enhance our organizational capacity to generate earned revenue and manage our website efficiently, as well as to provide additional, necessary services to arts and culture job seekers and employers.”
From 2022 to 2023, Work in Culture undertook a complete website review with OCAD University’s Inclusive Design Research Centre and digital media developers Surface Impression to reimagine, redesign and implement a new site that would be more inclusive and accessible to arts and culture workers, and help the organization recover from the impacts of COVID-19. The project included a needs assessment that analyzed user, organizational and sectoral needs through a series of co-design workshops, bringing together stakeholders from multiple creative disciplines and locations across Ontario to co-create solutions around seeking and finding jobs in the arts and culture sector. The reimagined website will increase the Job Board’s ability to generate income, ensure that the new site is as inclusive and accessible as possible, and offer improved functionality to optimize the user experience for arts and culture workers.
Celebrating 25 years of service to the cultural sector in 2023, Work in Culture is a non-profit arts service organization that advances the careers of Ontario artists, creatives and cultural workers from diverse lived experiences through entrepreneurial and business skills development and innovative research. The Work in Culture Job Board connects arts and culture job seekers with over 1,700 jobs every year. By working closely with the Inclusive Design Research team at OCAD and developers Surface Impression, and consulting with representatives from the creative community, Work in Culture is excited to launch an accessible and inclusive website that will help support the cultural sector’s workforce for years to come. Visit the Work in Culture website at workinculture.ca.
The Ontario Trillium Foundation’s (OTF) mission is to build healthy and vibrant communities across Ontario. As an agency of the Government of Ontario, and one of Canada’s leading granting foundations, last year, OTF invested over $110M into 1,022 community projects and partnerships. Visit otf.ca to learn more.
For more information:
Brianne DiAngelo
Marketing and Communications Manager
Work in Culture
[email protected]