Dear culture partner:

Today, I am honoured and excited to launch our government’s first Culture Strategy. This strategy reflects the diversity of cultural expressions and experiences that we heard during the Culture Talks engagement process. The result is a document that fully articulates the important role culture plays in promoting individual and community well-being across the province.

Last fall the government held town halls and conversations across the province to hear about the value of arts and culture in people’s lives and communities. We reached out to Francophones, Indigenous partners and communities, youth and seniors, newcomers and ethno-cultural communities and people with disabilities. Almost 3,000 Ontarians participated. We heard clearly that people care deeply about arts and culture.

Together with my predecessor, Minister Coteau, I would like to thank you for sharing your ideas and priorities for culture in Ontario. Your input helped to develop a strategy that truly reflects our province’s diversity and vibrancy.

The Culture Strategy sets out a vision, principles and four overarching goals to guide the government’s support for culture over the next five years. These goals are to promote cultural engagement and inclusion, strengthen culture in communities, fuel the creative economy and promote the value of the arts throughout government.

Each goal includes strategies and actions, which include:

  • creating a new fund to support publishers to develop learning resources aimed at fostering the use of diverse Canadian content in schools
  • supporting conservation of heritage buildings by leveraging opportunities for energy efficiency improvements through Ontario’s Climate Change Action Plan
  • creating opportunities to enhance technical and business skills training for cultural workers
  • developing a new fund to support cultural activities in Indigenous communities and supporting youth cultural camps to build leadership skills and promote awareness of traditional knowledge.

I encourage you to read the strategy to learn more about these and other actions we will take to strengthen culture in Ontario.

In the next phase of this initiative, we will develop a plan to implement the Culture Strategy. We learned a great deal through Culture Talks and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to put it into action and carry on the conversation to reach the goals Ontarians set out for us.

Ontario’s first Culture Strategy will help ensure our diverse stories and communities are celebrated long into the future, and I look forward to seeing all it can accomplish.

Once again, thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas with us, and for supporting culture in Ontario.

All my best,

Eleanor McMahon

Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport