Village of Pemberton Receives $5,000 to Identify Arts and Cultural Assets

The Village of Pemberton is leading a cultural mapping project to support long-term cultural and tourism planning in the Pemberton Valley. Under the Creative Communities program, 2010 Legacies Now and the Province of British Columbia are providing $5,000 to the Village of Pemberton to develop a cultural inventory and make it into an interactive GIS map.

Creative Communities supports local governments and arts organizations to understand their cultural assets and identify strengths and challenges in their arts and cultural sector. The Village of Pemberton will work with the Pemberton Arts Council, the Pemberton Museum and Archives Society, the Chamber of Commerce/Tourism Pemberton and the Pemberton Library on the cultural and historical mapping project.

"The Village is planning to enhance the downtown core and surrounding neighbourhoods," said Village of Pemberton Mayor Jordan Sturdy. "The cultural inventory will give us another lens to review future development so that arts, culture and heritage can be acknowledged as integral both to our past and our future."

Together with the Province of British Columbia, 2010 Legacies Now has invested more than $300,000 into 39 Creative Communities projects around the province, and $3.9 million in the arts overall through its contribution programs.

"We are working to ensure that legacies from the 2010 Winter Games are being shared by communities right across B.C. through investments in arts and cultural projects," said Kevin Krueger, Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Arts. "Creative Communities supports the long-term development of arts and culture in B.C."

Lori Baxter, Director of Arts for 2010 Legacies Now said, "As the Village of Pemberton plans community developments, this is an exciting way for local government to work collaboratively with arts and business groups to learn about how the cultural sector can benefit the region."

Creative Communities assisted local governments to take stock of their cultural assets and identify strengths and challenges in their local arts and cultural sector. The program also guided governments through community consultations to determine how and where to expand local arts and cultural programs and projects.

Funding was available for these cultural mapping and cultural planning processes to help communities discover a cultural identity that is unique to them and expand it into a viable part of community life. The program was supported by the Province of British Columbia.