Arts Commons is the third largest performing arts centre in Canada, is home to six Resident Companies, and welcomes over 600,000 visitors each year. In 2009, the organization was facing a crippling deficit and no clear path to sustainability.

Under new leadership, the focus was on revenue growth and expenditure controls, and within three years financial stability was achieved. Refocussing on strategy, work began to update the organization’s vision and mission, to guide them in what they would do, and to create a set of core values, to guide them in how they would do it.

Although the current crisis was unimaginable at the time this work was underway, living their values gave Arts Commons the base needed to manage through a pandemic which has brought the entire business to a halt. In this session, Colleen will go back to the creation of those core values and the evolution of how they were used to take a holistic view in creating a new strategic framework focussing on organizational stability.