Central Cariboo Arts & Culture Society, Williams Lake, BC

In 2009 in a remarkable initiative, the vast Cariboo Regional District became the first rural BC Regional District to develop an arts and culture function, passing a bylaw allocating tax revenue to arts and culture. The Central Cariboo Arts and Culture Society was formed in 2010 as a BC registered non-profit society, with a mandate not only to administer this function, but also to serve the many existing independent cultural organizations and events and to facilitate the development of arts and culture in the central part of the region. We take seriously the notion of assisting the development of the arts—not simply supporting the status quo—and one important means of doing that is our administration of an annual small project grants program which in three years has seen a number of innovative ideas bear fruit.