Claire Hopkinson, Executive Director of the Toronto Arts Foundation, is pleased to announce the finalists of the Artists for Community Engagement (ACE) Awards, a brand new set of awards in the Toronto Arts Foundation Awards Portfolio.

Claire Hopkinson, Executive Director of the Toronto Arts Foundation, is pleased to announce the finalists of the Artists for Community Engagement (ACE) Awards, a brand new set of awards in the Toronto Arts Foundation Awards Portfolio.

This year’s Finalists were selected by an outstanding, multi-disciplinary jury, featuring representatives from community development organizations, including Melanie Smith, Shahina Sayani, Lekan Olawoye, Honor Ford-Smith, Nasrin Khatam, Saniya Ansari, Nadia Alam, Emily Pohl-Weary and Tai ning Zhang. Winners of the 2011 ACE Awards will be announced on February 24th, as part of a symposium at the Harbourfront Centre, presented by the Neighbourhood Arts Network.

The ACE Awards focus on the arts, community collaboration and cultural diversity. Each award comes with a cash prize of $2,000. The TD ‘ACE Opportunity’ Award, sponsored by TD Bank Group, celebrates artists working with culturally diverse communities to increase youth access to arts and culture. The ICC ‘ACE Impact’ Award, sponsored by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, celebrates arts organizations who have made a significant contribution to community transformation and cultural diversity while working in partnership with culturally diverse communities.

The 2011 ACE Awards Finalists are:

TD ACE Opportunity Award
Derek ‘drex’ Jancar, Joshua Barndt and Domanique Grant

ICC ACE Impact Award
Friendly Spike Theatre Band, People Project and Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts and Culture

The ACE Awards are the result of a partnership between Toronto Arts Foundation’s Neighbourhood Arts Network and the 2010 DiverseCity Fellows, a leadership and city-building project of the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance and Maytree Foundation.

For more information and biographies of the finalists, please click below:

Press Release - ACE Award Finalists Announcement

Press Release - ACE Award Finalists Announcement.pdf 383.62 kB