Financial Institutions Sweep Prestigious Arts Awards
For immediate release: Tuesday, October 5, 2004
Sun Life Financial, RBC Financial Group and Scotiabank have just been named the winners of top awards for the arts. As outstanding business sponsors, they will be presented with National Post Business in the Arts Awards at a gala dinner in Vancouver on November 2nd. Another financial institution, TD Canada Trust, will be honoured with an Award of Distinction in this recognition program which is administered by The Council for Business and the Arts in Canada (CBAC). Awards of Distinction will also be presented to Procter & Gamble, Office Interiors Group and Tattersall Sound and Picture.
The Business in the Arts Awards recognize businesses that have formed remarkable partnerships with Canadian arts organizations, effectively serving community needs while meeting corporate objectives. This prestigious national awards program was created in 1978 as a partnership between The Financial Post and The Council for Business and the Arts in Canada (CBAC), the national business association committed to increasing private sector support of the arts through its leadership. Over the history of the Business in the Arts Awards over 160 businesses have been honoured – businesses large and small, working in a variety of industries in communities across Canada
To be eligible to win, businesses must be nominated by an arts organization. An independent panel of judges drawn from business and the arts then adjudicates the nominations and selects the winners in each of three categories: Most Effective Corporate Program, Best Arts/Entrepreneur Partnership and Most Innovative Marketing Sponsorship.
The 2004 Awards were juried by: Jeffrey Alexander, President and General Manager of the Vancouver Symphony; Neil Blanche, President of Imperial Tobacco's ITC Arts Council (Montreal); Denise Carpenter, Senior Vice-President, Public and Government Affairs for EPCOR Utilities Inc. (Edmonton); Barbara Hejduk, President of the Imperial Oil Charitable Foundation (Toronto); and Judy Murphy, Chief Operating Officer of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.
The jury has acclaimed Sun Life Financial as the outright winner of the Most Effective Corporate Program category for the way it has aligned its support of arts organizations to reflect its own objectives to be seen as “a leader in its markets”, “delighting customers” and delivering “outstanding performance”. To that end, Sun Life has forged relationships with arts organizations in its home community that are world-renowned for their standard of performance: Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Opera Atelier, the Canadian Opera Company, the National Ballet of Canada, the Shaw Festival and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. In each case, Sun Life has supported specific innovations to help “delight” the customers – from the TSO's Musically Speaking CDs to the COC's sur-titles to the Ballet's Share the Magic programme, which provides tickets for underprivileged children.
In the category of Most Innovative Marketing Sponsorship, the jury has singled out RBC Financial Group as the Award Winner for its holistic, community-spirited sponsorship of the National Ballet of Canada's Western Tour. Not only did RBC's sponsorship make it possible for the National Ballet to perform for audiences in five cities in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, it enabled wider outreach into each of the communities visited. For children aged 6-14, many of them involved in after-
Page 2. school programs also sponsored by RBC, the company's dancers gave workshops. As well, aspiring local artists were given the opportunity take master classes with such luminaries as Karen Kain and Rex Harrington. To extend the awareness of and access to dance in these communities, RBC also made grants to support local dance companies.
Scotiabank's multi-faceted 10-year relationship with Opera Atelier has earned it recognition as the Award Winner in the category of Best Arts/Entrepreneur Partnership. First as the sponsor of the Youth Initiative program, and then of the company's nine-city tour of Japan, Scotiabank has helped Opera Atelier reach new audiences. Within the bank, the relationship goes wide and deep, involving employees in two separate divisions who have created special client events that have raised both friends and funds for Opera Atelier. Executives at the highest level are also engaged as volunteers.
Each of the three Award winners will receive a bronze sculpture created by the late William McElcheran, an internationally renowned Canadian artist who left an artistic legacy of whimsical bronze businessmen. In their look-alike suits and hats, toting briefcases, McElcheran's sculpted businessmen have found their way into public and private collections in North America, Europe and Japan.
The jury also awarded four other winners, each of whom will receive a framed Award of Distinction featuring McElcheran's Businessman with Muse.
In the category of Most Innovative Marketing Sponsorship, Awards of Distinction will go to:
- TD Canada Trust for its sponsorship of Vancouver Arts Club Theatre's Studentrush.com. An internet-driven, membership-based, discount ticketing system, Studentrush.com was designed to target the college and university audience, building audiences for Arts Club, and brand awareness for TD Canada Trust at the time of the bank's re-branding. Its success is measured in the numbers: over 2,600 college and university students now belong to Arts Club Theatre, and the website boasts 59,000 hits per month.
- Procter & Gamble for its creation of a “national” theatre sponsorship strategy, in order to reach and cultivate its target market of women aged 35 and over. By sponsoring subsequent productions at CanStage, Manitoba Theatre Centre, Theatre Calgary, the National Arts Centre as well as the Stratford Festival, Procter & Gamble managed to roll-out and sustain the launch of its Olay skin care products across five major markets and an entire theatre season.
In the category of Best Arts/Entrepreneur Partnership, Awards of Distinction will go to:
- Office Interiors Group for its decade-long relationship with Halifax's Neptune Theatre. Led by the example of CEO Jim Mill's active involvement as a director, committee Chair and, later, Board President, of Neptune, the Group's employees have taken on the creation and production of annual fund raising events for the theatre. Over the past two years the company has raised $90,000 for the theatre, in addition to its own provision of time, talent and products.
- Tattersall Sound and Picture for providing the Canadian Film Centre with more than half a million dollars worth of post-production services and extending professional services and financial support to the wider film community. Jane Tattersall has partnered, in cash and kind, a generation of Canadian filmmakers by helping them achieve the highest standards in sound.
Arts and business leaders from across the country will be on hand to celebrate when The Council for Business and the Arts in Canada and National Post present the Awards at a special Tribute Dinner to Michael Audain, winner of The Edmund C. Bovey Award, CBAC's award for leadership support of the arts. Designed to recognize individuals who have had the vision to contribute their business leadership in support of the arts, The Edmund C. Bovey Award carries with it a cheque for $20,000 which the winner must give to the arts.
This year's Bovey Award recipient is the Chairman of Polygon Homes Ltd., a major residential builder in Vancouver and Seattle. Michael Audain has given over $4 million to the arts in British Columbia, funding, in particular, exhibitions of painting and sculpture at public art galleries. This spring he created the Audain Prize for the Visual Arts, an annual $25,000 award for lifetime achievement as a visual artist. He also endowed the position of Audain Curator of British Columbia Art at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
The Awards celebration on November 2nd will be held at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Raymond James, Riverside Forest Products Limited, Scotiabank, The Vancouver Sun and HSBC are generously sponsoring the event which will feature performers from the Vancouver Opera and the Vancouver Symphony.
For more information: Sarah Iley or Eileen Love, CBAC : (416) 869-3016
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