The Rossland Council of the Arts and Culture is asking the city for support for a bear sculpture downtown as well as renovations to the green room in the Miners’ Hall.
Renate Fleming, president of the arts council, said they have some funds put aside and want to use them to renovate the green room in the attic of the Miners’ Hall.
“We’re asking for the support of the city in helping us develop plans,” Fleming said, adding that the council has money to draw up the plan and people interested in helping them coordinate the project.
“We would like to work with the city and get your approval in principal for this project.,” she added, saying that if there is any of the arts council’s extra money from the project would go into finding more grants to do this project. “At this point we don’t have the budget to begin.”
Fleming said it’s an important project for the arts council.
“We would like to offer our performers a professional environment,” she said. “There is a lot of use for that sort of space. It could also be used for meeting rooms.”
She said the room would be multifunctional and could add to our community.
“We know you are planning some renovations at the hall in the next year or two, so we’d like to tie into that,” she said.
The other project that Fleming outlined and hoped for support for was a bear sculpture that would be displayed downtown.
“We’d like to put a sculpture up in the downtown core and we are looking again for your support in principal,” Fleming said.
They would also need the city to provide a space for the sculpture and given the downtown revitalization project see this as a good time to have a statue put up.
Approval of a space is needed in order to put a call out for submissions, since artists would need to know where their work is going to be displayed.
Once they have an artist chosen, then they would have an idea of the price tag to put on the project and can pursue grant money.
Fleming thanked council for their continued support, which she said was especialy important to because they’ve had so many funding cuts.
The city’s funding in matched by the B.C. Arts Council.
The city funds are also the only funds that they can use to pay their administrator to continue operations.
“Despite the many volunteers that we have, it’s very important that we have an administrator that follows through the commitment and continuity of a paid person and makes all our programs possible,” she said.
“It couldn’t all be done by volunteers.”
The arts council has put on three shows this year and has five more planned.
The Joe Hill Coffeehouse is one of their more community oriented projects.