OAC Digital Archives

In 2019, the Oakville Arts Council secured a Seed Grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation under the Inspired People action area. The priority outcome: More people connect with culture, heritage and the arts and the grant result: the preservation and animation of cultural heritage.

The funding was to be used to engage in a feasibility study to explore the viability of developing a digital arts archive for the community of Oakville.

We hired a Digital Archivist, Allana Mayer, for this task. Allana’s work provided information and answers to the questions:

1. What are the past, present and future needs of the OAC and local arts and culture organizations in terms of archive materials?
2. How much creative output is at risk of being lost to the community?
3. What do best practices look like for not-for-profit or charitable organizations and what is the best way to create an archive that encourages arts and culture organizations to regularly contribute their work?
4. What issues do organizations face in terms of creating and maintaining their creative histories?
5. What knowledge, skills and financial resources will the OAC need in order to produce a creative history for the Oakville community and its arts and culture sector?

In 2023, OAC released the archive in partnership with AMS Network under the public partners' repository.

• https://amsnetwork.ca/partners/oac/