{"id":33035,"date":"2023-05-12T00:09:50","date_gmt":"2023-05-12T04:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=33035"},"modified":"2023-05-18T20:40:02","modified_gmt":"2023-05-19T00:40:02","slug":"arts-survey-will-help-drive-future-cultural-programming-in-aurora-town-square","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/arts-survey-will-help-drive-future-cultural-programming-in-aurora-town-square\/","title":{"rendered":"Arts Survey will help drive future cultural programming in Aurora, Town Square"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A new survey being conducted by the Aurora Cultural Centre will help drive future programming for portions of Aurora Town Square and the community as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Open now through to the end of the first week in June, the anonymous survey will help the Centre gauge the kinds of programming cultural consumers want to see down the road, and in what form given the shift to hybrid programs at the height of the global pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEach year we do a customer satisfaction survey to keep a beat on what we\u2019re doing [but] we also recognize that this is really the time [for a survey] as we head back to Aurora Town Square in the coming months,\u201d says Jane Taylor of the Aurora Cultural Centre. \u201cIt\u2019s the perfect time to really poll the community after we have been out and about in the community for the last three years\u2026to get a deeper understanding of how we can best serve the arts community here in Aurora and beyond by doing a deeper dive into more pointed questions around the arts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe call it the Aurora Arts Survey, but interestingly people don\u2019t have to live in Aurora to complete it \u2013 in fact, it is really helpful for us because anecdotally we welcome people outside Aurora, around York Region and beyond. We see this in our performing arts in particular, but if we have a gallery show that is of interest or an artist, people will travel for the arts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The survey, she adds, will also help the Centre as they begin work over the next few months developing their new strategic plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the questions in the survey will ask what programs people have enjoyed, how they have enjoyed them (in person, virtual, etc.), and, if the respondent is outside Aurora, how frequently they come into Town and why \u2013 such as for work or school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is important data to know,\u201d says Taylor. \u201cHas there been a true culture shift into virtual programming that now becomes part of an ongoing conversation with the wider community? There is feedback there. We have questions like whether you agree or disagree with statements like, \u2018I would like more arts and culture,\u2019 and this really gives people a chance for a broader response on how they feel about the situation for the arts in Aurora right now and what it could be going into the future as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe survey is perfectly timed [for the completion of Aurora Town Square]. With our partners at the Town of Aurora and other partners who will be working within Aurora Town Square, these are discussions that have been going on since 2018 and 2019 in terms of how this space will be used and activated in so many ways; there is a really terrific conversation and some planning that has gone into the past to get to this point, but here\u2019s an opportunity. If there\u2019s a particular arts direction the community is really interested in, that is helpful for all of us partners to know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taylor says \u201cculture is all around us\u201d and the Aurora Cultural Centre team serves everybody. As such, \u201ccommunity understanding of culture is so vital.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not a top-down organization and that is sort of the beauty of what we do. We really like to position ourselves as understanding what our grassroots needs are. So many of us actually live in this community and work in the arts in this community [and] we\u2019re so passionate about what we do. If you scratch below the surface, everybody, and it doesn\u2019t matter who you talk to, has a personal understanding of what culture is and it is our hope that this survey will be able to tease that out so that people really understand this isn\u2019t just a tick of a box they\u2019re making, this is vital data that will guide our future direction and it will be rooted in our growing and diversifying community, and that is of real interest to us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Aurora Arts Survey can be accessed at auroraculturalcentre.ca\/artssurvey23 and, as noted above, it will be open until June 11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From there, the data will be collected, interpreted, and presented to the Centre\u2019s Board of Directors this summer to help direct their Strategic Plan. The report itself will be released to the public later this year, Taylor notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is important that people know this is an anonymous survey because we want an honest opinion,\u201d she says. \u201cIt is a digital, anonymous survey, so really feel free to let us know all your wishes and desires, as it were, when it comes to the arts because they will all be taken into account. We also have an opportunity at the end of our survey to do a call to action. Because it\u2019s anonymous, we ask if you want to have a bit more involvement [in this area] you can certainly email us and just follow up to say, \u2018I\u2019m interested in a deeper conversation,\u2019 in which case we\u2019re helping to put together some focus groups with some pointed questions\u2026 so we can take a bit of a deeper conversation [to look at] themes that have emerged.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new survey being conducted by the Aurora Cultural Centre will help drive future programming for portions of Aurora Town Square and the community as a whole. Open now through to the end of the first week in June, the anonymous survey will help the Centre gauge the kinds of programming cultural consumers want to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8AP","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-20 10:27:14","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}