We are extremely happy to announce that on Friday, June 2, at the Fairmont Vancouver, The Crow’s Nest Artist Collective was officially recognized by Small Business BC as one of the five most positively impactful small businesses to their community in the province of British Columbia.
The annual Small Business BC Awards is a celebration of entrepreneurship where small businesses are recognized for their achievements. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Small Business BC Awards, and saw 613 nominations across 84 communities in BC. To select the finalists in each category, over 74,000 votes were cast and then nominees were narrowed down by a panel of business experts.
We were shortlisted in the “Business Impact Award” category, which recognizes small businesses that create a positive difference within their community.
We’ve always thought that what we do is important, and, as it turns out, other people do, too.
When we opened in our old location six years ago, all we knew is that the community needed more art in its life. We just didn’t know how badly it was needed.
Within three years, we found ourselves moving to our current space – which is more than five times as large – in order to keep up with the art needs of our community.
At this point, we host 15-20 classes, workshops and parties per week in our space, we’ve got drop-in tables available for open-studio use and “paint your own pottery on-demand” projects, we’re developing a “DIY Kit Corner” section of the space where people can mix and match bits and parts we’ve created to make their own multi-media projects using our stockpile of supplies, as well as continuing to be the premier space within the community for local artists to sell their creations…keeping true to the original reason the business began.
We’ve also launched into various partnerships to find more ways to give back to our wonderful community, including offering art activities at various community events, putting on workshops to support other initiatives like the Campbell River Arts Council’s Art+Earth Initiative, The Museum at Campbell River’s annual Haig Brown Festival celebrating World Rivers Day, the Campbell River School District’s StrongStart program, an exhibition featuring art by our community’s children in partnership with non-profit organizations like Patrons Of The Arts and the Campbell River Art Gallery, raising money for The John Howard Society of North Island’s KidStart mentoring program and more.
We might only be a staff of four, but we’re passionate and dedicated and love what we do, why we do it, where we do it and the community we do it for.
Thank you so much to everyone who has supported us on this journey.
Thanks to you, we’ve gotten to the point where we can start making big plans moving forward.
Along with continuing to expand our instructional offerings into more complex mediums such as glass blowing, woodworking and photography, we’re also looking to make some improvements to our physical space and increase our ability to do “off-site” events and activities so we can bring more art into even more people’s lives more often.
We’re excited to see what the future holds, and we can’t thank you enough for supporting us in getting there.
Stay tuned…..
We’d also like to congratulate Homalco Wildlife & Cultural Tours for being recognized this year in the same category, as well as our friends down in Courtenay at West Coast Karma, who were recognized in the Premier’s Choice Award category for creating a safe and inclusive space for their community.
And thank you to Small Business BC for taking the time (and making the effort) to recognize the small, independent BC businesses that are the heart and soul of their communities.
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