The K.M. Hunter Charitable Foundation wishes to announce that our K.M. Hunter Artist Awards program will no longer be part of our yearly initiatives. Due to changes in our board structure and development of new strategies we have decided to pursue a different model of granting in our Arts portfolio. Our Awards section is under review and we will be launching a new model of an artist award within the next year. We will continue to support artists in Ontario, both through arts organizations and individual projects.
Over the past 23 years, the K.M. Hunter Artist Awards program has awarded close to a $1,000,000.00 ($944,000.00) to 139 artists. This program was started by Martin Hunter in 1995 as a way to encourage artists to continue, to have a space to grow and to develop their work. He was inspired to start this program because of a grant he himself received as a young playwright.
We wish to acknowledge and thank the Ontario Arts Council (OAC) and Ontario Arts Foundation (OAF) who tirelessly helped us implement the program, gather the nominees and run the juries for this program. To name just a few: Alan Walker and Ann Boyd of the Ontario Arts Foundation, and Carolyn Gloude of the Ontario Arts Council.
And we would like to especially thank Janet Stubbs, past Executive Director of OAF, for the inspired suggestionin 1995 that the Hunter Foundation, OAF and OACwork together. So many artists have benefited from this partnership.
The K.M. Hunter Charitable Foundation support focuses on leaders and visionaries in the areas of Social Services, the Arts and the Environment. As part of our overall review,we will increase our supportto Indigenous programming in all three sectors.