Our Initiatives

Welcome to the website of the Conseil des arts de Montréal. Its aim is to be lively and colourful—in fact, you can liven it up with your own colours. It’s also intended to be conversational, which is why it features the The Musts, in which Montreal artists offer their expertise, their suggestions for events, readings, visits, concerts, viewings, visits or openings that are of particular interest to them. Check it out—and don’t forget to leave your comments and suggestions!

The Conseil des arts de Montréal is always at the centre of things. With the help of its partners and the artistic community, it recognizes and supports artistic excellence by finding new ways to showcase Montreal artists and rally the public around the cause of art, both locally and city-wide. The Grand Prix du Conseil des arts de Montréal, created in 1985, and the Prix de Montréal pour les arts et la culture, launched in 2011, support these efforts.

In 2011, through various programs with budgets totalling more than 10 million, the Conseil helped to fund and promote more than 350 companies. Its expertise, vitality, inventiveness, flexibility and on-the-spot presence have made the Conseil a major player in the city’s artistic and cultural life.

Since the fall of 2010, the Conseil has relied on the expertise and experience of some 60 artists, cultural workers and administrators who have volunteered to sit on its Evaluation Committees. This new course of action allows us to be even more attentive to the community, and to benefit from fresh ideas and solutions. To better reflect the reality of Montreal’s artistic world, two new entities were created: a multidisciplinary sector and an evaluation committee for the circus arts.

The touring program was also redesigned and modernized to encourage greater risk-taking on the part of presenters. To support the concerts, screenings and exhibitions on tour (about 400 events at over 100 different venues), the Conseil des arts de Montréal en tournée now has its own website, which displays the full program.

In addition to Libres comme l’art and Écrivains en résidences, our new residencies—Poète de la Cité, Ateliers studios Saguenay-Montréal, Résidence de création et de diffusion en danse and Cinéastes en résidence—have all met with great success.

The issues of cultural diversity and emerging artists are also central to the initiatives of the Conseil. For emerging artists, the Artère website continues to provide tools and information, while diverse programs provide work experience, networking and training sessions, as well as funding to young artists and cultural workers. As for cultural diversity, the Conseil offers advice and guidance to artists engaged in non-typical practices, and to those newly-arrived. The latter can also benefit from various programs, including démArt-Mtl. In addition, the first Policy review of the Conseil’s Politique de promotion et de développement de la diversité culturelle dans les arts is now published.

Guided by its mission to support and recognize artistic excellence, the Conseil encourages experimentation, discovery and audacity in the heart of Montreal's artistic landscape. His interventions stimulate innovation while supporting emerging and diversity artists. With its roots in the artistic community, its complementary relations with the Ville de Montréal, the borough, and the other cities of the island and its constructive dialogue with the business sector, the Conseil des arts contributes, through its stimulating actions, to the development of "Montréal, cultural metropolis."

Enjoy your browsing!