December 7th, 2010

Since its founding in early 2007, No.9: Con­temporary Art and the Envi­ron­ment has flour­ished and become an important provincially rec­ognized orga­ni­zation. Some of the great things No.9 has accomplished in that time include rais­ing over $500,000 to de­liver public art in­stallations, attain­ing chari­ta­ble status and bring­ing art and envi­ron­mental issues to over 11,000 el­e­mentary school chil­dren in the Greater Toronto Area.

No.9 was formed with the objective to bring broad awareness to press­ing envi­ron­mental issues through the power of temporary public art in­stallations. Funda­mental to this has been key partner­ships with var­ious lev­els of govern­ment and private orga­ni­zations. These groups have con­tributed funding and exper­tise to de­liver programs and bring the work of No.9 to life and make its nu­mer­ous projects pos­sible. The successful de­liv­ery of this programming over the last four years has de­fined a clear role for No.9 in both the arts and envi­ron­mental communities.

Crit­ical to successful op­erations is chari­ta­ble status which we attained in June of this year as a result of the great gen­eros­ity and in-kind work of Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt LLP. This status takes No.9 a long way down the road to­wards orga­ni­zational le­git­imacy and al­lows it to com­pete ef­fectively for the scarce financial resources avail­able from the gen­eros­ity of the public.

Reflecting No.9’s growth and ma­tu­rity, we expanded the board 2010 to enhance governance over­sight and its members’ skills diversity including rep­resentation of var­ied busi­ness and ed­ucational backgrounds. Given the importance of a board’s role as fiduciary, we will con­tinue to update the na­ture of No.9’s board and its commit­ment to strong governance. As this evolution con­tinues, we will strive to achieve the best governance model for the pre­vailing circum­stances and expand the diversity of our members to reflect the var­ious skills our orga­ni­zation needs.

Looking to the fu­ture, No.9 will con­tinue its goal to expand its partner­ships with corporations, govern­ment and private foundations. In an effort to move from a project-to-project model to one of pro­viding self-sustain­ing programming, our current efforts are di­rected to­wards increas­ing our op­erational capacity.

Lastly, on behalf of the No.9 board, I would like to give a special thanks to Andrew Davies, our exec­utive di­rector, for his tire­less efforts in advanc­ing No.9 and bring­ing it to where it is today. His work and ded­ication have been extraor­dinary and reflect his deep pas­sion of the issues that No.9 promotes. Few orga­ni­zations are as fortunate as ours to have such a remarkable and pas­sion­ate leader.

Sincerly,

John Norman
Board Chair No.9