The Okanagan Arts Awards program has been retired. ARTSCO now supports the Kelowna Community Civic Awards, “Honour in the Arts”. For more information please follow this link: https://www.kelowna.ca/our-community/news-events/civic-community-awards
In existence since 2007.
The Arts Council of the Central Okanagan (ARTSCO) supports and strengthens the arts throughout the Central Okanagan by championing artistic excellence, accessibility, communication, awareness, and mutual support of the arts within the broader community.
The Okanagan Arts Awards were created by the Arts Council of the Central Okanagan to celebrate artistic and creative excellence and achievement of artists, in all disciplines, in our region. By publicly acknowledging the work of these individuals and organizations, the Arts Council of the Central Okanagan places excellence in artistic practice, in all its forms, front and centre as an integral part of our vibrant community.
The Arts makes a significant contribution to the social, physical, creative and economic wellbeing of the Central Okanagan and the strength of the Arts speaks a lot about the strength of the soul of any community.
The creative and artistic Soul of the Central Okanagan is alive and well.
We want to celebrate it. We want to showcase it. We want to acknowledge and champion those people and organizations that are making significant contributions to the thriving fabric of art making in our community.
Besides acknowledging creative and artistic excellence, the Okanagan Arts Awards also makes outstanding artistic practices more visible and accessible to our community and provides role models for other artistic practitioners. No matter the discipline, there is an inherent commonality and kinship amongst anyone engaged in the creative process and the spirit of creation.
The goals of the Arts Council of the Central Okanagan in creating and presenting the Okanagan Arts Awards are to:
- support, champion and encourage outstanding artistic practice
- publicly acknowledge, showcase and celebrate outstanding artistic practices in the Central Okanagan
- raise awareness of the amount and quality of artistic production in our region
- to advocate for continued and increased community support for artistic practitioners – individuals and organizations
- increase the visibility of successful artistic practitioners as role models in the Central Okanagan
- demonstrate the importance of the arts to the community of the Central Okanagan as a whole
- engage the community in the celebration of great artistic achievement
- create a lasting legacy and record of outstanding artistic achievement in the Central Okanagan
- create an accessible living archive of all past winners and nominees
The art awards will be awarded on an annual basis, with presentations made during a Gala Event, which will take place in the Spring of each year.
Learn More About the Award Criteria for the the Okanagan Arts Awards
Interested in some of our previous winners? Check them out below!
Keys to our Success
