The Fredericton Arts Alliance was created in 1999 to advocate on behalf of the arts and artists in the Fredericton area.

Since that year, it has organized a public forum on arts issues for every federal, provincial and municipal election, to give candidates an opportunity to state their policies on cultural issues. The federal gatherings invite all candidates in the Fredericton riding to attend. Provincial sessions ask each party to select one candidate to represent them. The municipal discussion focuses on mayoral candidates.

In 2000, the FAA began publication of the ArtsNEWS, which rapidly developed into a free electronic weekly bulletin on the city’s vibrant arts scene. With support from the City of Fredericton, the FAA has a contract editor to produce ArtsNEWS, which goes to some 1,500 subscribers, most of them in the city.

The same year, the FAA began its summer Artists in Residence program in the historic Garrison District. Artists apply for residencies, and successful artists are selected by an independent jury. They are paid to work, two at a time, in one of the Casemates. The program supports artists, and also gives locals and tourists an opportunity to connect with working artists and explore their motivation and techniques. Over the years there have been painters, printmakers, potters, sculptors, jewellers, musicians, writers, fabric artists, weavers, photographers and performing artists sharing their visions and interacting with the public. In 2020, because of the restrictions around the COVID pandemic, the Artists in Residence worked online, through various forms of social media.

Over the years, the FAA has participated in Arts and Culture Forums, Economic Development Forums and Social Policy meetings organized by elected officials and all three levels of government. It has also made presentations to government on arts related issues. It was involved in the creation of Fredericton’s Municipal Cultural Policy.

In its first year, the FAA launched the initiative to create a community arts centre in the Charlotte Street School. During 2001, Fredericton Arts and Learning Incorporated was established, with federal charitable status, to operate and manage an arts centre. Its interim board included two current, and two past, FAA board members. In 2005, the Charlotte Street Arts Centre became a reality.

In 2005, the Fredericton Arts Alliance participated in the Atlantic Cultural Spaces conference and later organized a follow-up meeting with attendees in the Fredericton region to discuss further some of the ideas which came out of the conference.

In 2005 and several following years, the FAA worked with students at the UNB Law School’s Pro Bono program to develop booklets on various aspects of the law for artists, including copyright and contract law. These are available via links on our website.

In 2006, the FAA and Enterprise Fredericton headed the organization of a visit of distinguished Chinese Artists to Fredericton, along with key participation of MCAF, the Chinese Cultural Association, Enterprise Fredericton, FAA, the Charlotte Street Arts Centre, The City, Fredericton Chamber of Commerce, and the provincial government. The visit took place June 4 to 7 and included an exhibition.

From 2005 to 2011 the FAA organized an annual open studio tour – Art Trek – inviting artists to open their work spaces to visitors for a day. A city grant which had helped support this was cancelled in 2009, and the program itself ended when the city organized a series of gallery hops over the summer which drew attention away from the artists studios.

In 2009, the FAA received status as a registered charity, allowing it to offer income tax receipts for donations. It opened up the organization to receiving grants from foundations which only give to registered charities. The same year, the organization ran its first major fundraising gala – High on the Arts (now For Arts’ Sake), with live music, live and silent auctions of art and fine craft.

Also in 2009, the FAA was instrumental in laying the groundwork for creation of Arts Link – a new body to represent artists in the province’s Anglophone community, as a counterpart to the Association acadienne des artistes professionnel.le.s du Nouveau-Brunswick. As a result, provincial funding for the FAA, which had been $20,000 in 2006, had dropped to half that by 2010, at which point it vanished completely. This forced the FAA to lay off its part-time coordinator, meaning that the Board had to take on all the aspects of the Association’s work.

The FAA started 2010 with that financial crisis. People responded: charitable donations topped $2,000 and paid membership increased over 100%.

In 2015, the FAA initiated a project to bring artists into area schools to work for extended periods with teachers and students. For each project, we expect the artist to spend about 25 hours working with a class on a project – preferably something with long lasting benefit. Over the years these have produced murals and sculptures in schools, photography, writing, musical programs and more. We have been able to initiate these projects thanks to the success of our fundraising efforts. The FAA covers an honorarium for the artists, and the costs of approved materials. This work is coordinated with the Anglophone School District West, which helps with the administration. In 2017 we were awarded $2500 in Canada 150 funding to expand the schools projects, enabling us to run six projects with a sesquicentennial theme.

In 2016 we initiated an Art Off the Streets program to link artists with clients of the city’s Homeless Shelters. The FAA works closely with Shelter Coordinator Warren Maddox to run these workshops.

In 2020 the virus pandemic offered challenges to all our projects. Some had to be postponed entirely -- Artists in the Schools, for example, and Art Off the Streets simply could not be conducted under the required conditions. Other activities, though, turned out to be possible with enough creativity and hard work. All the Board meetings from April on were conducted via Zoom. The Election Forum, which had to be put together in an extremely short time because of the unexpected provincial election call, was conducted via streaming live video, through a combination of a Zoom meeting among the candidates and moderator and a YouTube live video with provision for running questions and comments. Even the annual fundraising gala and art auction was conducted by an online auction site. And in addition to all that, the process of recreating the FAA's online presence with a new website, along with a new system for distributing our flagship ArtsNEWS, the weekly events bulletin, proceeded entirely via online conversations.