The Mayor's Arts Awards is an annual recognition program that celebrates high artistic achievement and recognizes extraordinary contributions in and to the arts. By increasing the profile and appreciation of the arts, the Awards enhance the cultural vitality and civic identity of Kingston. Through this program, the City affirms the value of the arts in City life, and nurtures and inspires sustained development of the cultural sector to the benefit of all its citizens.

Purpose

• To recognize the achievements and contributions of individual artists and arts organizations to the cultural vitality of Kingston, and in doing so, inspire and encourage others.
• To recognize and nurture the outstanding and sustained contributions of members of the community as supporters and volunteers in the arts.
• To build the profile of the arts community across the City, increasing awareness of the arts among its citizens, and thus building audiences and other forms of participation.
• To increase Kingston's profile as a place where creative life is valued and innovation is embraced, an attractive destination for visitors, residents and businesses.

Award Categories

The Mayor's Arts Awards recognizes three categories of contribution.

Creator Award

Arts Champion Award

The Arts Champion Award recognizes a living individual, organization or corporation who makes an extraordinary, leading contribution to the arts In Kingston as a volunteer, advocate, supporter, sponsor and/or philanthropist. Award and certificate of recognition

Limestone Arts Legacy Award

The Limestone Arts Legacy Award recognizes individuals of the past whose sustained and substantial contributions have built the artistic vitality of the City, nurturing and enabling forms of creation, participation, presentation and enjoyment, whose leadership has inspired others, and whose influence has been felt in the region and beyond. Award and certificate of recognition.

Nominations Process

The nomination of award recipients is facilitated through the City of Kingston Arts Advisory Committee (AAC) that establishes a Nominations Working Group (NWG) each year for this purpose. It is the responsibility of the Nominations Working Group to identify award recipients according to the program criteria set out in the Terms of Reference for the Mayor's Arts Awards. The Nominations Working Group is itself comprised of five to seven members who represent a range of interests, experience and perspectives and who are also respected and knowledgeable with regard to the arts in Kingston.

The members of the 2021 Mayor's Arts Award Nominations Working Group were appointed by Council and include Councillor Jim Neill along with Tim Fort and Nadine Baker from the Arts Advisory Committee as well as community members Kathryn Mackay and Rob Howard and past Mayor's Arts Awards recipient, Chaka Chikodzi.

The winners’ profile videos were created by Josh Lyon, AKAFLK Productions with support from the Kingston Arts Council.

2023 Recipients

Creator Award recipients

Sasha Jimenez French is a multidisciplinary Cuban American artist, based in Kingston, Ontario. Through her thriving visual arts practice, dance instruction and performance, Sasha is a strong community leader and a driving force for community building in the arts. Sasha teaches at the Kingston School of Dance and is a former Creativity Studio Artist at the Tett Centre for Creativity and Learning. Sasha’s arts practice is now based in a new studio space in downtown Kingston, where she continues to inspire others, working collaboratively to create opportunities for artists, develop creative projects, and build collective spaces to make art accessible. 

Savannah Shea is a Kingston based singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, visual artist, and poet. She is an active musician in the Kingston community, regularly performing at local venues including as part of her Sunday afternoon weekly series of folk, jazz, blues, and original tunes at Musiikki Café, and at festivals, and events. Savannah is community minded and a true collaborator, frequently working with fellow artists on creative and cross-disciplinary projects and she provides a strong presence for artists seeking live accompaniment or original compositions. 

Blue Canoe Theatrical Productions is a non-profit, community theatre and youth-led organization that creates opportunities for youth under the age of 30 to gain experience in the performing arts by developing a professional, safe, fun, and engaging atmosphere for youth to work together on theatrical productions. Blue Canoe strives to select programming based upon the ability to offer as many opportunities to youth as possible, selecting work that offers an equal opportunity for the youth of various ages with a focus on, but not limited to, musical theatre.  

Arts Champion Award recipient

Jermaine Marshall has a Master of Arts in Social Justice and Equity Studies and since 2021, he currently works as the Inclusion and Anti-Racism Advisor in the Queen’s University Human Rights and Equity Office. Performing under the name J-Marsh, Jermaine is an independent vocalist and poet whose art weaves together his love for spoken word poetry and free form dancing, often investigating his identity as a proud queer Jamaican within the polarizing atmosphere of his home country. Jermaine has been active in organizing Black History Month and Emancipation Day events in the Kingston community and helping to expand the visibility of black artists while encouraging engagement with the community as a whole and advancing spaces for equity and diversity in the city. 

Limestone Arts Legacy Award recipient

Bronwen Wallace (1945–1989) was a poet, short-story writer, and mentor to many aspiring authors as a creative writing instructor at Queen’s University and St. Lawrence College in Kingston. Born in Kingston, she remained deeply committed to the community she called home most of her life. She was also intensely involved in social activism and feminism as reflected in her work at Kingston Interval House, a shelter for women and children, as well as her weekly column for the Kingston Whig-Standard. 
Bronwen was recognized in the last decade of her life as a major Canadian poet and a significant figure in the growth of the feminist movement. She was the author of five published collections of poetry from 1980-1991 and in 2020, the Collected Poems of Bronwen Wallace was published posthumously, which featured Bronwen's published poems, a selection of previously unpublished early work, and an introduction and notes by Kingston writer, Carolyn Smart. As a testament to her continued influence and impact on the writing community, the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers was established in 1994 by a group of friends and colleagues to honour her belief that writers should have more opportunities for recognition early in their careers.