Arts and Culture

children playing on splashpad

Peterborough has a vibrant arts, culture, and heritage community. We have a wide variety of museums, an exciting music and theatre scene, hundreds of cultural workers, producers and organizations, a busy festival calendar, and well-preserved built heritage.

Municipal Cultural Plan

In 2012, Council adopted the City's first Municipal Cultural Plan. The Plan focuses on culture's role in creating a livable, sustainable community with a vibrant downtown and healthy neighbourhoods. The Plan presents a shared cultural vision for Peterborough through a set of guidelines, principles and actions that ensure we reach our greatest potential as a culturally vibrant and creative city.

Municipal cultural mapping

As part of the Municipal Cultural Plan, the City created maps identifying our range of cultural assets. These maps provide a wealth of information about our cultural activities, cultural facilities and organizations, public art, heritage resources, and businesses that make up our local economy.

These maps were designed to encourage using local cultural assets as tools to enhance creative endeavours, stimulate innovation, support entrepreneurial activity, promote cultural tourism, and economic growth. There are currently five different culture maps available.

Cultural facilities and spaces map

The Cultural Facilities Map shows areas where the community can display or produce cultural products and activities. These places include libraries, museums, art galleries, theatres, archives, aboriginal centres, outdoor stages and pavilions. The map shows the location and geographic distribution of cultural facilities in the city and identifies those that are municipally-owned and privately owned.

There are five types of facilities identified on the map:

Performance facilities

Includes space for the performing arts including live theatre, musical and dance productions, literary performances, film, and videography. In some cases, they also provide space for related training, classes and workshops.

Galleries

Includes facilities that feature visual and craft arts. Many also offer art classes or seasonal workshops in addition to their formal exhibition programming.

Cultural heritage facilities

Includes facilities providing space and support for local heritage resources and programs including museums, heritage buildings and archival facilities.

Arts and cultural space

Includes facilities providing free or affordable space for the production of arts and cultural activities and products, for showcasing local work, as well as space to engage in creative activities and entrepreneurship. Examples include rehearsal studios, incubator office space, art and design studios, gallery space, meeting rooms, and box office functions.

Libraries

Includes facilities housing literary, audio visual resources and access to online resources and information. Libraries also offer space to individuals and local groups for meetings, events and cultural activities.

Cultural organizations map

The cultural organization map illustrates non-profit cultural organizations, which play a key role in enabling and supporting cultural activity in our city. These organizations coordinate, assist and advance cultural sector development and activities. This includes visual arts, music, performing arts, literary, multicultural, heritage, arts advocacy and cultural education.

Cultural economy and businesses

The cultural economy and businesses map shows our cultural resources, activities, festivals and events, and businesses that are important to our economy.

Investing in local assets and human capital to strengthen our creative economy is an effective strategy for addressing socio-economic issues. Cultural enterprise and creative industries create employment growth, revitalize urban areas, transform ordinary cities into ‘destinations', create stronger connections between arts and business and attract skilled workers across other economic sectors.

We are home to a number of creative occupations and industries far above provincial and national averages In fact, across Ontario, only Toronto has a higher percentage of cultural workers as a percentage of the total labour force.

Heritage resources map

Cultural heritage encompasses both the historic built environment and the intangible heritage that shapes our local identity. Cultural heritage preservation ensures that treasures from the past are not lost as the urban landscape continues to evolve. Mapping heritage resources provides a valuable snapshot of the historic fabric of our city. Sharing our stories about these places helps us to understand who we are as a community. Our heritage resources map provides the location of heritage properties throughout the city.

Additional information on Peterborough's heritage resources is available through the City's Heritage Preservation Office.

Public art map

Our growing public art collection consists of sculptures, murals, monuments and other art installations. We recognize that public art is an important aspect of culturally vibrant cities - both as expressive works of art that enhance the attractiveness and live ability of an area, and as a way to recognize an event or places as being historical significance. Our interactive public art map showcases where you can find public art in our city.

Culture council

The Electric City Culture Council is as a community-based organization created in 2012 to support the efforts of cultural producers and highlight the value of creativity in building community prosperity.

Corporate Sponsorship Opportunities

Promote your business or brand with a customized sponsorship profile presented with City programs, facilities, and events.

Visit our Corporate Sponsorship page to find out about our current opportunities.