When Scott Gillingham sits at the mayor\u2019s desk in downtown Winnipeg, one of the things that he looks at is a pair of point shoes gifted to him by a dancer\u00a0from Canada\u2019s Royal Winnipeg Ballet sitting on a credenza.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time I look at those point shoes, they\u2019re there to remind me of discipline, hard work, putting in the hours of honing one\u2019s craft so you\u2019re ready for the performance moments,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The artistic inspiration hits Gillingham especially\u00a0hard\u00a0on the one day a year that he sits in a room at the RBC Convention Centre with hundreds of members of Winnipeg\u2019s creative community at the Mayor\u2019s Luncheon for the Arts, hosted by the Winnipeg Arts Council. 2026 will mark the fourth\u00a0time Gillingham has presided over the\u00a0proceedings, and\u00a0will be the last of his first term as mayor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Mayor\u2019s Luncheon for the Arts is\u00a0one of my favourite events of the year because it recognizes something\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0fundamental to Winnipeg\u2019s identity, and\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0the fact that we are a city of the arts,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Serving the arts through policy<\/p>\n
When he first campaigned for mayor back in 2022, Gillingham ran on promises to bolster funding to Winnipeg\u2019s four main performing arts organizations: the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Manitoba Opera, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra,\u00a0and the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre. These organizations have used this\u00a0support\u00a0(a\u00a0$2 million fund\u00a0called the Downtown Arts Capital Fund) for infrastructure upgrades.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe performing arts communities spend so much of their time obviously raising funds for their performances, but often, it that capital like grants that are necessary,\u201d says Gillingham. \u201cThe money for the bricks and mortar are sometimes harder to come by for arts\u00a0communities, and so we know that for them to deliver their performances, they need to make sure their buildings are operational and in shape and responding to the needs of\u00a0their\u00a0audiences.\u201d<\/p>\n
RELATED STORIES<\/p>\n
Arts play key role in vision for downtown\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another infrastructure project related to the arts that Gillingham and city council have taken an interest in is the proposed refurbishment of the Pantages Playhouse Theatre. The\u00a0executive\u00a0policy committee has recently directed city staff to explore the possibility of a land exchange deal to gain ownership of land known as the Pantages Annex Parcel that it would, in turn, give to the Performing Arts Consortium (the organization leading the charge on the Pantages project).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Scott Gillingham posing with leaders of downtown arts organizations in 2025. (Source: Royal Winnipeg Ballet)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gillingham\u00a0notes that this kind of investment\u00a0is one part of his administration\u2019s approach to the revitalization of the\u00a0downtown, which\u00a0also includes a major investment in housing. \u201cWhat\u2019s going to be key to the health of Winnipeg\u2019s downtown in the future is more people living in the downtown,\u201d he says. \u201cThat will also be very important for the success of the arts community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Scott Gillingham sits at the mayor\u2019s desk in downtown Winnipeg, one of the things that he looks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":711565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-711564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=711564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/711565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}