The Future of Arts & Culture in St. Thomas
Photo: Carley Shearon & Andrew Gunn of young & free press have been gathering feedback from community members and local students on ‘The Future of Arts & Culture in St. Thomas’. The mural in the background is titled ‘La Chorcha’ & was painted by artist Andrew Lewis in 2022.
With the possibility that the City of St. Thomas might wish to develop an ‘Arts & Culture Master Plan’ for the community, our team offered to generate an early overview of what shape this could take. We are grateful to the St. Thomas Economic Development Corporation for the opportunity to consider the potential for arts and culture in the city. Throughout 2025, our team met with community members to gather input, and as part of our ‘Students Build Cities’ program with Thames Valley District School Board, we received lots of feedback from local students as well. The current expectation is that the population of St. Thomas will nearly double by 2050, swelling from roughly 45,000 to 80,000. Time to plan for the impact of this rate of growth city-wide …
Our primary consideration has been this: rather than thinking only about the cost of the City supporting arts and culture, perhaps we should consider how much the community is losing in the absence of substantial investments in this area. In our conversations with community members, we found that, in general, there is deep appreciation for the significant support that the City has demonstrated for sports and recreation; simultaneously, many people lament that the same approach has not been taken with the arts and culture sector. Developing a robust and innovative ‘Arts & Culture Master Plan’ could help drive strategic growth in this area.
From January to March 2026, we will be sharing our top five recommendations for ‘The Future of Arts & Culture in St. Thomas’ based on our work so far. Follow along here or on our Instagram page. Of course, this is only a preliminary list -- there is certainly lots of room for more ideas and we look forward to continuing to refine these suggestions and collaborate on others.
Note: over the past decade, our team has been heavily involved in coordinating private sector support for arts and culture in St. Thomas, including the ‘Track to the Future’ mural project, the development of new park spaces and recreation amenities, education programs, environmental initiatives, tourism offerings & more. Therefore, we are very much looking at this issue from the inside out, and acknowledge our angle of vision.
Top Five Recommendations for the Future of Arts & Culture in St. Thomas
1. One consistent theme in our conversations with community members was the desire for consistency. While special or annual events can be fun, St. Thomas lacks a central cultural destination that can deliver a steady schedule of events that will draw large numbers of attendees on a regular basis. Local businesses, like restaurants, cafés, shops and bars would benefit from this enormously, especially downtown. Therefore, our view is that the time has come to construct a new, purpose-built ‘Centre for Arts and Culture’ in the core. We heard lots of excellent ideas regarding what could be incorporated into this type of facility, including a black box theatre capable of adapting for concerts, theatre productions, film screenings, guest speakers and small to mid-size conferences. Additionally, there could be a social café, gallery and studio space for visual artists, and classrooms for ongoing opportunities in education. Another meaningful move would be to set up artist-in-residence positions, which could add new and diverse voices to cultural programming in the city. We recognize, of course, that building a Centre for Arts and Culture would be expensive, but having such a central destination in the community would draw residents and visitors in noteworthy numbers and give a substantial spin-off boost to businesses. Key considerations: right-size the venue and hire an excellent Artistic Director to program the venue to correspond with local interests.
Stay tuned for the rest of our recommendations throughout January, February and March!
