Municipal Cultural Planning Partnership (2003 - 2010)

The Municipal Cultural Planning Partnership (MCPP) was an alliance of almost 40 agencies including government agencies at Federal, Provincial Municipal levels, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Association of Municipalities of Ontario, The Trillium Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Business for the Arts and a range of individual business and community groups.

MCP was not a vague idea but a set of specific ideas and practices. At its centre was the idea of cultural resources which asked us to forget the categories of culture defined by governments agencies (arts, heritage, creative industries) and instead ourselves what constituted the cultural resources or assets in cities and communities - with a very ‘big tent’ definition of those assets. The MCP taxonomy of cultural resources was officially endorsed by the Governments of Ontario and Nova Scotia, and more than 70 municipalities across Canada and the United States. Cultural mapping was a specific methodology to identify, record and spatially mapping cultural assets in cities and regions. Beyond these physical assets mapping involved intangible assets - the values, traditions and stories that combine to define the identity of a place.

MCP was not about community development but about embedding culture in the actual planning systems of municipalities - in land use planning, in economic development, in social planning, in complete neighborhoods, etc. It was about adopting a “cultural lens” on planning and decision-making.