The Hachborn-Courtnage Fund for the Arts

The Hachborn-Courtnage Fund for the Arts was created by David Courtnage and Elizabeth Hachborn to celebrate their marriage on August 14, 2010. Gifts to the fund form a permanent endowment with the income supporting smaller arts organizations. The arts are sometimes out-of-reach of families and others who simply have nothing left after their basic needs are met to see a play, attend a concert, or take music or drawing lessons. One of the goals of the fund is to provide accessibility for all to enjoy and pursue the arts. Explains David, "we want everyone to benefit from the best the Stratford and Perth County community has to offer."

Another goal is to promote and support arts, culture and heritage to ensure that creativity and imagination remain a vital part of the community's social and economic life.

With so much need in the world, so much strife, so many other important causes, why the arts? The answer to this question begins with the relationship the Stratford and Perth County Community Foundation has with the local creative community. Elizabeth explains. "In 2009 the Community Foundation was approached to assemble a group of community leaders to brainstorm the delivery of funding to smaller arts organizations in an effort to avert the negative effect of the economic downturn. As part of this process the Community Foundation was introduced to many local artists and grew in appreciation of their various crafts and in knowledge of the challenges they face." Perth Arts Connect was formed as a result of this collaboration among artists, arts organizations, community organizations and funders. These local artists and arts organizations contribute greatly to the vitality of communities in Perth County.

This fund to support the arts was also inspired by a phrase taken from a work by Dostoevsky and quoted by Aleksandr Sozhenitsyn in his Nobel Lecture on Literature in 1970. "Beauty will save the world”. The creation and appreciation of beauty has always inspired down through the ages. Archaeologists tell us that no stage in human existence has been without art. The ancient philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, compared beauty to goodness and truth – describing each as inseparable from the other - as one absolute idea. Art speaks to us. Art transcends us. “Through art,” says Solzhenitsyn, “we are sometimes sent – vaguely, briefly – insights which logical processes of thought cannot attain.” Can beauty save the world? Politics has not worked. Money has not worked. Why not try beauty.

*Photo by Irene Miller Photographic Art