Each year the Utah Cultural Alliance recognizes individuals who demonstrate dedication to Utah’s cultural industry. This year the awardees will be honored at the Annual Awards held on June 30, 2022 in conjunction with Culture Connect.

2022 Utah Cultural Career Achievement Award

Award Criteria

- Given to one person each year.
- An individual who has demonstrated a dedication to Utah's arts, culture, and humanities for more than one decade.
- An individual whose efforts have made a significant and lasting impact on Utah’s cultural sector.

Awardee - Amy McDonald (Brolly Arts)

Amy MacDonald believes “that the arts are one of the most non-threatening means society has to bring people together to engage in critical issues”. Yet while the arts are indeed a powerful place for human and community transformation, access to funding, resources, and communities can be complicated, difficult, and sparse. It takes nothing short of a hard working visionary to build dozens of sustainable systems of expression, education, community engagement, and art over time through relentless resourcefulness and an enduring belief in positive change. Amy’s super power is her ability to listen to the culture around her and diagnose the needs, gaps, and potential of any given community. She knows how to build a team, elevate and empower individuals, include all voices, and build something meaningful with whole communities without excluding folks with ideas different from her own.

In 1995, Amy founded Brolly Arts, a non-profit umbrella arts organization, dedicated to creating meaningful art and vibrant communities through artistic and civic collaboration and experimentation. Through these efforts, Brolly Arts has sponsored or supported numerous local projects, served over 750 artists, and successfully engaged in multiple strategic partnerships, all the while addressing global issues with local relevance. Brolly Arts is British slang for umbrella - an appropriate name for an inclusive non-profit arts organization focusing on positive social change. As Nancy Boskoff, Former Executive Director of the Salt Lake City Arts Council, said, “Brolly Arts has, from its inception, been an agent of change and community development through the arts for Salt Lake City. Every project undertaken has moved the arts community to work together and has creatively addressed many local and global issues.”

Amy’s positive ethos, work ethic, integrity, willingness to act, representation of all voices, and effectiveness are incredibly rare. Without her hard work over the last 30 years, there would be many seasoned artists and community builders who wouldn’t have even begun their careers or had the chance to make the infectious impact they learned first from Amy and her big ideas! Amy has an uncompromising dedication to bring about positive social change through the arts and humanities.

2022 Utah Exceptional Cultural Contribution Award

Award Criteria

- Given to one person or organization each year.
- An individual or organization working in Utah’s cultural sector that has used arts or humanities to make an exceptional contribution during the previous 18 months to social issues, advocacy, or community impact.

Awardee - Ogden Contemporary Arts (OCA)

A vibrant, thriving, and one-of-a-kind, non-profit, exhibition and community arts programming venue in Ogden, is one of Utah’s most brilliantly burgeoning fine arts communities. OCA began with a relatively meager start some 10 years ago, as ‘Ogden First.’ Since that time, it has continued to grow in scope, size and outreach, and now commanding a national stature, enabling it to continue to more fully realize and engage in its core values, which are:

• to be welcoming: to break down existing and perceived barriers surrounding contemporary art.
• to be entrepreneurial: to be an established, valuable organization that takes risks and inspires change.
• to be inclusive: to be a vehicle for respectful dialogue, diverse representation, and unbiased opportunity.
• to seek excellence: to foster a contemporary art experience focused on excellence and accessibility.

With a recent gift from the Dr. Ezekiel R. and Edna Wattis Dumke Foundation, OCA, has renovated key exhibition, studio and office space in the new Ogden landmark, the “Monarch”. OCA not only anchors this building, but the distinctive “Nine-Rails Arts District” in downtown Ogden, serving the diverse communities of all northern Utah.

Inspiring local and regional artists through active involvement with the international contemporary art community, OCA strives to be viewed as a credible and internationally respected art establishment while empowering artists with the facilities, environment, and experience to excel in their medium and enrich their lives. With their ground-breaking exhibitions, OCA creates and shares globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advanced arts programing. OCA has quickly become another gem in the complex shimmer of the Northern Utah cultural scene.