Welcome to the Archives!

Note: We will be decommissioning our old Archives Website and migrating everything to this website over the next several months. Thank you for your patience as this page is under construction!

Since 1977, Cultivate Art Commons previously named Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre/Kingston Artists’ Association Inc. (K.A.A.I.) has been a catalyst for contemporary art. The creation of the digital archives began as an effort to document our history, and provide public access to decades of media from our past exhibitions, community events, and workshops. This is an ongoing project with updates and additions still to come. If you notice something missing or want to inquire about anything, feel free to contact us.

Learn more about Cultivate Art Commons’ Mission & History.

Explore by Decade

Copyright Policy

Digitizing 45+ Years of Contemporary Art History

photograph between floors of a building with a staircase to the left.

As one of the longest-running artist-run centres in the country, Cultivate Art Commons has 45+ years of rich and valuable content in our archival collection stored in our office and at the Queen’s University Archives.

In honor of the organization’s 45th anniversary, and through the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Cultivate Art Commons began the digitization of our archival material to preserve our deteriorating media and provide access to never-before-seen records through an online database.

This project intends to preserve Canadian contemporary art history – enabling artists, researchers, writers, and curators to easily access archival material, and adding the experimental and alternative practices of hundreds of artists to the national canon. 

a man standing in front of a large scale multi panel art work in the space of a gallery.

Preservation of Vulnerable Media

Over the years, Cultivate Art Commons has documented exhibitions, performances, and installations using various technologies of the time, leading to archives stored on outdated media like micro-caches, tapes, and floppy disks.

This project safeguards this content from physical loss, including misplacement, hardware corruption, equipment limitations, and unforeseen disasters such as floods or fires.

2 people looking at the screen of a large camcorder

Access to Cultural Heritage

Heritage preservation is essential for maintaining cultural identity and ensuring the legacy of past generations endures. Digitizing our archives preserves our cultural history, strengthens our community’s artistic roots and allows materials to be accessed by new audiences, within new time frames and socio-political contexts.

This project addresses the need to preserve and document the histories of alternative art practices in Canada, with the caveat that any history will be partial, selective, and subjective.

✺ Intention of our Archives ✺

Cultivate Art Commons’ Archives are an educational resource created to provide access to our permanent archival collection for research, access to cultural heritage, and the preservation of vulnerable media.

* For more information on the intended use of this resource, please see our Copyright Policy.