Tim Jones

Background

About Tim Jones

Change-maker, social entrepreneur and thought leader, Tim Jones has made profound and unique contributions to arts, culture and urban development communities in Toronto, Canada and around the world. His work has evolved over the past four decades in three distinct but related career phases. In his early career as part of the senior leadership of Toronto’s queer theatre company Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, he built a cultural platform that empowered LGBTQ2S+ artists to define new identities, shift cultural narratives and in the process helped pave the way for previously unthinkable advances in human rights. Next, over a ten-year relationship with The Canada Council for the Arts, Tim played a catalytic role in strengthening Canada’s national theatre ecosystem. As Artscape of CEO from1998 - 2021, Tim gained recognition as a global leader in leveraging the power of arts and culture as catalysts for change in urban and community development. Today, Tim is the CEO of Base31 a major new cultural destination on the site of a WWII airbase in Picton Ontario. Tim’s ground-breaking approaches in all phases of his career have been rooted in his deep understanding of the value and power of arts and culture as a driver of change, growth and transformation. Tim is recognized as a thought leader ‘creative placemaking’, a term that he coined in 2006 that has since become a global field of practice. He has spoken in more than 75 cities and communities around the world and has been given numerous awards and distinctions including Social Entrepreneur of the Year (by the Geneva-based Schwab Foundation) in 2014 and the Order of Canada in 2023.