Downtown Williams Lake B-I-A was rewarded for its efforts for a project that was launched back in June.
They were one of ten B-I-A’s to be recognized by the Business Improvement Areas of British Columbia to win an award.
“They were looking at BIA’S across BC as to what we were doing to help in the response and recovery effort of our members”, Brent Dafoe, BIA Business Coordinator said, “and that relates to the Business Portrait Program that started all the way back now in June. That was where Dwayne Davis went out and painted 35 caricatures on the front of all the businesses”.
Dafoe said they would like to share the award with all the businesses who took part in their business portrait program along with local Williams Lake artist Dwayne Davis.
(Original story from May 22)
Downtown Williams Lake B-I-A announced the launch of its Business Portrait Project.
Business Coordinator, Brent Dafoe said since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many residents have probably missed the faces they would see in the downtown business community, so they thought why not put their portrait on their windows in caricature form.
“So we wanted to continue a tradition of windows being painted here in the summertime months so the Downtown BIA along with the Royal Dividend Grant is going to cover a number of businesses to pay for two and a half hours of window painting for each of them to sort of unite the community into one fun project”.
The caricature paintings will be done by local artist Dwayne Davis who Dafoe said he will be spending time with each business interested in being involved in the project to get their thoughts of how they would like it to look.
Dafoe explained how the Business Portrait Project got started in the first place.
“One of my goals in my Rural Dividend Project is to beautify the downtown area. I’ve heard that it’s a fun tradition”, Dafoe said, “To usually paint the windows here in the summertime and I wanted to make sure our community got still got that sense of excitement when they’re walking around our downtown core”.
Dafoe added that they put their own caricature on their Downtown Williams Lake B-I-A window as an example of what they’ll look like it and right away the business next to them wanted one as well.