By Pepper Parr
April 3rd, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
Jeremy Freiburger led the search for a cultural identity and the development of a cultural action plan for the city of Burlington.
Jeremy Freiburger announced today that he is leaving what started out as a scrappy group of artists just hunting for a home for the creative work we all did, Cobalt Connects has grown to take on an insane mix of projects. From feature-length indigenous films to massive public art installations, municipal and provincial level research and cultural planning, restoring old theatres and leading local festivals, funding music videos and doing weirdo science on people’s brains in response to cultural stimuli – we’ve done some really exciting work and all of it has engaged you, our community, in one way or another.
Cobalt Connects has always been an organization that responded to the community before us with an eye to make positive change and impact. We’ve paid out millions of dollars in artist fees, produced content for our community and others to enjoy, launched facilities that still house hundreds of artists in Hamilton and beyond, and we hope, helped shape the city and province we all live in.
Jeremy Freiburger, author of a report that provided direction for the city’s cultural plan based on reams of data he had gathered. The city didn’t do all that well implementing its Cultural Action Plan.
Freiburger had a contract with the City of Burlington to do all their serious arts based thinking – the city wouldn’t have a serious arts programme without Jeremy. It wasn’t an easy job. He is going to be close to impossible to replace.
Freiburger announced that it was “time for me to change” and said he will be leaving Cobalt Connects as its Executive Director to take on an exciting new opportunity to lead the cultural programming development at Royal Botanical Gardens . I aim to bring the same sense of entrepreneurship, creativity and pushing the edges to this remarkable organization that has so much potential for the arts.
Cobalt Connects will carry on under the leadership of Steve Deeps (he/him) and Steff Bishop (they/them), two amazing people who have helped shape the programming and projects you know and love from Cobalt Connects over the past few years – and a committed Board of Directors. They are amazing, passionate, skilled cultural workers who will now shape the future of the organization and will have my ear to bend and advise forever.
Yes, that could be true – but they aren’t Jeremy Freiburger.
It will be interesting to see what he can achieve at the RBC; he will have the advantage of working with people who understand what is needed and have wisely chosen someone who can do the job.
