Vancouver 2010.  Having been there and in Whistler for the past week, there are sites earmarked all over the area for development ahead of the Winter Olympics.  A series of high class venues and buildings, all built to house this great sporting event. 

However, my friend, who lives in Whistler, was wondering about all this construction.  Why, she asked, when you're surrounded by some of the most beautiful scenery in Canada, would you want to erect a series of "iconic" buildings?   read more »

Looking back at the blogs for the past week or so, there seems to be a thread running through all of them and that is creativity.

Creativity and creating creative cities are very much buzz ideas developing in the early years of the 21^st century. With organisations such as Toronto's Artscape addressing how to create the conditions for creativity to thrive within a city and companies such as Pixar and Google addressing creating conditions for creativity within their workforce, there is no escaping the fact that this is an important movement.

Being an historian by trade, this got me thinking about the importance of creative thinking in the past and the revolutions this has created, why they occurred and how that compares to our situation here. Unsurprisingly, there are common themes running through all of them.  read more »

This Monday past, we held our Volunteer Appreciation Party, to recognise the work and contribution of the volunteers who work on our Granting Committee. It was held in Calgary Opera's Arrata Centre, a beautifully restored church in the Beltline district. Part of our entertainment that evening were the performances of two young artists, Whitney-Leigh Sloan and John Conlon, both of whom are participants in Calgary Opera's Emerging Artists Programme. The pair sang a duet and then each performed a solo.  read more »

Having only been in Calgary for eight and a half months and working at Calgary Arts Development for 2 of those months, I'm still on a steep learning curve about what the city has to offer in the way of arts. This learning curve doesn't only involve discovering the vast amount of performances and events, but also how the arts community in Calgary has developed and is developing. It is in exploring this that I realise just how different my own background and experiences are. Not only do I not come from Calgary originally, I am not even Canadian, hailing as I do, from the UK. Moving away from my familiar cultural references has been more of a shock than I had anticipated and certainly more of a challenge. Suddenly, I can't reference contemporary or historical authors, artists, musicians and organisations. My cultural landscape has disappeared and I'm moving through new and alien territory.  read more »