We are in the midst of the Arts Space Assessment Process, the Calgary Arts Development led process to identify strong community led arts space proejcts to reccomend for municipal funding or land. Much like developing space, our process sometimes inches forward and sometimes takes a giant leap. Lately we have been leaping along. The Arts Space Assessment Process has brought forward amazing projects that, when completed, will change the city's sky line and bring creative life into many Calgary nieghborhoods. Read more »

Somehow the first month of my work term with Calgary Arts Development has flown by without a blog post. Not a single one. As a public relations student at Mount Royal College, I understand the importance of communicating with the public, so I figured it was time for me to jump on the blog train with reckless abandon. And there's no better time to start than now.

The other evening I had the good fortune of attending the dress rehearsal of Alberta Ballet's Dangerous Liaisons. I was pleasantly surprised. Take everything you thought you knew about the ballet and throw it out the window. Dangerous Liaisons pushes the boundaries by having a play and a ballet going on simultaneously. The choreography was visually stunning as dancers held poses that at times were painfully beautiful to watch. This truly is a must see, even if you don't think you like the ballet. Go. I promise you won't be disappointed. Read more »

Memories are powerful. If you look at some current pop cultures trends it's easy to find evidence of the power of nostalgia. The fact that we have an orange Care Bear in the office is a good indicator. 80's revival has been in full swing for some time now and I've got my plaid shirts and doc martins on deck for a 90's grunge revisit. For many of us around the triple decade mark conversations often turn to the music, movies, and television we experienced when we were younger. Those of us who grew up in the 80's were really the first generation to grow up in such a media saturated environment and we can easily relate our media experience with just about anybody the same age in North America. Read more »

It's been a rush. Since today is my last day at Calgary Arts Development, I thought I would attempt writing a blog. I have to admit I've been sort of afraid of blogging (even though blogging dates back to 1983 and I still haven't tried it). How does one write about something in a way that is interesting to read; conversational, yet not silly? But, like Terry says when referring to accepting new technologies, “jump on the train”. Read more »

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 »

Like many people, I spend a lot of time browsing blogs to keep up on news, trends and cool stuff. I'm always grateful for the amazing learning journey that comes from reading through my Bloglines feeds (almost!) every day. It was a great discovery to find New PR this week. It's a reader-ranked source of news and resources on all things PR-related. All the work of sorting and filtering to see what's worth reading is done already, so what you get is a really useful collection of great articles that's been ranked and screened by a readership of PR professionals. The concept of quality content rising to the top is one of the guiding principles of Web 2.0** and I really appreciate when it happens in such a useful way.

I'm interested to learn more about resources like this that others find useful in helping them navigate through the world in an interesting and engaged way. What's rising to the top of your list? 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 »

I have been thinking a lot lately about the how the concepts of creativity, risk, and success are interrelated. Does a person or an organization have to be a risk-taker in order to be creative and thus successful? Does being risk-adverse result in creative stagnation and mediocrity at best or blatant failure at worst?

I was reminded the other day about a speech given by Sir Ken Robinson at the 2006 TED Conference, where he said, “if you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything creative”. He goes on to say that “we have become frightened of being wrong and stigmatize mistakes.” So Sir Robinson might argue that taking risks and not letting fear get in the way of bold action will result in higher levels of creativity and an increased probability of success. Read more »

Another quick note from South America: I found a culture house in Buenos Aires, care of Lonely Planet and confirmed by a hip, young porteña (local woman) walking her dog. It´s called El Catedral. If you were every lucky enough to go to The Night Gallery in Calgary, then you´d love this place. It’s located in a warehouse just outside of the centre of Buenos Aires. It’s cavernous filled with art and eclectic furniture with gigantic chandeliers with red lights, vegetarian food, and a big dance floor. We drank the local beer, Quilmes, and watched stylish, young couples do a sensuous tango lesson. It was mesmerizing… Check out the photos on this website. I hope the link works!

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Writing on location from Curico, Chile. It´s a small city two hours south of the capital, Santiago. Curico is not unlike the Okanagan, surrounded by vineyards and orchards. (The wine is cheap and delicious… and so is the fruit.) It´s spring here: the sun is shining and I´ve slathered sunscreen all over my fair skin. I´m staying with a visual artist whom I met several years ago when studying art in Spain. She has regular exhibitions and teaches art and yoga by day (not at the same time). I´m here on vacation but our work at Calgary Arts Development never escapes me. There´s nothing like a trip to South America to offer some perspective on development in general… Read more »