The National Director’s Blog – On the Red Arrow bus from Calgary to Edmonton

Jan­u­ary 31

CALGARY — Ah Cal­gary! What a warm wel­come, and I am not refer­ring to the spring-like tem­per­a­ture or the radi­ant sun­shine of the past two days! It began yes­ter­day at the air­port where Michael Green, Cura­tor and Artis­tic Direc­tor for Cal­gary 2012 was wait­ing to take me to my hotel and it went on until Tom McCarthy, Gen­eral Man­ager of Cal­gary Arts Devel­op­ment, dropped me at the Red Arrow bus ter­mi­nal today. I was wel­comed with open arms in this mod­ern metrop­o­lis in expan­sion mode. Cal­gary is proud of being a 2012 Cul­tural Cap­i­tal, a title it fully deserves. I must say to the usual wags that arts and cul­ture occupy a grow­ing place in the Cana­dian petro­leum cap­i­tal. Over the past ten years or so, Cal­gar­i­ans have grown more and more con­scious of the impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion the arts make to the qual­ity of life of their com­mu­nity, and they invest time and money in the sec­tor accord­ingly. On the infra­struc­ture front alone, the city will ded­i­cate in the next few years some $165 mil­lion in the cre­ation of new cul­tural spaces!

I sensed this energy and enthu­si­asm dur­ing the recep­tion hosted by Doug and Lois Mitchell, two promi­nent “movers and shak­ers” of the Alber­tan com­mu­nity. Close to 40 peo­ple responded to the invi­ta­tion sent by Cal­gary 2012 and gath­ered for  wine and cheese in an ele­gant recep­tion room of the legal firm Bor­den Lad­ner Ger­vais, on the 19th floor of the Cen­ten­nial Tower. They were curi­ous to hear about the CCA, a not so well-known orga­ni­za­tion from out east. This being an an infor­mal meet­ing, my usual for­mal pre­sen­ta­tion would have been out of place. So I pre­sented a Twit­ter ver­sion and in just over four min­utes, I sketched the ori­gins of the CCA, its past glo­ries, its unique place in the Cana­dian cul­tural ecol­ogy, its cur­rent chal­lenges and the vision it puts for­ward. This was fol­lowed by a Q&A of about 15 min­utes which car­ried for­ward to one-on-one con­ver­sa­tions. Many peo­ple expressed their inter­est in the CCA and asked how they could help with our future plans. I col­lected many busi­ness cards and promised that I would fol­low up. The first oppor­tu­nity to do so will be in just a month: I will be back here on March 4th as Board mem­ber of the Gov­er­nor Gen­eral Per­form­ing Arts Awards Foun­da­tion, to par­tic­i­pate in the events around the unveil­ing of the recip­i­ents of the 20th anniver­sary of the awards. It will be the first time that this announce­ment takes place out­side of the Toronto-Ottawa-Montréal tri­an­gle. I sensed a feel­ing of pride about that.

Today, I had a meet­ing with some ten peo­ple who were invited by the Cal­gary Arts Devel­op­ment Agency. This small num­ber clearly dis­ap­pointed the orga­niz­ers but the more inti­mate char­ac­ter of the meet­ing led to a rich exchange between par­tic­i­pants. Here again, the CCA was a totally unknown entity but after two hours, it is fair to say this was no longer the case! I think I made con­verts to the cause. Like yes­ter­day, the call for greater sol­i­dar­ity and putting an end to exces­sive frag­men­ta­tion of the sec­tor res­onated with par­tic­i­pants. Build­ing con­nec­tions will not be easy, but I received sage advice along with many words of encour­age­ment. I also had a short but stim­u­lat­ing con­ver­sa­tion with the Man­ager of the Arts and Cul­ture Divi­sion for the City of Cal­gary. We agreed to meet again when I return in March.

I want to end this blog with a beau­ti­ful metaphor from of a par­tic­i­pant in this afternoon’s meet­ing. She told me not to lose hope: the CCA is like a bam­boo plant, she said. For many years, it has been grow­ing deep roots that go unseen, but like bam­boo, it will soon sprout above ground and peo­ple will be able to see it grow rapidly. I could not have dreamed of a bet­ter way to end a mem­o­rable visit!

–Alain