Mayor’s Arts Visioning Committee releases recommendations for raising the profile of arts in Edmonton

By Mack D. Male · November 15, 2011 at 8:37pm

After eight months of consultation and hard work, the Mayor’s Arts Visioning Committee has released 12 recommendations that aim to raise Edmonton’s profile as an arts and culture hub. The City’s existing 10-year-plan, The Art of Living, provided the foundation for the committee’s work. From today’s news release:

“The committee has done a tremendous job reaching out to the community, narrowing down a wide range of ideas to come up with this list of recommendations,” said Mayor Stephen Mandel. “Their efforts show how we can work together as a community to raise the profile of arts in our city. Arts is an economic sector as well as a part of our everyday experience as Edmontonians. These recommendations provide a good place from which to start a dialogue about how we can move forward.”

The committee was co-chaired by Dianne Kipnes and Brian Webb. The first major event was held on June 21, an initial “Think Tank” that brought hundreds of Edmontonians together to brainstorm ideas and opportunities. I was fortunate enough to take part in that event, and was delighted to see so many people with such passion for the arts in Edmonton. Over the summer, a number of smaller consultation events took place. The second “Think Tank” was held on October 28. We were presented with preliminary recommendations and tasked with providing feedback. Since then, the committee has been finalizing the report.

You can download The Art of Living in PDF here, and the Arts Visioning Committee’s final report in PDF here.

Here are the 12 recommendations:

MacEwan Centre for the Arts: The City of Edmonton acquire and convert MacEwan University’s west campus, the Centre for the Arts and Communications, into a multi-use, multicultural and City operated arts incubator.
Rossdale Plant Redevelopment: The City of Edmonton develop the former power plant site into a landmark cultural and commercial complex on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River which must include a premier Aboriginal arts and cultural celebration centre, as well as studio, exhibit and performance space for Edmonton artists.
Downtown Arts District and Performance Centre: The City of Edmonton endorse, in principle, a landmark performing arts centre (PAC) downtown, and designate land for such a development in the city core.
Arts Capital Allocation: The City of Edmonton establish a capital allocation under the civic capital budget in anticipation of future opportunities to establish, enhance or acquire arts space of all types.
Community Centres: The City of Edmonton create and sustain arts spaces within existing and future community recreation centres and other community spaces for creation, classes, exhibits and performance.
Arts Sustainability Fund: Private and government partners establish an Edmonton Arts Sustainability Fund for small and mid-sized arts organizations to help finance business development.
Arts Central: A community-led initiative, modeled after Sports Central, be supported by the City of Edmonton, to supply materials, equipment, and program support for disadavantaged and disconnected Edmontonians to pursue arts experiences.
Arts and Culture Vision in City Administration: The City Manager and Edmonton Arts Council leadership develop a strategy to embed a broad vision of the arts into city planning and decision making.
Multicultural Arts Outreach: The City of Edmonton increase capacity for the Edmonton Arts Council to strengthen proactive outreach programs to ensure diverse communities are engaged in decision-making throughout the city’s arts organizations and increase participation across the city.
Arts in Education: The City of Edmonton takes a leadership role to invite a coalition of business, civic and community groups to strongly advocate for increased funding and emphasis on arts education in Edmonton schools and post-secondary institutions.
Artists in Residence Program: The City of Edmonton and business partners increase support and awareness of the Edmonton Arts Council’s “Artist in Residence” program to enhance in-house opportunities and collaboration for artists with local businesses.
Business and Arts Advisory Council: Corporate and arts community members establish a business and arts advisory committee to work with the Edmonton Arts Council to build on the 2040 arts vision and link the two communities with shared expertise, resources and ideas.

I think it is important to look further ahead, but as we all know, it’s easy to make a plan and much harder to execute on it. There’s a lot of work to do to bring these recommendations forward!

Some of these recommendations should come as no surprise. The Rossdale Plant Redevelopment was going to happen with or without this report, for instance, but specifically including arts and culture in the plans certainly makes sense. I think the Community Centres recommendation is an obvious one, and actually am a little surprised that we don’t already include space for the arts in mega-complexes like the Terwillegar Recreation Centre. I’m less excited about the Arts Capital Allocation, because I think we should leave capital funding decisions up to the Council of the day, to decide on what they think is most important for the city at the time. All the recommendations are worth considering, however.

The next step for these recommendations is for Mayor Mandel to submit them to City Council for consideration. In the meantime, save the date for the 25th Annual Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts: April 2, 2012. Nominations are now being accepted!

Edmonton’s 2010 Grey Cup Festival Never Happened

By Mack D. Male · January 21, 2011 at 2:00pm

In November 2010, Edmonton hosted the 98th Grey Cup. The Montreal Alouettes defeated the Saskatchewan Roughriders for the second straight year to capture the CFL’s top prize. Of course, the event was more than just a football game. We’re festival city, and we turned the Grey Cup into a very successful festival. There was something for everyone, and downtown was full of people, which unfortunately doesn’t happen very often. It wasn’t a perfect event, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find an Edmontonian who would consider it anything less than a success.

Here’s what Todd Babiak wrote (archive):

Ten years from now, only the statisticians and the really, really heartbroken will recall the winner of Sunday’s Grey Cup game in Edmonton.

What we would like to remember, in 10 years, is that many thousands of warmly audacious people from Saskatchewan came to witness Edmonton’s transition from a cosy little prairie city to something else.

I would go further and say that we absolutely need to remember what we accomplished with the Grey Cup Festival. We need to be proud of it, we need to learn from it, and we need to improve upon it.

But, the Grey Cup Festival never happened.

If you try to visit the festival website, at http://www.greycupfestival2010.com, you’re redirected to the website of the Edmonton Eskimos. As far as the web is concerned, the festival never happened. And in 2011 and beyond, the web is all that matters. Think about it for a second – less than two months after the event took place, the most important online record of it has vanished.

Ignoring the fact that the website barely worked during the festival (which is an important, but different issue), this is troubling. I have written before about the need to preserve our local, digital, cultural artifacts. The web is the single most important platform for doing so. The web is accessible and pervasive. Too often, however, it is not permanent. We can and must do better. We also need to stop thinking of event websites as only being relevant during the event.

Now obviously the festival happened. And there are other places online that provide evidence and a record of it. There’s the Wikipedia entry, the many blog posts that were written, thousands of photos uploaded to the web, etc. But all of these should be ancillary to the event website, not a substitute for it. And there’s no guarantee that they’ll exist in the future. For instance, you can read Todd’s article today, but in six months it will no longer be available on the web (hopefully my archive link is…this is a problem the Journal is aware of and hopes to address).

The saddest part about this particular instance is that I guessed it would happen. I should have spoken up sooner. The good news is that I archived the entire site on November 27, 2010. You can see the front page here.

I don’t think this is an easy problem to solve, but I believe it is important that we do solve it. I’m going to do what I can to help educate others about why this is so important, I’ll continue learning from the very smart people we have in the “archival” business, and I’ll continue doing what I can to help archive.

Catalyst Theatre’s Frankenstein

By Mack D. Male · April 14, 2010 at 10:19pm

Last night, Sharon and I had the pleasure of attending The Mayor’s Evening (and opening night) for Catalyst Theatre’s award-winning production Frankenstein (thank you Jenifer for the invite). I had never seen Frankenstein before, but I had some idea of what to expect as Sharon and I saw Nevermore last May (Sharon saw Frankenstein back in 2008 too – read her excellent review here). I knew it would be an entertaining, unforgettable show, and it definitely was.

If you’ve never seen one of Catalyst’s productions before, you really must – they are unlike anything else! Thanks in large part to artistic director Jonathan Christenson and production designer Bretta Gerecke, everything just works so well. There’s the mostly dark stage and the effective use of light and shadows, the clever storytelling that manages to touch a range of emotions (including a bit of humor), and the very talented cast. And perhaps the magic element – the music.

I also love that they manage to make the simple things work so effectively. For instance, the way they opened the show, with Nick Green walking on stage in front of the curtains, looking around at the crowd. Eventually he cracked a mysterious smile and announced “fade to black”, and things got underway. So unique and memorable. Or take the props – none of them are particularly complicated (much less so than in Nevermore) but they still helped tell the story. How do you make Victor Frankenstein look like someone interested in science? Give him a giant magnifying glass!

The entire cast was great, but I thought Andrew Kushnir as Victor was superb, and I also really enjoyed Nancy McAlear as Justine Moritz. I felt the most powerful scenes were those between Victor and the Creature, played by George Szilagyi, though my favorite scene was actually the one where the Creature mustered the courage to introduce himself to Old Man DeLacy, played by Tim Machin. It’s the scene I remember most from reading the novel.

After the show I remarked to Sharon that although Frankenstein was great, I still preferred Nevermore. She said that for her, Frankenstein still stood out. We agreed that it’s probably the first Catalyst show you see that becomes your favorite because they make such a great first impression!

Frankenstein runs through Sunday at the Timms Centre for the Arts (on ShareEdmonton). In May it will be in Toronto, at the Bluma Appel Theatre, presented by the Canadian Stage Company. Nevermore will be in London in July, followed by New York in October. Next up for Catalyst Theatre is Hunchback, a commission by The Citadel Theatre, coming to its Mainstage Series in March 2011. As Mayor Mandel and many others said last night, it’s great see Edmonton’s Catalyst Theatre achieve such success around the world!

We need to preserve our local, digital, cultural artifacts

By Mack D. Male · December 7, 2009 at 11:45am

As Edmonton continues its climb toward global status, I think it’s important that we consider the digital cultural artifacts that we create along the way. It’s rare that something big happens in Edmonton (or anywhere in the world for that matter) without a website or other online presence of some kind being created. That online presence is important in the weeks and months leading up to an event, but it’s just as important after the fact too. We need to start considering that from the beginning.

Think about big events that Edmonton has hosted in recent years. The 2001 World Championships in Athletics should come to mind. If you do a search for Edmonton 2001, you’ll find:

And linked from the official IAAF website and many other pages that show up in the results, is the the Edmonton 2001 website, at http://www.2001.edmonton.com/. The problem is, that site no longer exists.

What would happen if the IAAF took down the page they are hosting? It doesn’t have to happen on purpose, it could be an unfortunate side effect of a redesign, server relocation, etc. The article at Wikipedia is pretty sparse, containing mainly result information. And the mention on the EEDC site is insignificant. It’s almost as if the event didn’t happen.

Additionally, I’d argue that none of the links that still exist tell the story of Edmonton 2001. The effort that went into it, the many volunteers and organizations that made it happen, the effect it had on the city, etc. I think it’s important that we capture that information, and that we do so online, where it is easily accessible by all.

Another more recent example would be the ICLEI World Congress, held in June 2009. The City of Edmonton has a brief page devoted to the event, but most of the information exists at the ICLEI site. That’s fine, but again we’re relying on someone else for the information, and we’re missing an opportunity to tell our story. The advantage that the ICLEI had over Edmonton 2001 is that many bloggers wrote about the event and many photographers posted photos, and their content will likely continue to exist for quite some time. The new Transforming Edmonton blog will help too, I think.

The idea of digital preservation applies to smaller-scale events too. Try to find an online presence for the 2005 K-Days (now Capital EX), the year the event’s attendance record was set. Or try to find out about the 2008 Fringe festival.

I recognize that there’s costs associated with preserving our online cultural artifacts. Someone has to pay for them, and someone has to maintain them. And if we go that extra step and treat some online presences as legacy projects with updates and other information to tell our story, there’s obviously costs associated with that too. I think the costs would be quite minimal, however, and definitely worth it.

Perhaps this is something for the Edmonton Heritage Council to tackle? Or the Edmonton Historical Board? Or maybe just you and me. Either way, we need to start taking digital preservation more seriously.

Edmonton’s Next Generation

By Mack D. Male · February 23, 2006 at 4:27pm

We hear lots here in Edmonton about how our city needs to improve, but less about what is being done. I got an email recently about a survey from the Next Generation Task Force. If you’re in Edmonton, you might be interested in this:

The Next Generation Task Force is a temporary committee of Edmonton’s City Council. Chaired by Councillor Kim Krushell, it is charged with providing recommendations to City Council, on making Edmonton a more fun, attractive, and pleasant place to live. It is composed of twenty Edmontonians from diverse backgrounds and walks of life. Over the upcoming months they will be inviting public input on the six broad themes they have chosen (listed here in alphabetical order): Arts and Culture, Business Opportunity, Edmonton’s Image, Human Capital, Sports and Recreation, Urban Living Environment.

They have a ten minute survey up on the website that you can use to offer your opinion on these topics.

Read: Next Generation Task Force