Visual Arts Team Citizen Experiment

Like the rest of the world, we Calgarians have an interesting relationship with the arts. We either love it, hate it or are on the fence about it. Someone once said, fertilizers are to plants what community is to a creative economy. The more we nurture creativity with engagement, admiration and feedback, the more we build a stronger sense of community around it.

Reflecting back on the experiences we had partaking in different opportunities through VivacityYYC - from the Jane’s walk in Calgary to engaging with key influencers and figures in Calgary’s economic and arts development and learning a lot about creative economies from around the world through our coursework, we had much to ponder about Calgary’s public art and local talent.

From murals hidden in alleyways to beautiful sculptures dotted around Prince’s Island Park, we saw, and we experienced all the little hidden gems around Calgary with the excitement of little children trick-or-treating during Halloween. With different ideas and perspectives that we gathered and brainstormed, we reflected back on how Calgary’s artistic community plays a significant role in contributing to Calgary’s appeal as a creative city.

In retrospect, we ask ourselves how we can engage Calgarians to think differently about the city through the visual arts in order to shift the negative perceptions of art in Calgary.

Our design process started with brainstorming different ideas about how we can engage Calgary’s local community in dialogue not only through words but through visual keys that they may be able to relate to on a local level.

We brainstormed different designs for our project ranging from engaging the local community to build a sculpture through micro-contributions such as placing a block of wood in order to create a beautiful Masterpiece of a symbol of Calgary, to having people contribute their opinion on public art in Calgary and the role that they themselves play in contributing to Calgary’s creative economy.

In the end, our love for sticky notes and the Calgary Tower, not to forget the several iterations and a lot of juggling of ideas, lead us to design an experiment that would not only allow us to collect people’s opinions about what makes Calgary beautiful to them but also allows them to contribute to a beautiful art piece.

This experiment will enable us to get a general sense of people’s opinions as to they would like to see more of in terms of art and creativity. With the data that we gather, we would be able to connect the local artists to the local community and encourage the artists to create more of what people would like to see around Calgary that would make them feel a sense of belonging in the city.

Our Design

The design we came up with will encompass a collaborative engagement piece depicting an outline of the Calgary Tower asking, “What Makes Calgary Beautiful?”. Visitors will be invited to use different colored markers to colour in a small section of the Calgary Tower according to their opinion as outlined by a variety of categories in response to the question (murals, nature, sculptures, etc.). This will collect data while creating a colourful representation of Calgarians’ feelings through the collaborative completion of the Calgary Tower piece. Users will also be able to provide extended qualitative feedback through sticky notes placed on the board underneath the question.

This will inform the development of new public and visual arts in order to enhance people’s connection to their city. The goal of this experiment is to inform the creation of new art in Calgary that reflects the identity and feelings of Calgarians.