Big Cheers and Heartfelt Jeers
Cheers to Calgary for being named as one of Fast Company Magazine’s “2008 Fast Cities” in the June issue. This magazine has quickly become my favourite (sorry Calgary Inc. – I still like you and want to stay friends). To have my hometown highlighted alongside mentor cities (cities I think Calgary should look to for advice and strive to follow in the footsteps of) like Chicago, London and Seattle is very exciting. It shows, while perhaps we haven’t arrived yet, we are definetly on the right path.
And people are starting to take notice.
Jeers to me for being so absent from blogging these past two months. I did indeed survive my back surgery (thank you to those that enquired) so that’s not the reason I’ve be non-existent since the end of May.
What can I say, there are a number of reasons why I’ve been offline (my own RSS reading has drastically declined this summer too). First: its just so damn nice outside; second: I think I’m a little Web 2.0 burnt out. Sometimes it is just nice to not have to find info myself and let a book, magazine, movie or the television do the heavy lifting for me. That pretty much describes the past three months. I’ve been lazy on purpose.
I suppose there is a third reason too. I’ve drafted a blog post about it three or four times but none of them seemed appropriate or expressed what I was feeling. The third reason I’ve been so absent is the death of Amber Bowerman. I’m not sure my I let it affect my writing, but I did. (Isn’t it strange how someone’s selfish act can have such an unforseen ripple effect?)
Amber, a freelance writer in Calgary – and always a strong supporter of the arts, was murdered on the evening of Tuesday, May 27 by her landlord, who also killed his wife and himself. The details have been widely publicized and I don’t want to get into them again. There is no need to open old wounds.
I did not know Amber well; I had only had drinks with her and her husband a couple of times. (They once stuck me with the bill after heading home without paying after a night of revellery at Velvet.) We might’ve even walked past each other on the streets without recognizing one another, but I somehow admired her without really knowing it. Her writing with Alberta Views was admirable and her work with other publications such as Avenue, Calgary Inc. or Swerve always spoke well to me. I looked up to her success as a freelancer and thought well of her.
She’ll be missed by many, myself included. But the writing must continue.
Calgary’s 2008: the year of dreaming BIG
Hello all! I’ve been rather silent over the holidays so apologies in advance for the Ken Chapman-sized post…
Now that the New Year has arrived it is time for all of us to get back to work. And I think it is time for Calgarians to seriously begin looking forward at what we want 2008 to be. What do we want to accomplish for ourselves this year on our path toward becoming a “great city”.
I know I’ll have plenty to say in the coming months about the political direction we have to head in, so I want to take this opportunity to make my first post of aught eight about the quality of life in Calgary. Specifically our arts and cultural sensibilities.
During almost every one of my years of involvement in Calgary’s arts and cultural scene there has been a sense going into any new year that things are building — and certainly this year is no different. But this year I think there is something a little extra in the water: a sense that this could be the year we officially “arrive” on the arts scene. Of course nobody has any idea what that means, and I doubt anyone else will admit the same, because “arriving” is impossible to measure. None-the-less I think you can feel it in the air.
So what can we do to make sure this happens? I turn your attention to a comment I wrote on the Calgary Arts Development blog last June about “branding Calgary’s arts scene”. I suggest here that the four steps I outlined for Calgary’s arts and cultural community should be accomplished in 2008.
1. What is the problem we are trying to solve? Is it: are Calgarian’s proud enough of what their artists do? Is it: that Calgarians don’t attend enough arts events? Is it: that we want more visitors to come to Calgary for the express purpose of our arts and cultural scene? Is it: that the arts aren’t as intrinsic in what Calgary “is” as we’d like them to be?
2. Once that is done we must identify what the key issue of that problem is. What is the blockage? What is the barrier to successful communication? Why doesn’t this exist/work/happen already? We’ll need to dig deep and find the specific issue (not the symptom but the actual problem).
3. Then we can finally look at what our current equity is. What IS Calgary’s arts scene? What do all these artists and groups have in common? There is some kind of current brand, what is it? This is important because we can’t just make something up and apply it. That’s false advertising and will fizzle quickly. We also have to do this so that we get a brand that is as dynamic as Calgary’s artists are, otherwise we’ll get something lame and corporate like “js” points out in Edmonton: “The Art of Downtown”. (WTF is that? What does that mean?)
4. Then, and only then, can we bring together all three answers and state what Calgary’s arts brand is. (A brand is not a logo, that’s just a visual representation of your brand. A brand is what you are. What drives you. Its your heart, why you do what you do.)
And for a little extra cream in your coffee I’ll look back again to a Facebook message I sent Eugene Stickland that he wrote about in his weekly Calgary Herald column this past July (when he was querying friends on their thoughts about the Calgary Stampede). Hopefully this helps get the juices flowing for 2008.
I love Stampede for all the reasons I hate it. And I hate it for all the reasons I love it.
Stampede is the one time of year all Calgarians come together in clearly defined community, if you will. Downtown becomes alive. People actually talk to one and other on the streets. And judging by the CHR post-Stampede STD stats: Calgarian’s love each other during those 10 days. They love each other a lot.
I’m not a Stampede fanatic (I doubt I’ll go down to the grounds this year) but Stampede is the only thing that I have found that offers Calgary an identity. That’s why Tourism Calgary and Calgary Economic Development created the “Heart of the New West” tagline that now greets all as they enter our fine city’s ever expanding city limits. But what the heck does that mean?! Those who know me have heard me say it a thousand times however: you might as well have called it “Heart of the Old West”.
Sure those agencies make pretty posters with ballerinas. But they’re wearing cowboy boots. This only perpetuates the redneck myth. But the Stampede can be used as a cultural beacon. Let me explain…
I used to be one of those arts community folks that said the Calgary arts community would be better off if the Stampede disappears. Calgary artists are doing some amazing things and breaking some rules and creating art unlike anywhere else. But on civic, national and international levels the Stampede is all consuming and people rarely notice these artists. Everything Calgary does is framed by the Stampede. The amazing offerings of Calgary artists don’t stand a chance. It’s like sleeping next to a giant. Nobody really pays attention to you. Least of all the giant.
But over the past couple of years I’ve been spending a lot more time with business people in the downtown core and I’ve notice that their “stories” are not so different than those of the arts community. However they have tended to find a way to frame them better. This is what I call the “Calgary maverick” story.
Calgarians in both the business world and the arts community are breaking new ground (or a new trail if you want to use old west language). We’re constantly creating new things and thinking in ways that are different than in the past. We’re all mavericks in the same way the cowboys of the old west and founders of the Stampede were. And certainly Calgary has a maverick mentality: if you want to do it, go to Calgary, you can make it happen there.
That is how the Stampede can be embraced instead of reviled.
This means we as arts organizations have to start re-shaping our stories (or key messages). Think of the Alberta Ballet’s Fiddle and the Drum. They could have just said look at the beautiful ballet we have created. But no, instead they said, look at how Jean tracked down Joni Mitchell from self imposed exile and worked with her to create something unlike anything Joni’s music has been used for before. That is a maverick story.
As an added bonus the media love maverick stories! (They love pretty much any personal story but if it is one of someone overcoming odds it’s even sexier). Everything about the High Performance Rodeo is a maverick story. That’s why it gets so much coverage every year. Why did the Grand Theatre re-opening get three double page spreads in the Herald? Because it is a maverick story of both a theatre company and an old building breaking the boundaries. (Tooting my own horn, yes. Sorry.)
Let the Stampede continue to form the identity of the city, but let’s all start framing our stories as part of the cities identity. There’s no need to fight it when we can make it work for us.
Also, just an observation: the Stampede used to be about family fun like Carnival d’Hiver in Quebec City but it has turned into a more adult oriented booze fest a la Mardi Gras. I wouldn’t say either of these events is better than the other. They’re just different but equally fun for different reasons.
The ‘I hate’ Stampede part of me is excited for August to hit so our downtown will stop smelling like stale beer and urine on every block. (And go back to just smelling like urine on every other block.)
More to follow for sure! Have a great year everyone! One filled with creative ideas that help make Calgary an even better city.
Is Calgary a "family-friendly" city?
I just read a very good post from the CEOs for Cities Blog which is a response to a Wall Street Journal article about “family-friendly cities”. This obviously got me thinking about whether or not Calgary is a family-friendly city.
In order to figure out if your city is family-friendly I suppose the first question is where do families come from? Certainly a young couple doesn’t get married and when they become pregnant they suddenly say, “okay, now which city would you like to live in?”. Families grow in a city to start with. The CEOs for Cities post I think summarizes this very well:
It is plainly a lot easier to hang on to the young adults who live in your city rather than recruiting them from other places. That’s why cities should pay particular attention to young singles when they are at their most mobile and also build on their family friendliness as a way of retaining these talented and energetic people.
Young families themselves are the ones that drive a “family-friendly” atmosphere in a city, not the other way around.
So is Calgary a family-friendly city? I suppose the question goes back to the beginning: are we a young adult friendly city? Judging by the large number of university and college grads choosing to make Calgary their home so they can make their “millions”, I’m guessing it won’t very long before Calgary sees itself become an even more family friendly city. Perhaps a couple of years plus nine months?
Calgary civic pride unleashed!
My favourite new headline comes from a new article published by Calgary Economic Development:
“Calgary is better than you think!”
If that doesn’t get the citizens excited nothing will, right? (BTW, give the article a read is relatively informative.)
PS – The exclamation mark is overused in writing, don’t you think?
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