The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. The City of Calgary needs to stop focusing on designer buildings as a means of urban renewal and focus more on capitalizing on its arts community as the catalyst for creating a vibrant Greater Downtown.

Burns Visual Arts Society has a history converting old buildings into vibrant creative hubs.

While the City has spent billions of dollars over the past 40+ years – and plans to spend billions more trying to make our greater downtown a vibrant, creative place - the fact is Inglewood/Ramsay (communities not even included in the City’s Greater Downtown Plan) is the City’s most vibrant arts district. And with no major designer public buildings.

This funky neighbourhood is home to several commercial art galleries, as well as the outstanding Esker Foundation public gallery (privately funded) and numerous design-oriented local retailers.

It also has four live music venues (Blues Can, Ironwood, Lantern Community Church and Festival Hall), two bookstores and a live music café (Gravity).

It is also home to several artist studio cooperatives – nvrlnd, Burns Visual Arts Society and Artpoint Gallery & Studios. Plus many of Calgary’s established and emerging artists live in the Inglewood/Ramsay arts district.

No art, music, culture and/or entertainment district is complete today without dozens of craft and microbreweries. Inglewood/Ramsay has Calgary’s fledgling brewery district including Calgary’s funkiest bohemian hangout: Cold Garden Beverage Company.

Calgary: Street Performer Capital of Canada?

Calgary’s downtown core needs more grassroots arts, bohemian development, if it is to become a hub for creativity. A key reason Seattle and Austin are international tech hubs is that both are known around the world for their live music and bohemian culture scene, making them very attractive to young tech professionals.

Derek Manns, co-founder of Calgary-based Stagehand, recently shared with me how this past summer he worked with Los Angeles’ Downtown Burbank and South Park business improvement districts (BID) to create successful outdoor live music programs along pedestrian streets and in small urban parks and plazas.

The big lesson learned was that actively programming live music was much more effective than murals and public art in attracting people to public spaces AND getting them to stay.

Stagehand is currently in discussion with several BIDS in California are looking to use the App to reactivate public spaces post pandemic.

FYI: Stagehand is an app that makes it easy for anyone (landlords, government and not-for-profits) to activate public spaces by working with local artists. They currently have over 1,000 Calgary based artists that are eager to perform.

Ellen Riotto, Executive Director, South Park BID had this to say, “Stagehand helped us expand our public art strategy in a manageable way, both in terms of financing and staff-time. For years we focused on murals and visual art, but programming live music allows us to build community by working with local musicians and providing a live experience for neighbours to share in a public space.”

Creating A Better Downtown Experience

Imagine if Calgary’s downtown experience included local musicians playing when you got off the CTrain downtown and then again when you were leaving. How fun would it be if there was live music regularly at Olympic Plaza in front of Arts Commons? Imagine in the winter if live music animated various spaces in the +15, Devonian Gardens, The CORE, Bankers Hall and Brookfield Place. What if office towers and hotel lobbies turned into live music venues from 4 to 6 pm and at lunch hours.

Some may recall having experienced live music at the Calgary Airport before COVID. Stagehand helped the Airport Authority to host over 1800 live music performances.

This past summer Calgary’s Music Mile (from Arts Commons to Blues Can) used Stagehand to program over 60 outdoor performances along The Mile.

Calgary’s downtown could become the “Street Performers Capital” of Canada with some collaboration from the City, corporate Calgary, Business Improvement Associations, and arts community.

Richard Florida, noted American sociologist and economist, in his 2002 book The Rise of the Creative Class, noted major cultural buildings don’t attract the “creative class,” rather it is small live music and arts venues, as well as a vibrant street culture is what will attract creative talent to cities in the 21st century.

This couple enjoyed the musicians on Stephen Avenue so much they had to start dancing.

Buildings vs People

Artists and arts entrepreneurs have a great track record in revitalizing decaying neighbourhoods. On the other hand, new large buildings be they arenas, concert halls, museums, art galleries and towers (office, residential or hotel towers) have a terrible track record for revitalization. In fact, they often cause sterilization.

In Hamilton, over the past 30+ years a new mega shopping, office, hotel complex, library/farmers’ market complex, convention centre and public art gallery have failed to revitalize its core. And yes, they also an arena (event centre) and convention centre.

In Edmonton their downtown arts district built around Churchill Square with major public art gallery, concert hall, theatre complex, City Hall, Courthouse and shopping complex failed to revitalize its downtown core, so now they are trying with a new arena, hotel, office and residential towers.

And in Winnipeg the addition of a mega indoor shopping center, new arena, major museum, concert hall, renovated performance spaces, and office towers failed to revitalize its downtown core. Yes, they also added an new downtown arena (event centre) and convention centre.

Big buildings simply don’t create urban vitality and don’t attract today’s young professionals.

So what should we do?

The City of Calgary should focus its attention on working with downtown building owners to convert a couple of empty downtown office buildings into live/work/performance spaces for artists as a means of creating downtown vitality and fostering a more creative culture.

I am not talking about deluxe studio and performance spaces like the City’s $35M renovation of the King Edward School into cSPACE. But rather the nvrlnd model where artists (visual, music, fashion, film, crafts, performance etc.) take over an empty space and apply their creativity and energy to convert it into viable work spaces.

I realize it is easier to work with 10 property owners than 100s of artists or dozens of art groups, but if Calgary really wants to create a vibrant downtown, it will have to think outside the corporate box.

What if the City purchased one or two of the tired old office buildings and turned them over to the arts community to renovate? I wonder what Calgary’s arts community might do with a $20M experimentation fund (20% of the city’s $100M fund for office conversions)?

And really, aren’t all inner city urban revitalization initiatives pretty much experiments anyway?

Master Planning vs Bohemian

Great music streets like Beale (Memphis), Broadway (Nashville), 6th (Austin) and theatre districts like Times Square (New York) are loud, colourful, gritty, messy and chaotic - the antithesis of corporate and planned.

Great inner city arts districts are usually centered around old buildings that offer cheap rent - not pristine parks, plazas and public realm, the likes of which are usually found in gentrified neighbourhoods. Every master plan I’ve seen promotes the gentrification of the site, by recommending upscale buildings, streetscapes, parks, plazas and pathways.

The City needs to spend less time and money on downtown master plans and mega buildings and more on strategic urban experiments involving its existing arts communities.

Calgary’s downtown core needs more quirky bohemian spaces like Inglewood’s Cold Garden.

Last Word

I sincerely hope that when the City announces which empty office building owners are receiving the first wave of funding for office conversions to new uses, one or more will focus on providing affordable live/work/performance spaces for artists of all genres, music studios, performance spaces and pop-up galleries i.e. an “arts incubator” (to use current urban planning jargon).

Creating vibrant arts, culture and entertainment districts (creative zones) is not about fancy designer buildings, but rather about affordable live/work/performance spaces that allow local artists to create innovative art experiences for locals which then attracts national and international attention.

The best way to make Calgary’s downtown core vibrant again is to create more spaces for artists to live and work right in the core, not just on the edge.