Heritage key to Calgary culture - opinion

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Heritage key to Calgary culture - opinion

Postby newsposter » Thu Jan 11, 2007 7:44 pm

So Edmonton has been designated as the 2007 'Cultural Capital of Canada' eh? Two recent articles point to the important role that heritage and architecture can play in the cultural success of Calgary. In particular note Trudy Cowan's comments in the column below.

Irena Karshenbaum's column in the January 10 Herald is posted below in its entirety. Blane Hogue of the Lougheed House wrote the the January 11 Herald, and is at this link (pay wall as of posting): http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/new ... 1e99d41609


Let's get culture back in Calgary
The Calgary Herald
Tue 09 Jan 2007
Page: A10
Section: The Editorial Page
Byline: Irena Karshenbaum
Source: For The Calgary Herald

I hate to say this, but Edmonton is the City of Champions, again. Our northern neighbour was just designated as the 2007 Cultural Capital of
Canada by Heritage Canada, an honour which will allow the city to dip into $2 million in funding for arts and cultural programs.

It wouldn't be a bad gig for Calgary, given that our arts and cultural institutions don't get to dine on steak.

Calgary has increased funding to the arts from $2.54 million in 2006 to
$3.04 million for this year. That contribution -- about $3 per Calgarian -- is still less than a white chocolate mocha frappuccino at Starbucks. Even with the increase, Calgary still has the lowest investment in the arts in Canada.

Not taking into account increases made in 2007, in 2006 -- the last year these numbers are available -- $6.52 per capita was invested in Toronto, $4.01 in Vancouver, $3.88 in Edmonton and the very generous Winnipeggers gave $5.20.

For Edmonton, the Cultural Capital of Canada designation is a well-earned honour. They have a poet laureate. For us, a poet laureate isn't even a twinkle in Mayor Dave Bronconnier's eye. They have a Mayor's Evening for the Arts, an arts and cultural extravaganza which also doubles as a
fundraiser.

We have $1.14 billion in planned road expansions to take us to 2010. Great. Calgarians can look forward to spending more time in traffic jams.

In terms of art and culture, the city is a hodgepodge of the silly and the sublime.

Edible animals are everywhere: paintings of buffalo grace office tower lobbies, metal horses graze on the concrete in front of City Hall and pigs oink in the Plus 15s. Yet, we have a world-class puppet theatre company --The Old Trout Puppet Workshop --and one of the best literary festivals in the country, WordFest, just to name a few.

Calgary was not always a cowboy-culture wasteland. In the 1920s, Sergei Rachmaninoff played to a thrilled audience at the Palace Theatre, and in the 1950s, Picassos hung in the offices of Mobil Oil in the Barron building.

Great cultural capitals are not made by government bureaucratic
designations or come about as a result of feasibility studies presented to parochial city councillors.

Great cultural capitals happen spontaneously from the passions of great spirits who are often considered mad by the conventions of the day. The
French, for example, can never repay their debt of gratitude to Gustave Eiffel.

Trudy Cowan, who headed up the restoration of the Lougheed House, believes that if Calgary is to truly enter the world stage, it has to invest in heritage and architecture. "There needs to be more attention paid in every
community, in every neighbourhood, to what is significant about that neighbourhood's architecture. It's not just the grand and the glorious but the groupings of residential architecture that you look at and you say,
well of course, that's Rideau or Roxboro. Or something that helps to tell our story as a city as differentiated from any other city in North America.
What is it that makes Calgary, Calgary?"

Cowan believes we need to nurture our architectural identity so that, "Everything doesn't become international style and big boxes."

First, we need the grand and glorious. The city needs an opera house --
preferably one built of marble and stone with stained glass windows and ceilings painted by our greatest painter.

Second, Calgary needs a poet laureate who will feed our starving souls and relax our overworked brains. We have unwittingly created a Down-and-Out-in-Paris-and-London Orwellian universe where work predominates
and leisure activities are banal.

Third, we need to nurture with pride our architectural identity and make it
socially unacceptable to demolish our preciously small inventory of old
buildings. Why are we so insecure as to believe tourists wouldn't want to
see a distinct heritage of sandstone and brick?

Bureaucratic honours are good. Authentic greatness is better. An Eiffel is
yet to emerge. In the meantime, Calgarians can invest in arts and culture
by cutting back on the big-box shopping sprees in favour of season's tickets to the CPO.

Irena Karshenbaum lives in Calgary. irenak@shaw.ca
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