The Northeast Public Art Initiative artist engagement started in 2022! Please click the button below to find out more about the selected artists and opportunities for engagement.

Public art is art that exists in public spaces. The work can be temporary or permanent and can take on many forms, including but not limited to, bike racks, benches, sculptures, murals, mosaics, artist residencies, performance art, and social practice (community participation in creating artwork).

Public art plays a crucial role in the development of modern, vibrant cities. It can be used to capture significant historical events, reflect community spirit and create public awareness of current and past issues. Public art enhances our city's cultural capital and shapes our cultural identity. It helps build community, and creates opportunities to engage with our public spaces.

Why are we doing this now? In November 2020 City Council directed us to explore public art opportunities in Ward 5 and surrounding northeast Calgary communities with an emphasis on replacing the gap left by the Wishing Well at the Genesis Centre and further compensating for a historically inequitable distribution of public art funds in these communities.

This project will provide more opportunities for artists that live and work in the northeast. It will support the local economy and provide opportunities for the community to come together and create amazing spaces.

As a starting point, we need to understand the values and priorities of residents, businesses and community organizations when it comes to public art. Your input will play a key role in helping make decisions on what kind of public art should be created, where it should be located and what stories the public art should tell.

Results from engagement are in the What we Heard Report under Links on this page.

We also encourage you to visit the project page for more information.

“Purposeful dialogue between The City and citizens and stakeholders to gather information to influence decision making.” - Engage Policy

Your input, and the input of other citizens and stakeholders, helps The City understand people’s perspectives, opinions, and concerns. Input collected for this project will be compiled and shared through a What We Heard report. Personally identifying information, profanity and comments that do not meet The City's Respectful Workplace Policy or the Online Tool Moderation Practice will be removed.

Although it would be a great outcome, the goal of public engagement is not to reach consensus or make everyone happy. Public engagement is also not about voting or collecting representative information. Public engagement is about considering the input, ideas and perspectives of people who are interested or impacted by decisions, before decisions are made.

To learn more about engagement at The City, visit engage.calgary.ca/about.

The following translated engagement pages are now available. Click on the following links to be redirected to each page.

ਨੌਰਥਈਸਟ ਪਬਲਿਕ ਆਰਟ

东北区公共艺术

東北區公共藝術

Nghệ thuật Công cộng ở khu vực Đông bắc

شمال مشرقی (نارتھ ایسٹ) عوامی فن(نارتھ ایسٹ پبلک آرٹ)

الفن العام في نورث إيست (الشمال الشرقي)

In this phase of engagement, we wanted to understand:

• What you value about public art in northeast Calgary; and,
• What criteria you believe is important for public art in northeast communities.

The following feedback form was divided into 4 sections. These are:

1. Reflections on public art
2. Criteria for public art (why, who, prioritizing types of public art)
3. Stories public art should tell
4. What and where (type of art and recommended locations)

Engagement is now closed. It was open March 23 to April 19. Thank you for providing your input! Your input has been reviewed, themed and is included in the What we Heard Report.

Your input was shared with the project team to be used to develop their workplan for implementation. This will include using your feedback to help develop criteria for public art in northeast Calgary; creating a selection panel that includes Calgarians from northeast Calgary; and, creating a list of potential artists. Once artists are selected, they will come back to you for a second round of engagement.

DID YOU KNOW?

We want you to feel included in engagement. This means that we want you to feel respected; we want you to know your opinion is valued; and, we want you to be supported to participate in The City’s engagement process. We do not want you to experience any difficulties to sharing your ideas and opinions with us. We try to design engagement activities so that everyone that wants to be involved, can be.

We use your answers to the following evaluation and demographic questions to understand which voices from the community are missing so we can be better at including them next time. We work with internal and external colleagues to help ensure that our engagement activities are welcoming to all.