Creative Calgary Congress — Exploring ways that the arts and artists can play a leadership role in making Calgary a more curious, compassionate and creative place for all citizens.
Stephen Hunt—The Arts Writer and Blogger
A dispatch…
What happens when creativity meets graduate business students?
A rebranding of the word creativity, for starters.
That was the big reveal from the University of Calgary Haskayne School Dean Jim Dewald, who spoke at the Calgary Creative Congress held at the DJD Dance Centre and Hotel Arts November 22, 2016.
The event was attended by an eclectic combination of Calgary-based funders, arts administrators, artists, innovators, and just regular Calgarians, who listened to speakers from a variety of areas of Calgary civic life speak about how they live creative lives.
There was Anne Flynn, from the U of C, explaining how her dance department collaborated with Dr. Bin Yu from the faculty of Medicine to create Dancing Parkinson’s YYC, a dance class for people with Parkinson’s and their loved ones.
There was 11 year old Lauren Voisin, who stood in front of the audience of 160 and said, “My name is Lauren and I run a robotics company.”
Jim Button, who juggles a business life running Village Brewery, creating digital advertising at Evans Hunt, and battling cancer, talked about his journey across Canada in 1993 that led to choosing to settle in Calgary, where he has lived, raising a family and running various businesses ever since.
There were Indigenous speakers, such as Cowboy Smithx, who, with Rio Mitchell, taught an afternoon workshop about the stories we tell each other.
But perhaps the unlikeliest voice to be found at a congress celebrating creativity was the dean of a business school.
Wasn’t it?
Maybe not.
Calgary Arts Development President and CEO Patti Pon explained, in her opening remarks, that the school’s engineering arm has actually added classes in music and fine arts to its curriculum.
Dewald himself said there were three questions the congress had to address.
“What kind of leadership does our city need?” he said. “Number two, what does Calgary need to do to become more entrepreneurial and innovative?
“And three,” he added, “what role can arts and artists play in achieving a shared prosperity for all citizens?”
In his remarks, Dewald pointed with pride to the school’s emphasis on teaching entrepreneurial thinking, including a $100,000 pitch contest to foster innovative thinking.
That’s when he let the crowd in on just how much of a connection he saw between artistic thinking and business innovation.
“We use the word entrepreneurial [vs. creative] thinking,” he said, “because that goes over better with business students.”
Dewald’s was just one take on the vital role creativity can play in reviving the fortunes of Calgary, which is in the economic doldrums at the moment.
One of the coolest moments of the day — and one that beautifully illustrated the theme — came when Anne Flynn explained the genesis of the Dancing Parkinson’s YYC project.
It came about in a roundabout way, as a collaboration between Flynn, Bin Hu, and a trio of unlikely connectors — Flynn’s daughter, past President of U of C Harvey Weingarten and the Mark Morris Dance Company in New York City, which operates the longest-running Parkinson’s dance program in the U.S. and — as it turns out — works with Bin Hu as one of their neurological experts.
What it all turned into was a dance class for people with Parkinson’s, their caregivers and their partners, which has turned out to be a hugely successful and enormously creative program that helps Parkinson’s sufferers re-engage with their bodies — and communities.
Community engagement — or re-engagement — was a theme that popped up quite a bit throughout the day.
Coming on the heels of the American election, there was still an air of stupefied disbelief at the result, and the ways in which America appears to be a more deeply divided community now — talk about two solitudes — than it’s ever been.
Whether it’s through our bodies (as in Dancing Parkinson’s), or through our stories that we tell each other — there’s a global need as much as a local one for a kind of communal reconciliation.
That was beautifully articulated by Calgary 150 honcho Colin Jackson, who said, “There’s a huge conversation going on around the world about how to live, in a peaceable, prosperous way.
“We, as a species,” he said, “need to accelerate our adaptation into the future.”
That brought it all back to the election of Donald Trump.
“The Trump phenomenon is a huge clarion call,” Jackson said, “to dig deep into developing empathy with others.
“There’s a lot of people [out there, in those red states], feeling a deficit of meaning,” he added. “Not just loss of job, but loss of meaning. And a deep deficit of empathy. They [red and blue states] can’t hear each other.
“Seeing some of it here [in Canada], we need — as creative people — to stand strong and say no!
“Creativity,” he said, “is about empathy. We need to be bold — and big.”
Maybe the spirit of the day was best summed up by Rio Mitchell, who co-curated a storytelling workshop with Cowboy Smithx after a lunchtime keynote by Indigenous leader Brian Caillou, who spoke about our need, as a culture, to engage in deep listening.
“We’re all just made of stories, old and new,” said Mitchell, “so let’s make some new ones.”
Stephen Hunt
Stephen Hunt writes The Storytelling Project for Calgary Arts Development, and is the 2017 High Performance Rodeo writer in residence. He wrote for the Calgary Herald for 10 years, and teaches playwriting at UBC.
About the Creative Calgary Congress
Calgary Arts Development produced the first Arts Champions Congress in 2011 as a meeting place for people who make Calgary’s arts sector a vibrant and exciting place to work and our city a great place to live.
Renamed the Creative Calgary Congress in 2014, it returned on November 22, 2016 as a place to share ideas and explore ways that the arts and artists can play a leadership role in making Calgary a more curious, compassionate and creative place for all citizens.
