Memories are powerful. If you look at some current pop cultures trends it's easy to find evidence of the power of nostalgia. The fact that we have an orange Care Bear in the office is a good indicator. 80's revival has been in full swing for some time now and I've got my plaid shirts and doc martins on deck for a 90's grunge revisit. For many of us around the triple decade mark conversations often turn to the music, movies, and television we experienced when we were younger. Those of us who grew up in the 80's were really the first generation to grow up in such a media saturated environment and we can easily relate our media experience with just about anybody the same age in North America.

Not too long ago one of my coworkers said she had the theme to the Buck Shot Show in her head and it wasn't long before we were reminiscing about Benny T. Bear. Sometimes when my wife and I are going for a walk and we have a good view of the Calgary skyline I'll start singing the catchy Hello Calgary ditty. My wife grew up in Saskatchewan so she doesn't remember how channels 2 and 7 love her, but I'm sure many of you will watch the clip and have fond memories of growing up in Calgary.

Boards of Canada, one of the most influential electronic music creators worldwide, produce music that is steeped in nostalgia and their history intersects briefly with Calgary:

Wikipedia:"Their deliberate eschewal of a purely synthetic sound gives their music a warmer, emotive quality, often meant to inspire nostalgia."

Pitchfork: When did you live in Canada?
Mike: From 1979 to 1980. I was eight years old and Marcus was a bit younger. Our father worked in construction. He helped to build the Saddle Dome in Calgary.

My memory of Calgary is a picture of boxy 1970s office blocks dumped in the middle of nowhere against a permanent sunset."

Boards of Canada took this image and others like it, mixed them up with a good dose of Hinterland Who's Who and ran with it. I would like to think that the work we are doing at Calgary Arts Development will make it even more difficult to get this same impression of Calgary and I know that the artists who live in this city carry impressions of the environment directly into their work. What kind of media, spaces, and events do you think might fuel nostalgic conversations twenty years from now? I hope that there will be more elements of local culture that work their way into our collective psyche. There is undoubtedly an authentic Calgary that can comfortably curl up into our memories and I'm sure it will be fun to take out at parties twenty years from now.