Somehow the first month of my work term with Calgary Arts Development has flown by without a blog post. Not a single one. As a public relations student at Mount Royal College, I understand the importance of communicating with the public, so I figured it was time for me to jump on the blog train with reckless abandon. And there's no better time to start than now.

The other evening I had the good fortune of attending the dress rehearsal of Alberta Ballet's Dangerous Liaisons. I was pleasantly surprised. Take everything you thought you knew about the ballet and throw it out the window. Dangerous Liaisons pushes the boundaries by having a play and a ballet going on simultaneously. The choreography was visually stunning as dancers held poses that at times were painfully beautiful to watch. This truly is a must see, even if you don't think you like the ballet. Go. I promise you won't be disappointed.  read more »

Looking back at the blogs for the past week or so, there seems to be a thread running through all of them and that is creativity.

Creativity and creating creative cities are very much buzz ideas developing in the early years of the 21^st century. With organisations such as Toronto's Artscape addressing how to create the conditions for creativity to thrive within a city and companies such as Pixar and Google addressing creating conditions for creativity within their workforce, there is no escaping the fact that this is an important movement.

Being an historian by trade, this got me thinking about the importance of creative thinking in the past and the revolutions this has created, why they occurred and how that compares to our situation here. Unsurprisingly, there are common themes running through all of them.  read more »

I have been thinking a lot lately about the how the concepts of creativity, risk, and success are interrelated. Does a person or an organization have to be a risk-taker in order to be creative and thus successful? Does being risk-adverse result in creative stagnation and mediocrity at best or blatant failure at worst?

I was reminded the other day about a speech given by Sir Ken Robinson at the 2006 TED Conference, where he said, “if you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything creative”. He goes on to say that “we have become frightened of being wrong and stigmatize mistakes.” So Sir Robinson might argue that taking risks and not letting fear get in the way of bold action will result in higher levels of creativity and an increased probability of success.  read more »

Another quick note from South America: I found a culture house in Buenos Aires, care of Lonely Planet and confirmed by a hip, young porteña (local woman) walking her dog. It´s called El Catedral. If you were every lucky enough to go to The Night Gallery in Calgary, then you´d love this place. It’s located in a warehouse just outside of the centre of Buenos Aires. It’s cavernous filled with art and eclectic furniture with gigantic chandeliers with red lights, vegetarian food, and a big dance floor. We drank the local beer, Quilmes, and watched stylish, young couples do a sensuous tango lesson. It was mesmerizing… Check out the photos on this website. I hope the link works!  read more »

Major music happenings have occupied my thoughts lately. Richard Branson strode into town awhile back on a crazy horse-drawn carriage to kick up a big fuss about the Virgin Festival coming to Calgary this June (right around the time of Sled Island and followed by the Calgary Folk Music Festival). Michael Green, Blake Brooker and the rest of the team at One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre announced January's sizzling High Performance Rodeo line-up - there are some fantastic music events including a new arrangement of Tubular Bells, presented in collaboration with Alberta Ballet and Honens.`And of course, the 2008 JUNO Awards are coming to Calgary this April!  read more »

Scanning bloglines today, I noticed an item on the 37Signals blog Signal vs. Noise... it appears that Calgary's own VEER was purchased by Corbis. Congrats are due to the folks at VEER for another major Calgary creative industry success story. Some of the heaviest hitters in the world in the creative industries--Corbis and Getty Images--now both have major operations in Calgary.  read more »

Earlier this summer, Fast Company Magazine published a list of cities they deemed to be “Fast”.

What makes a city fast? In their words,

“It starts with opportunity -- a culture that nurtures creative action and game-changing enterprise. It's where the number of patents filed is high, or where the high-tech sector is expanding. These cities invest in physical, cultural, and intellectual infrastructure that will sustain growth. Finally, fast cities are full of highly creative people.”  read more »

So what fast and fabulous places around the world made the Fast Company list?

DEMOS, a think tank out of the UK, self titled "the Think Tank for every day democracy" recently published a Green Paper and accompanying Podcast titled " So, What *Do* You Do?" which looks at how the creative industries work and how policy can support these industries.  read more »

I've been reading the ArtsJournal series "Engaging Art" since last week. What a great conversation about how things happen between art and audiences. A few brief excerpts below, plus great reading on the blog, mp3s, and a future book, so dig in!

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