Arts workers concerned with city's decision to move public art program outside city

Calgary artists want to talk about public art program A group of Calgary art workers and artists want some input into the future of the public art program. Chad Tweten reports.

Calgary — A group of a dozen artists, cultural workers and art curators under the banner of the Calgary Public Art Alliance, presented an open letter to council Tuesday and spoke to councillors about their concerns with the city’s decision to move the public art program outside the city.

The standing policy committee (SPC) on community and protective services held a meeting Tuesday to discuss the development of a request for proposal for third-party organizations to effectively take over the management of Calgary’s public art program.

The decision to move public art planning to a third party was made in a closed doors meeting in September 2019, two years after city council suspended the public art program and put it under review.

Shauna Thompson, a curator at the Esker Foundation and a representative of the Calgary Public Art Alliance, had been working with the city around the issue of the public art program over those years. Thompson said when news came out that city council was planning to move the program outside of the city to a third party organization, it caught her by surprise.

"All the dialogue we had with (the city) up to that point was about how to make the program better within the city and how we deliver it as a public art program for Calgarians by Calgarians,"

Thompson said this move counters everything they had heard from the arts community.

"This idea of taking responsibility for a public art program and passing it off to another party so that you don’t have to deal with any of the messy bits, it’s a weird kind of messaging," she said.

Artistic expertise

Coun. Jeremy Farkas is on the SPC and was the only councillor not to vote in favour of moving the program.

"I don’t think the city’s executed well on our public arts program, but I’m not sure if creating some brand new layer of bureaucracy and some brand new organization with all the other costs associated with it is the way to go either," Farkas said, adding he thinks the city should be keeping the public art program in house.

"We should figure out how to fix this problem and actually bring Calgarians on board," he added.

Thompson said she and the public art alliance are hopeful there’s still time for the city to get this right.

"There’s are so many artists, art workers and cultural works who have expertise," she said. "All we’re asking is for (the city) to consult us as they're going through this, because we know what we’re talking about and want to help."

The letter has gathered over 70 signatures and is still growing.

The city's four-year budget plan for 2019-2022 includes $3.2 million annually for public art.