Alberta Business Marketing

It’s not very often my biggest areas of interest – local government and local arts and culture – intersect, but this is one of those times.

The Pumphouse Theatre is an amazing story that I invite you to read up on. It is one of those stories about saving Calgary’s heritage while at the same time making the city an even better place to live. The Pumphouse is owned by the City of Calgary and runs at capacity. There is a waiting list like you would not believe for community and professional theatre groups to gobble up even a week of free time in either of the Pumphouses two theatres. In short, it’s exactly what one would hope a performing arts space to be.

Because they have been at capacity for several years and the demand is so extraordinarily huge the decision was made a couple years back to expand the facility once again. The Pumphouse went through Calgary Arts Development’s Arts Spaces Initiative, was approved for funding, and placed high on the list of locations to receive financial support from the City of Calgary. Calgary City Council even awarded the project $2 million in 2008. Last week the final $2 million dollars required to make the expansion a reality went to the Community and Protective Services Standing Policy Committee of city council and, in the words of Pumphouse Theatre Executive Director Scott McTavish, “got a rough ride”.

Basically what happened – and remember I wasn’t in attendance and I’m hearing this third hand from aldermen and interested parties that were there – is political grandstanding. It’s an election year and no alderman wants to be seen as “wasteful”. Cutting the arts is an easy way to take a stand because it is often not seen as a necessity.

The problem is this is not some pet project or some “would be cool to have” third party proposal. The Pumphouse Theatres are OWNED by the City of Calgary. To not approve funding to the facility that has been recommended by all the powers that be in the City of Calgary is nothing short of being an absentee landlord. The project has been identified as achievable by Administration (after a stringent multi-year approval process they are recommending the expansion go ahead) and necessary (again, the building has a waiting list long enough it could operate two facilities and still be full).

So if a project is both acheivable AND nessecary why not fund it? They are looking for $2 million. Just a couple months ago, Cantos was approved for $25 million for a building that is in it’s very early stages of design. That is a new construction and that conversation took 10 minutes and ended with applause from council. $2 million for the Pumphouse however took an hour and forty-five minutes and was not approved.

The problem here is that the City owns the building and has NEVER, in 38 years, put a single dollar into it. And now that they are asking for $2 million to make up for the Province reneaging on a $5 million commitment, they are balking. $2 million over 38 years sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.

And here’s the kicker: the $2 million isn’t even from the property tax base. It’s going to cost the City zero dollars to give the Pumphouse $2 million. The money is coming from the Province through the Municipal Sustainability Initiative. One of the hoops you have to jump through for funding from that project is that not only does the City need to approve your project, bus so does the province. Which they have already done in this case. All of this means that if Council does not give the $2 million to the Pumphouse then guess what happens? The City has to give the money back to the Province!

That’s right. In the process of looking like they are being tough on wasteful spending, City Council is… losing $2 million and leaving another $2 million in limbo. Sigh.

The Pumphouse Theatre board and staff are more than a little confused by all this. (After all they are facility operators and not used to the often non-sensical world of politics.) So they have sent out a call to everyone affected by this recent committee decision to help them bring some common sense to Council. Below is their message.

As you may or may not know our upcoming expansion project Pumphouse 2012 received a rough ride from Community and Protective Services this past Wednesday April 8, 2010. We are working with our partners at Calgary Arts Development and City of Calgary Administration in an effort to save Pumphouse 2012 from cancellation when it comes up for reconsideration at the April 26, 2010 council meeting.

We urgently need your support and the support of your volunteers and patrons in a two-stage lobby effort. Stage 1 will involve a letter, phone, fax and e-mail campaign to select members of council including the aldermen who we want to reconsider their position on the issue: Alderman Joe Connelly, Alderman Rick McIver, Alderman Diane Colley-Urquhart, Alderman Andre Chabot, and Alderman Jim Stevenson. We also need to sway the Aldermen who have an unknown position including: Alderman Dale Hodges, Alderman Gord Lowe, Alderman Ray Jones, and Alderman Linda Fox-Mellway.

The Pumphouse is working on a draft letter of support, which we will make available to you ASAP along with contact information for you to forward to your constituents.

Stage 2 will involve a public presence at the council meeting. Our goal is to fill the council chambers with 200-300 people on April 26, 2010 at 9:30 am.

For those of you with productions remaining in the month of April we request that you include a pre-show chat preceding each of your presentations to solicit your patrons for support for the continued health and vibrancy of not only The Pumphouse, but also the diverse theatrical community in general who benefit from the existence of The Pumphouse Theatre.

Some points to include in your message are the following:

1. The city of Calgary owns the building. If there is weak support from the owner the federal government and other donors are less likely to give.
2. The building is aging; some parts are 38 years old and some 100 years old. This project is not only about an expansion to help foster the theatre community, but also about maintaining the existing building to ensure that the Pumphouse will remain an affordable venue for both community theatre and emerging professional companies.
3. If the project fails to go ahead there is a risk that the Pumphouse will cease to remain affordable due to increases in fees to cover maintenance costs. We will cease to be accessible in the event of any infrastructure failure because The Pumphouse will be forced to close its doors until such time as the city chooses to effect repairs.
4. If the city decides to support the project, all of The Pumphouse children’s theatre programs would be in house and there would be no need to rent additional facilities. We would also be able to expand programs and capacity so more children would benefit from our affordable programming.
5. If the city supports the project the expansion translates into jobs. The Pumphouse will hire more staff to assist the growing client base and children’s programming

An important question to ask is: why did the Pumphouse get a “rough ride” from Council? From what I hear one of the big sticking points with several questioners at the committee meeting was that after the Province reneged on their portion of the funding, Council did not want to commit to the project until they knew the Feds were committed. On the surface this looks like a good idea, but I have to ask: how in the world will the Feds commit to a project when the owner (the City) won’t do it first? Why not, simply add a caveat to the funding: you can have this $2 million only if the Feds come on board too. Wouldn’t that solve the issue? (I’m asking this question seriously. If it would not solve the issue, please let me know why so we can come up with a better solution. But as it stands now, this sure seems like a no brainer answer.)

Tags: arts, Calgary, calgary city council, Politics, Pumphouse Theatre
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Did you know you can download the ministerial business plans from Alberta.ca? With today’s Budget announcement and everything available at budget2010.alberta.ca, I thought, “I wonder if budget2009.alberta.ca looks anything alike?”

Well it turns out not only do the sites look and function the same, they have much the same information. Meaning it is VERY easy to compare one year to the next. (Open government FTW!)

As a result, here is a quick PDF comparison I just did of the Ministry of Culture and Community Spirit business plans from 2009 and 2010: Acr1649115.tmp. It makes for a quick side-by-side comparasion that shows you exactly what has changed. I may do a little more research into this, but for now, I thought I’d write a quick blog post inviting others to do the same with other departments and, with perhaps a little re-formatting, make the comparasion even easier.

I makes it very easy to see that on page 5 the vision and mission for the department have changed. There is also the addition of a “Clients and Stakeholders” section. To me however, the most interesting part is to see how the performance measures have changed. For example  in 2007-08 “participation in arts activities or events by adult Albertans” was 87.4%; for 2008-09 it had gone up to 91%. In 2007-08 “Level of community volunteerism by adult Albertans” was 68.6% with a goal for 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12 of 69%; for 2008-09 it had blown past it’s targets for the next 3 years and was already up to 81.4%!

See? Fun with numbers! I invite you to do the same. Go, enjoy; hold your government accountable and expose their successes and failures.

Tags: arts, open government, Politics, provincial budget
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As 2009 comes to a close I wanted to take a look back. It was a good year for me personally and I think this blog shows some of the highlights that come to my mind when I reminisce about the last year of the decade. I could simply select my favourite posts, but I decided why not not just let the readers “select” by highlighting the most popular posts on this blog for 2009.

So without further ado, the most popular djkelly.ca Blog posts of 2009:

14. What kind of bridge will $25 million get us?
May 22, 2009

This was my first blog post about the soon to be built Calatrava bridge. I decdided I would take a look at the design limitations given to Calatrava and try to predict what the bridge might look like. While, I was right about it not being white with soaring cables, I wasn’t even close to the guessing the Chinese finger trap design, which is much more ornate than I was expecting.

13. Conversing with Alberta politicians on Twitter
June 4, 2009

A useful post that should probably be updated given how many more Alberta politicians have joined since June!

12. New Ward Boundaries Demystified
February 21, 2009

A simple post created by laying the old ward boundary map with the new map that was being proposed by the chief electoral officer. (Showing off my Photoshop skills.)  It turned out to be a post that proved it was sorely needed.

11. Loving or hating Calgary’s new bridge is not as easy as it sounds
July 29, 2009

This is probably one of my favourite posts of the year, as I went through what I observed to be each of the areas of complaint about the proposed Calatrava bridge and outlined which were fair game and which were not. It was my attempt at adding clarity to an issue extremely misunderstood by Calgarians. While it landed at number 11 on the most popular posts, I don’t think I was overly successful because people still complain about the price with little understanding of “why”. If you’re one of those folks, it might be worth a re-read.

10. Calgary City Council saves face by embarrassing themselves: ward boundaries solved!
July 14, 2009

The last blog post on the old blog template! It holds a special place for me for that reason, but most people probably just appreciated it for what it talked about – as outlined in the post title. This is the most proud I was of our council this year. They painted themselves into a terrible corner, but admitted their mistake and righted their wrong. I wish they would have done this more times during 2009.

9. Vanessa Porteous, ATP Artistic Director Designate
January 14, 2009

I am shocked an arts related post ranked so high on this list! (And it’s not even the highest one!) Is it because of the lack of local entertainment reporting resources? I think it might be, because non-Hollywood entertainment news tends to take a couple days to make it into the papers. Maybe I should take up Metro Calgary on their offer to blog about Calgary arts for them… It could prove to be a very successful blog that maybe long overdue.

8. Doug Elniski: how to do it right
June 24, 2009

This post – along with number 5, which I wrote a day earlier – simply outlined where things went wrong in MLA Doug Elniski’s mini-Twitter scandal. This particular post provided follow-up and greater context to comments I made in several media interviews on the subject. (You can say SO much more on a blog than in a media interview!)

7. University of Calgary cutting 200 jobs
July 14, 2009

Out of all the posts in this list I think this is the closet to “regretting” one as I come. Unlike all the other posts (save the honourable mention) this post was “breaking” news instead of my usual commentary on the news. I didn’t mean for it to be however! Here’s what happened: the UofC sent an email to all staff saying they were cutting 200 jobs. I heard about this and asked the individual if it was okay I mentioned it on Twitter. They said yes, because it was sent to all staff and thus obviously public info now. The problem was, UofC never sent a press release. So when I posted it on Twitter I was inundated with media requests for more information. The result was I had another source send me the text of the email and I posted it on this blog. That night the television and radio news lead with the story and it was front page news in the papers the next morning. I’m not sure if the lesson here is about the power of Twitter, or to always keep your communications department in the loop when making major announcements. Maybe both.

6. Progress and respect
November 30, 2009

In the aftermath of the first Reboot Alberta conference I summarize my thoughts on the participants themselves.

5. Doug Elniski: now just another walled off politician?
June 23, 2009

(See number 8 first.) This is the blog post that started it all. I’m not sure why no one else was talking about Doug Elniski’s comments in context of his use of social media. It still baffles me that people think social media is some sort of special entity instead of what it actually is: just another way to talk to people. It’s nothing special, but is highly effective. This post was also was popular enough to result in me being invited to talk about his comments on CBC Calgary’s The Calgary Eyeopener, CBC Edmonton’s Edmonton AM and for a feature article in the National Post.

4. The #AskEd Accountablity Window ends tomorrow
December 3, 2009

Just like number 5 this was me talking about Alberta politicians and their failures with social media tools – although this time Mastermaq got the press coverage a week later

3. How to fix Ed’s communications problems
December 14, 2009

After number 4 I felt like I had to address the Premier’s communications problems appropriately. It’s bizarre how he’s lost the media and the public so thoroughly by a simple failure to communicate. He’s our premier and I want to see him, and thus us, succeed. This is my attempt to throw the premier a bone. We’ll see if he and his team take my advice or if they continue to fumble their way through 2010.

2. Look out Alberta, you’re about to get “rebooted”: First Impressions
November 28, 2009

I honestly think the Reboot Alberta movement – along with the Wildrose Alliance’s rise – is the single most important thing to happen in Alberta politics since the creation of the Progressive Conservative party. This post outlines my initial thoughts after the first day of the conference. The fact so many people read it gives me hope that Reboot Alberta is on the right track in their discussions. You can expect more thoughts from me on this movement in the very near future.

1. Jeffrey Spalding, CEO of the Glenbow and cultural rockstar, unexpectedly steps down
January 9, 2009

Yes, an arts story made it to number one on the list! And for such a short blog post?! The people spoke.

Honourable Mention: “Open Government” coming to Calgary?
July 21, 2009

Usually you expect to see an honourable mention at the bottom of the list, but I think this one deserves to be at the top of the list. July 21 had more people visit my website that any other day in it’s history. By a LONG SHOT – almost twice as many as any other day. There was only one post written around that period of time, and it was written on that very day. I think what happened was the main URL of this site was circulated and shared rather than the actual URL of this paticular post. Therefore I don’t have accurate numbers on exactly how many people visited this particular story, but the numbers are just so overwhelming I had to include it.

I wrote this post during the morning hours in a business centre of a hotel in Portland, Oregon. I had been given permission from Ald. Pincott and Ald. Ceci to announce the open data notice of motion the day before it became public when the council agenda was released. People from all over North American immediately sat up and took notice and did so by reading this post. Amazing. Look for a lot more on outcome of this notice of motion in early 2010.

Tags: arts, Brian Pincott, Calgary, calgary city council, CBC, communications, Doug Elniski, Ed Stelmach, Edmonton, Edmonton AM, Jeffrey Spalding, Joe Ceci, Mack Male, National Post, open data, open government, Politics, Reboot Alberta, Santiago Calatrava, technology, The Eyeopener, Twitter, University of Calgary, Vanessa Porteous, wards, Wildrose Alliance
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Do you know what PechaKucha Night is? If you do, I know you’ll be at the second Calgary PechaKucha tomorrow (Thursday) at 7pm at the Uptown. If you don’t, trust me, you have to come and check it out. You won’t regret it.

You won’t regret it because of the format. Each presenter is given 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide. Meaning they have 6 minutes and 40 seconds to tell you everything you could ever want to know about their topic. (Or at least enough to whet your appetite.) Generally this is enough time to only give you the really cool highlights of their project. No fluff. And beside, if it’s not a topic you happen to be interested in, just wait a couple minutes – there will be something more suiting to you along shortly!

The first Calgary PechaKucha Night was held on September 14 at The Grand Theatre. There wasn’t really a “theme” per se, but all the speakers were talking about great public spaces and how they were designed. Many of the speakers were from Calgary and a few were brought in from out of town. The list included:

• Tim Jones, CEO, Artscape
• Andrew Mosker, Executive Director, Cantos
• Bill Chomik, Principal Architect, Kasian
• Scott McTavish, Executive Director, Pumphouse Theatre
• Joe Lobko, DTAH, Lead Architect, Don Valley Brick Works Project Toronto
• David Scott, Associate, Peter Cardew Architects
• Billie Bridgman, President, Bridgman Associates
• Paul Dornian, Director, The Conservatory, Mount Royal College
• Jane Pendergast, Pendergast Collaborative Architecture
• Jeremy Sturgess, Principal, Sturgess Architecture
• Erik Olson, Artist and Spacemaker
• Mark Lawes, Executive Artistic Director, Theatre Junction Grand

Tomorrow night’s theme is “How We Live Together”. The speakers are architects, planners, artists and other great minds talking about exploring how cities become truly livable places and how the decisions we make today affect the future of our environmental, social and economic landscape. The speaker list includes:

• Eric Moschopedis, Interdisciplinary Artist
• Gian-Carlo Carra, Senior Urban Designer, T6
• John Frosst, Arbour Lake Sghool
• Tom Keenan Associate Dean Academic and Professor, EVDS, UofC
• David Plouffe, Acting Executive Assistant for the Director of Land Use Planning and Policy
• Xstine Cook, Artistic Director, Calgary Animated Objects Society
• Naheed Nenshi, Associate Professor, Bissett School of Business, Mount Royal University
• Lothar Wiwjorra, Senior Urban Designer City of Calgary
• Susan Veres, Communications Director, Calgary Municipal Land Corporation
• Jerrod Bitango, Pastor, Central United Church
• Quinton Rafuse, Partner, CoworkYYC
• Bernie Amell, Landscape Architect, Prairie Sky Co-Housing

While we’ve already started talking about what the theme for the next PechaKucha Night should be (I’m honoured to have been asked to sit on the Advisory Committee) – and it sounds pretty cool so far – I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. So, go get your tickets for this Thursday’s even now. They are just $10 and can be purchased here. And I’ll make you a deal, if you absolutely hate the event you can buy you a beer afterward and make as many suggestions as you like on how we can improve it. Sound good?

Hope to see you there!

Tags: arts, PechaKucha, technology, the Grand, the Uptown
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I have seen the City of Calgary screw up before but never in such a spectacular fashion.

Last week I heard about a new City art program that sounded pretty cool to me. In response to comments from Shaw Millennium Park users that the park was dull and didn’t provide the kind of urban energy you might expect in a skate park, the City decided to let the complainers do the fixing.

In a press release sent out on Friday, August 21 the City announced, “Shaw Millennium Park was built for and dedicated to Calgary’s youth who often tell us it’s drab and boring. We’re providing young urban artists a chance to work with an acclaimed professional artist to visually animate this space.” In short the City gave the users the paint and pointed them in the direction of a wall on the Landmark building to unveil their masterpieces.

More amazingly the local youth would be “under the guidance of internationally acclaimed urban artist The Kid Belo.” What a great idea and opportunity for Calgary’s kids!

What could go wrong, right? After all the press release continues on to say, “The urban artists will be visually identified as authorized to create this work” and “a peer review process will be facilitated by The City so that only the best work will be allowed to stay. The Kid Belo will work with the young artists to ensure all artwork is appropriate for the space.”

Apparently The City and The Kid Belo must have fell asleep at some point because Shaw Millennium Park was completely trashed in just two days. (See Michael Platt’s article in the Calgary Sun for all the details on what went wrong.)

As the press release says, “artwork will only be permitted in a certain area of the park.  Anything outside that area will be considered graffiti and vandalism.”

Well it looks like there is A LOT of vandalism then. Just take a look at the Sun picture from the interior of the men’s room! I wonder if any of the paint ended up on the correct wall?

The behaviour of the perpetrators is simply despicable. They were given an opportunity and they wasted it. And for what? To be seen as punk-asses by the rest of the city? Way to ruin it for everybody.

Not to mention the outcome of this project just gives “art” a bad name. The ramifications of which could be felt through public perception and funding for years to come.

Normally I would say a project like this is a fantastic idea. Calgary needs to look at ways of empowering citizens to improve our lot and make our home a better place. But where were the controls? Surely the City knew something like this COULD happen. They even said addressed it in the press release. So where was the supervision? Did they just leave the paint in the park for anyone to use? Clearly the perpetrators were not “visually identified as authorized to create this work”.

With so much going so spectacularly wrong the question becomes who’s at fault? (We already know who’s going to foot the bill. That’d be you and me. But I’d suggest the cleanup comes out of the budget of the offending department’s budget. You break it; you bought it.)

Do we blame the vandals entirely? Does The Kid Belo deserve some of the blame? Regardless I’d suggest the City is going to have to shoulder the responsibility on this one and admit the program clearly had a massive hole in it and was beyond poorly planned. Whoever was in charge of the program needs to step up, take the blame, and publicly apologize for allowing a beautiful iconic park to be so thoroughly destroyed.

Sadly, today much more than just a park was destroyed.

PS – In an unrelated note congratulations to Rachael Seupersad for her appointment yesterday as the City of Calgary’s Superintendent, Public Art. I hope her department isn’t in charge of this program, because if it is, she may have the shortest tenure for a City employee of all time.

Tags: arts, Calgary, Calgary Sun, graffiti, John Mar, Michael Platt, Politics, Shaw Millennium Park, The Kid Belo
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