Alberta Business Marketing

I should have posted a Nuit Blanche update months ago, but there had been so much movement over that time things never felt settled enough that it made sense to post an update. With recent events however now seemed to be the best time to let everyone know what’s going on.

Here’s the whole story:

On December 9, 2009 I saw a tweet from a friend in Toronto saying Scotiabank Nuit Blanche was now accepting applications for the 2010 festival. I retweeted saying something like “why don’t we have this in #yyc?”. My tweet was then retweeted and echoed by about 10 Calgarians. I thought to myself, what does 10 retweets really mean? What sort of support does that translate to? And so I put together a Google Docs form asking people to provide their details if they “might be interested in helping plan or attending a Nuit Blanche in Calgary.”

In two days 150 people had signed up.

Suddenly I was faced with a reality: that’s a pretty good critical mass, but what’s the next step to make a Nuit Blanche in Calgary a reality?

I thought about it and realized with my contacts in the arts I could at the very least get the right people in the room to talk about it. And with 200 people (where the list ended at after about five days) we knew there were people who wanted it in our City.

So that week in December I met with two people from Calgary Arts Development and pitched them the idea. And then I met with five people from the Calgary Downtown Association. And then a few others I know in corporate community investment, and even Michael Green from the High Performance Rodeo. Everyone said the same thing: it’s a great idea and we should make it happen.

Obviously I couldn’t do it on my own – not to mention I didn’t have any interest in organizing a festival – but buoyed by the 200 names on the list I felt I should at least see it through. As luck would have it toward the end of my meeting with CADA, Karen Ball mentioned that I should talk to a friend of hers. He had mentioned to her before that he thought Calgary should have a Nuit Blanche, but – I’m paraphrasing her words – he didn’t know the kind of people needed to make it happen. But she thought he and I would counter balance each other because I knew the people and he knew Nuit Blanche. He knew it so well in fact, because he had curated a zone at the Toronto Nuit Blanche for two years.

Email introductions were exchanged and a few days later I was sitting in the Auburn Saloon with a pint of Grasshopper in my hand across from Wayne Baerwaldt – a complete stranger. We chatted a little bit about our backgrounds: me in arts marketing, him the curator and director of the Illingworth Kerr Gallery at the Alberta College of Art and Design, before quickly getting to the point of our meeting. I must have talked for 10 or 15 minutes straight, laying out everything I knew about making Nuit Blanche in Calgary a reality, everything I learned from the half dozen or so meetings I had the week previous. When I was finally out of breath, Wayne asked one or two simple questions, which, if I remember correctly, I answered surprisingly succinctly, and then he said “okay, let’s do it.” I was taken aback by how easy it was to get him on board, but I did nothing more than put my hand out to shake his. I had a partner.

And a partner who is knowledgeable too. A month or so after that we had a tour of Stephen Avenue with Janet Jessiman, the manager of Stephen Ave from CDA, Karen Ball from CADA, David Down, senior architect with the City of Calgary, and Paula Dozois, a prof from MRU and a friend of Wayne’s. Following our hour and a half tour, it was decided that Stephen Ave was the place and the festival should probably run from City Hall to Bankers’ Hall with two major installations per block. Ideas for big brought in installations were exchanged, as were ideas for smaller projects undertaken by local artists. (That’s not to say some of the big installations won’t be done by local groups however.)

Things were getting real and it was time to become real. In order to apply for funding we needed to become an official not-for-profit society and we needed five directors to do that. Wayne approached Paula, and we also added Rita Mckeough and Diana Sherlock, both instructors from ACAD. We had our first meeting at Paula’s house on April 24 and the paperwork was filed by lawyer Tyler Shandro (who was one of the original ‘re-tweeters’), arriving in Edmonton on May 11.

Last week it became official as the Certificate of Incorporation from the Alberta government landed in my inbox.

We are moving forward with a target of September 2011 for the first Nuit Blanche Calgary.

Grants are about to be applied for, but in our first VERY rough budget we estimate it will take $300,000 in cash to make the kind of splash we think a first year needs to have. Potential sponsors will be approached soon. The plan is being developed. Identifying our needs at the same time as applying for funding.

Wayne has already had meetings with Scotiabank Nuit Blanche in Toronto about ways that we might be able to work together, and he’s just returned from Berlin where he spoke with organizers of their Nuit Blanche.

We’re serious about making this happen – even if I’ll need to take a step back soon lest I be suddenly “organizing a festival” like I said back in December that didn’t want to do. But we’ll need your help soon to make it all a reality!

So if you haven’t done so already please fill out this form: http://bit.ly/nuitblanchecalgary. It’s still the original form that started it all.

And please share the link with your friends!

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Tags: Alberta College of Art and Design, arts, Calgary Arts Development, Calgary Downtown Association, City of Calgary, David Down, Diana Sherlock, High Performance Rodeo, Janet Jessiman, Karen Ball, Michael Green, Nuit Blanche, Paula Dozois, Rita Mckeough, Twitter, Tyler S. Shando, Wayne Baerwaldt
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As I’ve written about before, coming out of the first Reboot Alberta event, many individuals (including bloggers) were invited to write on what “being a progressive” means to them.

While there have been a great many posts and white papers written on the subject as a result – I invite you to visit RebootAlberta.org to read as many of them as possible – I wanted to take advantage of the week leading up to Reboot Alberta 2, which begins this Friday in Kananaskis, by offering my own take.

The first Reboot Alberta event was billed as a meeting of progressives before the event. I considered myself to be ‘progressive’ in my thinking (or at the very least not ‘regressive’), so off I went to Red Deer. But it didn’t take long before I, and others, started asking “what does it mean to be ‘progressive’ anyway?”. It’s amazing how sometimes we simply label ourselves as something and do not bother to delve into it to find out what it really means. We’re far too often to simply sit back and be comfortable with a superficial label.

So for me it seemed only natural that the first group discussion of the day I would attend would be “What is a Progressive?”. I’m glad I did, as that very first conversation helped frame the rest of my Reboot experience and the outcomes of it came up several times throughout the weekend.

In that group we came up with the following traits that we believe ‘progressive’ is about:

1. Interconnectedness
2. Understanding
3. Adaptability

It was shortly after the first Reboot Alberta conference that I came across this post by Tyler Shandro, who, while it is true did not attend the event, still hit the nail on the head. “Progressive” isn’t a left or right thing and it should not be the domain of any single political faction. The definition of progressive my group came up with can easily be applied to ANY political party. (And, in my opinion, should be applied by all parties and by all individuals in their personal lives to.)

I, unlike several of the individuals who have written on the topic over the past couple months, do not see progressive as the opposite of anything or any other political ideology. Instead I see progressivism as a principle – a tool to help create wise decisions built on the best knowledge available. With this in mind, progressive policies – policies that are built on interconnectedness, understanding and adaptability – could just as easily be created by self-styled conservatives or liberals. Hence progressivism should not be the domain of one party to the exclusion of another.

There are many ways to for Albertans to be progressive within their community. I think this is why all four “ways forward” discussion groups at the first Reboot Alberta were so heavily populated. No one group dominated. Some thought “progress” can happen via the current parties we have, others wanted a new party option. Some thought “progressive” ideals could be best pursued by them on their own, others thought it best to happen as part of a non-political movement.

I felt – and still feel – it was a shame the “news” being heard by those not at the initial Reboot Alberta was so focused on the new party option, because focusing on that alone is to ignore 3/4 of the discussion.

But, I digress.

I think it is healthy that Tyler and others question what “progressive” means. I know I did, and still do. Every person who subscribes to an ideology, principle or policy, should always dig deeper into what it means, what its causal architecture is, why it is the way it is, and what cognitive dissonance might be at play in both the presenter and ourselves. It is through our recognition of how these various facets are interconnected that we may gain better understanding and we can become adaptable and change our ways and minds based on the evidence we may find. This is something I think – and hope – every individual and political party would want to do. (And you’ll just happen to note, those are all three of the ‘pillars’ of our group’s definition of ‘progressive’.)

So, during this upcoming week, I plan on writing a series of posts exploring what it means to be ‘progressive’ and what ‘progress’ actually means. I plan on doing this by going dedicating some time to each of the three ‘pillars’ as well as one extra post on what I believe to be a key feedback tool to ensure the pillars are possible: openness and transparency.

Tomorrow I will begin with a little more on ‘progress’ and what the term itself means and where it comes from. I hope you’ll take the time to follow along as I explore this rabbit hole in anticipation of Reboot Alberta 2.

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Tags: Politics, progress, progressive, Reboot Alberta, Tyler S. Shando, Uncategorized
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