Bird Creatives joins the 2022 creative Congress

December 1, 2022 | CALGARY, EVENTS, Arts, Talks, WHAT'S HAPPENING

Signage: “Living a Creative Life Congress: Imagining our Future Together” Photo by: Motif Photography.

Calgary Arts Development's 2022 Congress: Imagining Futures Together was a full-day event where they announced its organization's four-year strategic plan, and highlighted different parts of the Calgary creative community and the roles they will play in the future through a number of panel discussions.

Bird Creatives participated in the panel discussion on The Creative Economy: What is Calgary's CreativeCITY Strategy and How Might We Activate It?. Led by our very own Kaley Beisiegel, Principal Consultant for Bird Creatives, the panel featured Cowboy Smithx, Leah Naicken (Bird's very own Graphic Designer), and Parker Chapple, and they elaborated on the importance of creating a city that supports and develops creative industries and talent.

Kaley highlighted the four key pillars from the CreativeCITY Strategy, which includes embedding creativity into our city's DNA, mobilizing Calgary's creative capacity, valuing the diversity of Calgary's Creativity, and incubating creative collisions.

Cowboy emphasized the importance of rooting our work in the spirit of Treaty 7 and using its principles of community and cooperation to guide all of our work in the creative space. He also talked about how developing technologies like Blockchain can help artists in the future to protect their intellectual copyright and ensure residual compensation for their works.

Leah discussed how crucial it is to think about the creative economy from a holistic perspective. She suggested that if we want the creative industries to grow, we have to think about how we are supporting creative education and encouraging the development of public transit to allow for cross pollination of ideas to occur. This will allow artists to have access to underutilized infrastructure and spaces all over the city.

Parker elaborated on the importance of giving underrepresented communities and artists the space to explore their passions. They also talked about making accessibility a key part to planning for creative events and creative spaces, as well as ensuring we reach out to people from all different backgrounds and intersections so that they can use their own voices to tell their stories.

Overall, our panel touched on many aspects of how we can shift the creative culture in Calgary to one that is more vibrant and internationally recognized and imagines a future for Calgary that allows creativity to thrive.

Learn more about Calgary Arts Development Annual Congress.

All photos taken by Motif Photography.