BUMP Public Sculpture Program
BUMP Festival
Deadline: March 29, 2026 at 5 pm MT
In 2026 we launch the inaugural BUMP Public Sculpture Program, expanding beyond murals into three-dimensional, site-responsive works. Our RFP is now live!
Calgary is a city shaped by powerful and often conflicting narratives. It is both “Cowtown” and a rapidly densifying urban centre. A gateway to the Rockies and an oil capital. Public space is where these tensions surface most clearly. Our new Public Sculpture Program seeks artists who understand the city not as a fixed identity, but as an ongoing negotiation between visible narratives and hidden realities.
Guest Curator Ken Lum
The inaugural edition is curated by internationally acclaimed Canadian artist Ken Lum, Co-Founder and Chair of Monument Lab. After his powerful keynote at our 2025 Urban Art Conference, the dialogue around monuments and memory stayed with us. That conversation has grown into action.
His curatorial framework invites artists to interrogate urban symbols, surface what they obscure, and propose new ways of seeing Calgary.
What we’re Commissioning
- Two artists or artist teams
- $65,000 CAD per project (inclusive of fees + fabrication)
- Semi-permanent installations (minimum three years)
- Located in Calgary’s Beltline neighbourhood
- Open to local, national and international artists
This will become an annual initiative, building a long-term lineage of contemporary public artworks across the city.
Our RFP is now open, visit Public Sculpture Program to find all the details, notes from our curator and other considerations in the document.
Our Deadline is March 29, 2026 at 5 pm MT.
