Living a Creative Life Congress 2025
Creating Our Calgary artist collectives will re-enact their activations at this year’s Congress. Clockwise from top left: Crate-ive Crew, The Triple A Club, Error 404 Dance Found Collective, Ayo Collective, and Fem Assembly.
Date: November 20, 2025
Location: DJD Dance Centre (111 12 Ave. SE)
Theme: Inspiring Civic Participation through the Arts
Cost: Free but registration is required
This is an in-person event, but there is an online option for the morning session if you are unable to attend in person.
ASL interpretation is provided.
About this year’s Congress
For the past two years, the Living a Creative Life Congress has focused on art for social change. At those gatherings, we featured inspirational guest speakers and amazing local artists who are using their community-engaged art practice to provoke positive change in the world. This year we invited a handful of artist collectives to experiment with ways to inspire civic participation through the arts. In the spring of 2025, we posted a call for artist collectives to participate in the Creating our Calgary project, a rigorous six-month process to encourage civic participation.
Using a process created by the internationally acclaimed Center for Artistic Activism, and led locally by Recess Calgary, five local artist collectives created innovative projects to encourage Calgarians to imagine the kind of city they want to live in and become more civically engaged. Find out what happened with those projects at this year’s Congress, featuring a review of the Creating our Calgary project, re-enactments of some of the artist collectives’ activations and some tips for your own community-driven art practice. Get inspired, exchange ideas, meet other artists, community-builders and possibly find future collaborators. Free lunch will be available for the in-person event. Find out more about the artist collectives and their Creating our Calgary activations here.
The 2025 Living a Creative Life Congress is on Thursday, November 20 in-person from 10am to 4:30pm at the DJD Dance Centre. The morning session (10am – 12:45pm) will be streamed online for those who cannot attend in person.
Accessibility
General accessibility information is listed below. If there are ways that we can make this event more welcoming for you or others, please let our event manager, Cherie McMaster, know. She can be reached at cherie.mcmaster@calgaryartsdevelopment.com.
Our event takes place at the DJD Dance Centre, which is located at 111 – 12th Avenue SE. The venue is about a five- to seven-minute walk from the Victoria Station CTrain station. Bus routes can be found on the Calgary Transit homepage. There are paid public parking lots located near the building. Two-hour meter street parking is available on Centre Street SE between 12th and 13th Avenues SE. There are two accessible parking spaces available on the south side of the building. A parking map is available on this page.
The DJD Dance Centre’s main doors are equipped with push plates for accessibility. The venue is wheelchair accessible with a large elevator from the main floor to the second floor where the theatre is located. We are reserving accessible seating in the first rows of the theatre. There are accessible toilet stalls on each floor.
ASL Interpretation will be provided as well as live captioning.
A quiet space is available for decompressing. Art therapists are on hand to hold space for calming activities or to support your emotional and mental well-being.
Food Options
Free lunch will be provided to in-person attendees. There is a place on the registration form to add any food sensitivities or allergies and to let us know if you require a gluten free, vegetarian or vegan meal.
2025 Congress Schedule
Schedule is subject to change; check back for further details.
9:30am — Doors Open, Check-In and community art-making project
10am – 12:45pm — Morning Session (theatre on second floor): includes welcome remarks, presentation by Center for Artistic Activism and Recess Calgary; panel discussion with artist collectives from Creating our Calgary
12:45 – 1:30pm — Lunch
1:30 – 3:30pm — Experience re-enactments of the artistic activations from Creating our Calgary
3:30 – 4:30pm — Closing and Next Steps
Registration
Register here to attend the morning session online The in-person event is now full.
Please note: If you register to attend in person and then are not able to make it, please cancel your registration to make room for other participants.
Information about the artist collectives and the Creating Our Calgary project can be found here.
We’d like to thank Wunmi Idowu and Leslie Robertson for their help on the Creating our Calgary project.
Left: Artist collective Crate-ive Crew’s Project Your Voice activation invited youth to turn their hopes for Calgary into glowing messages.
Right: Ayo Collective’s Silent Protest is a striking arrangement of chairs, empty yet resonant, each marked with the silences, hesitations and barriers that keep many from the ballot box.
Stay informed. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.
