Artist Call: Creating Our Calgary
Increasing civic participation through the arts
For the past two years, artists and civic leaders have gathered at our Living a Creative Life Congress to focus on art for social change. At those gatherings, we featured inspirational guest speakers and amazing artists from our community who are using their art practice to make positive change in the world. What’s the logical next step? A city-wide activation led by artists.
Creating Our Calgary is a comprehensive, six-month program that trains and supports artists in working together to run innovative creative campaigns to mobilize Calgarians for the October 2025 civic election and beyond.
Using a process created by the internationally acclaimed Center for Artistic Activism and coordinated by Calgary community-builder Tyson Bankert of Recess Calgary, Calgary Arts Development is launching Creating Our Calgary. This six-month program empowers artist collectives to develop and launch innovative, impactful campaigns that encourage people to imagine the kind of city they want to live in and take concrete steps to realizing it. Artists can use their unique skills to mobilize their fellow citizens to shore up Calgary’s potential and create the beautiful place citizens want and need.
Creating Our Calgary kicks off with an in-person inspiration and ideation intensive in late June, followed by local and city-wide activations through October leading up to the civic election, and ending with analysis and next steps.
This project will support 4 to 5 artist collectives leading hundreds of community members to develop culturally specific, surprising, hopeful campaigns aimed to spark civic engagement this year and beyond.
PHASE 1
Kickoff Intensive
June 25, 26, 27 from 10am to 6pm
The project starts with a mandatory multi-day, in-person workshop where you’ll:
- Get trained by leading artistic activists in how to use art and creativity in building impactful civic engagement campaigns: The training will be led by Tyson Bankert of Recess Calgary and Rachel Gita Karp of the Center for Artistic Activism, who have trained thousands of people all over the world.
- Connect with passionate artists like you who want to use their talents to have direct impact on Calgary and civic participation: We’ll have four to five artist collectives participating. More about what constitutes a collective and who is eligible to participate is below.
- Learn from Calgary community groups about barriers to participation and how we can overcome them: We’ll ask community-building groups in Calgary to share their expertise and inspire your work.
- Explore and identify creative campaigns that you’ll go on to prototype and implement in the months to come.
Topics covered will include:
- Inspiring examples of how artists have led incredibly effective creative projects in past election cycles
- Concrete steps of how to build creative campaigns for your communities
- Blueprints for creative affective and effective campaigns that you can use throughout your artistic practice
- Personal support for your own campaign ideas
PHASE 2
Campaigns and Mentorship
July, August & September
From the intensive, your collective will leave with a few ideas for projects. In the summer months (July, August, September), you’ll test out your ideas and find what’s really working. As you do this work, each month you’ll get:
- One-on-one creative lab sessions to support you and your specific project: you’ll get into the details and get help and advice to make your work as successful as possible and to make sure it’s reaching the audiences you want to reach.
- An all-participant meeting: you’ll share with the entire group what you’ve been doing, hear updates from the other projects, and find opportunities for further collaboration and support.
PHASE 3
Final Activations
October
In the last weeks leading up to the election, the developed city-wide campaigns will roll out at scale to increase the number of Calgarians going to the polls. The specifics will be determined over the course of the program, but we anticipate this will involve:
- High-visibility artistic interventions in public spaces
- Neighbourhood-based activations that meet people where they are, and
- City-wide collaborations amplifying the energy of the movement
PHASE 4
Project Evaluation
November
Following the months of ideation, testing and implementation you’ll share back about your work and the Creating Our Calgary program as a whole. CADA, Recess Calgary and the Center for Artistic Activism will rely on your evaluations and insights to produce a greater analysis about the program and to inform future Calgary civic engagement programs by looking at questions such as:
- What worked best in engaging Calgarians?
- What strategies can be improved for future civic engagement?
- How can we sustain momentum for Calgary’s creative and civic future?
This phase will cement the work as not just an election year effort but an ongoing cultural shift where artists and creatives remain at the forefront of contributing to Calgary’s future.
Benefits and Pay
We estimate you will spend about 75-80 hours on this program. This includes:
- June: 24 hours for the in-person kickoff
- July – October: 8 hours of creative lab sessions and full-group meetings; 40 hours of project realization
- November: 2 hours for analysis and reporting
We are looking for artist collectives comprising 2 to 4 artists. Each artist will receive a fee of $6,500. All artist collectives are required to attend the in-person workshop in June.
In addition to financial compensation, through the program you will:
- Learn frameworks and exercises that you can use across your practice
- Participate in a high-visibility program
- Contribute to work presented across Calgary
- Deepen relationships and find new collaborators who want to use their art for impact
What are the expectations?
We want to harness collective power by having participants work together on campaigns, which is why we are inviting artist collectives to participate. This is a commitment to the full six-month program. You must be free to join the entire June kickoff workshop and participate in all program elements. See the specific hour expectation breakdown above.
Who is best suited for this work?
This program is for artist collectives who work in the realm of art for social change. Specifically, we are seeking artist collectives who use creative expression to inspire, connect and advocate for positive transformation at a community level through socially engaged or community-engaged arts, community development through the arts, or participatory arts. You do not need to have an established body of work together; it is fine if you form a group specifically for this program.
What should we bring to this work?
Come with an open mind! The kickoff intensive is meant to inspire, challenge, build your skills, and fill you with new ideas. You’re welcome to come with ideas of projects but stay open to new ideas that emerge through our time together.
Are there any rules we need to know about?
The number one rule is to stay nonpartisan. Projects supported through Creating Our Calgary cannot be for or against any specific candidates running in the election. Rather, this is a campaign to identify what is important to Calgarians by envisioning the kind of city we want to live in and making your voice count through your vote or taking other meaningful civic action.
Information Sessions
If you are interested but want to know more, there will be two information sessions where you can learn more about the project and ask your questions before applying. These sessions will be as follows:
Online Information Session
June 5, 12-1pm MST, over Zoom
Register here
In-person Information Session
June 6 at the Calgary Arts Development Office
Drop in between 10am and 4pm
Register here
If you have questions, please bring them to one of the information sessions. If you are unable to attend either of the info sessions, please submit your question to info@calgaryartsdevelopment.com with “Question about Creating our Calgary” in the subject line.
Timeline:
May 26 – Call is open
June 5 – Online information session
June 6 – In-person information sessions
June 10 – Deadline to apply
June 13 – Selected artist collectives notified
June 25-27 – Mandatory in-person kickoff workshop (location TBA)
July, August, September – Campaigns and creative lab sessions
October – Final activations
November – Project evaluation
Calgary Arts Development is committed to open, fair and transparent processes. If you need help with this application, you can learn more about the assistance available to you in our Applicant Support & Accessibility Policy. If you have questions, please email info@calgaryartsdevelopment.com.
