Behind the Scenes: Creating Our Calgary
Five local artist collectives spend six months planning activations to inspire civic engagement
In 2025, in response to a call inviting artists to experiment with ways to inspire civic participation through the arts, five local artist collectives were selected to create innovative projects encouraging Calgarians to imagine the kind of city they want to live in and to become more civically engaged.
Behind the scenes, artists planned and prepared their activations through a rigorous six-month process developed by the internationally acclaimed Center for Artistic Activism, and led locally by Recess Calgary, in partnership with Calgary Arts Development.
Called Creating Our Calgary, this project resulted in 30 events with 14 community partners in locations across the city, reaching more than 17,500 Calgarians.
Learn more about the process, the project and what was learned along the way in this article by Rachel Gita Karp of the Center for Artistic Activism: Creating Our Calgary.
