Update to the Utility Box Public Art Program
We are introducing a new approach to the Utility Box Public Art Program this year following a successful pilot project in 2025. The Utility Box program is a city-wide public art initiative that turns standard utility boxes into painted artworks throughout Calgary. Since launching in 2010, more than 300 utility box artworks have been installed across the city, adding visual interest to streetscapes, supporting neighbourhood identity and helping reduce graffiti.
New Curator-Led Model
Starting in 2026, the annual program will shift to a curator-led model. Previously, community organizations applied to the program directly and then selected an artist to work with. Under the new model, five curators selected from Calgary Arts Development’s Curatorial Roster are each assigned to one of the five chosen communities for that year.
The curators develop a vision for the project informed by research and relationship-building within the community, and select an artist or artists to create a series of artworks across approximately six to 10 utility boxes. Our Community Directory is one of the resources curators use to find artists to work with, so we encourage all artists to join the directory if they haven’t already, and to make sure their profile is up to date.
This new approach allows each group of utility boxes within a neighbourhood to be connected through a shared theme or visual language, creating a stronger sense of place across the artworks. The curator-led model also creates more opportunities for emerging artists to develop their skills, and for new artists to participate in the program. By streamlining project delivery and supporting curators to develop cohesive collections of artworks, the program can include both artists who are new to public art and artists with established public art practices, while reaching more communities across the city year over year.
The Selected Communities for 2026:
- Sunridge (NE)
- McKenzie Towne (SE)
- Shawnessy (SW)
- Bowness/Montgomery (NW)
- Downtown (7 Ave.) — replacement community
When selecting communities each year, the goal is to help ensure public art is distributed more equitably across the city, so areas with gaps are prioritized. Selection also considers whether existing utility box artworks in a community need to be replaced due to wear over time, as well as overall program capacity.
Building on the Marda Loop Curated Pilot Project
This program update builds on the success of the Marda Loop Curated Pilot Project in 2025, which tested the curator-led model. For the pilot, curator Stacey Watson developed a curatorial vision for the neighbourhood and selected artist Tayler Schenkeveld to create a series of utility box artworks throughout the area. The project demonstrated how this approach led to a collection of artworks that respond to the character of a community while supporting artists through a more focused project structure. Insights from the pilot helped inform the updated program model that will now be implemented across future Utility Box Program projects.
Learn more about the Utility Box program here.
2026 Utility Box Program Curators
Curators were selected from our pre-approved Curatorial Roster based on factors such as equitable distribution of projects, connections to the selected communities and overall availability. The curators for the 2026 Utility Box Program are:
Cobra Collins
Cobra Collins
Cobra Collins is a Mohkínstsis-based Indigenous and settler poet of significant height. She has represented our city on a national level at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and was humbled to sit as Indigenous advocate on the Writers’ Union of Canada’s (TWUC) National Council in 2021 and 2022.
Her debut short film Hop Along Hang On has been featured nationwide and internationally in numerous film festivals, and has won several awards, including Best Short Film at the Black Hills Film Festival.
Cobra was also honoured to be shortlisted as a nominee for Calgary’s 2016 and 2018 poet laureate.
Utility Box Community: Sunridge
Lindy Pruitt
Lindy Pruitt
Lindy Pruitt is a Calgary-based artist, curator and development co-ordinator for the arts whose work explores the intersections between creative practice, community development and placekeeping.
She’s passionate about sharing her experience in design theory and fabrication knowledge with local artists to help bring their dreams into reality.
Lindy holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Calgary and a Bachelor of Sculpture from the Alberta University of the Arts. She brings a research-driven approach to her curatorial practice with a focus on how art can transform our experience of shared public spaces.
Utility Box Community: Shawnessy
Mao Kun Chen
Mao Kun Chen
Mao Kun Chen is a Calgary-based visual artist, ceramicist, curator and creative entrepreneur. Her practice explores cultural identity, diaspora, neurodivergent experience and collective memory through ceramics, mosaic and community-engaged public art. Born in China and now working in Canada, her work bridges Eastern and Western visual languages, examining how personal narratives intersect with shared cultural structures.
While her early work drew from East Asian kawaii culture and themes of female empowerment and diasporic experience, her current practice expands into sculptural installation, layered glaze research and fragment-based mosaics that transform flaws and discarded materials into cohesive forms. Through individual and collaborative projects with Chris Savage, she reimagines classical ceramic traditions using bold colour, painterly glazing and narrative symbolism to foster dialogue, inclusivity and cross-cultural understanding.
Mao holds both a master of fine arts and a bachelor of fine arts and has exhibited across Canada, the U.S. and Asia. As co-founder of Mao Projects, she integrates artistic research with community engagement, leading workshops and public interventions that activate civic spaces. As a curator, she is committed to creating public art that builds belonging, encourages participation and transforms everyday environments into sites of connection and cultural exchange.
Utility Box Community: Bowness/Montgomery
Stacey Watson
Stacey Watson
Stacey Watson (she/her) is an artist and curator based in Calgary/Mohkinsstsis. She graduated with an master of fine arts in 2004 from the University of Calgary. Stacey has exhibited locally and internationally in printmaking, video, sculpture, painting and installation. She has taught at Alberta University for the Arts, the University of Lethbridge and in Essex, U.K. Her curatorial work began at Pith Gallery (2008–2018) which she co-founded.
Her artistic practice, currently focused on painting, addresses cognitive dissonance and competing realities.
Utility Box Community: Downtown (7 Ave.)
Tomas Jonsson
Tomas Jonsson
Tomas Jonsson has curated, presented and performed work both in Canada and internationally. Tomas’s family came to Montreal from Denmark in 1969, living and travelling west until eventually deciding to stay in Calgary, where he was born in 1975. A large part of his practice has been unraveling and understanding this trajectory, and his relation to a place he now also knows as Mohkinsstsis, among other names. Tomas is currently living in oskana ka-asasteki (Pile of Bones), known today as Regina.
Utility Box Community: McKenzie Towne
Questions? Contact utilitybox@calgaryartsdevelopment.com
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