Community-run PUBLIC ART PROJECT

A poster indicating the Inspire Our Future project between the HVCA and Calgary Arts Development focusing on the themes of Beauty, Joy, Whimsy, and Indigenous awareness

“Inspire Our Future” is our community’s public art project sponsored by Calgary Arts Development that features and supports local artists. It is a grassroots awareness and beautification plan that extends the HVCA’s Local Area History.

The project will create art based on two specific themes and transfer that art onto vinyl graphics for wrapping traffic light utility boxes and outdoor community refuse bins throughout the community.

Installing this art helps to keep our community vibrant, and directly promotes and supports four local artists in our community by providing multiple public platforms to showcase their work. The HVCA’s beautification committee has chosen vinyl wrapping instead of direct surface painting to increase the art’s outdoor durability. We hope that it helps to promoting pride and wellness within our community.

Themes

The project will create art based on two specific themes:

Fostering Truth & Reconciliation

Learning about the truth of Canadian colonization and its ongoing impact on First Nations, Metis and Inuit 4 peoples. Explore and create paths towards reconciliation and right relations with Indigenous peoples and the land:

The Hidden Valley Community Association is located within the traditional Blackfoot territory of Treaty 7. Approximately 2% of residents (295) that live within our community identify as Aboriginal.

Truth and reconciliation are individual, personal journeys, and there are no limitations for when individuals start or feel like they have completed their journeys. The HVCA would like to take our first step in its commitment to reconciliation by encouraging members of the community to research the ‘Calls to Action’ identified by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRCC) by “promoting public dialogue, public/private partnerships, and public initiatives for reconciliation…to build capacity for intercultural understanding, empathy and mutual respect.”

These public art pieces are being created through collaborative illustrative art that underscores the importance of the need for truth and reconciliation and the importance of the contributions of Indigenous peoples to our community’s history. Three out of six art pieces will be dedicated to Indigenous knowledge and learning.

Bringing Beauty, Joy, Whimsy, and Hope

If there is one thing residents have been able to continue to enjoy over the past few years, it is the use of the great outdoors through our community pathway connections. There is no better way to bring the community out of this difficult time, and closer together, than to come up with creative ideas like public art that can bring beauty, joy, whimsy, and hope to all those who are able to do so while traveling to and from.

Three out of six art pieces will be dedicated to beauty, joy, whimsy, and hope using a theme extension of Hidden Valley’s Local Area History both past and present.

Meet the local artists involved in the project!