Creative City Summit The New Old:Culture as a Revitalizing Tool in your Community

From the Creative Communities Canada Newsletter: 

May 10-12, 2011


London, ON 

Creative City Summit
The New Old:Culture as a Revitalizing Tool in your Community


The Summit was designed to be more intimate and interactive to provide practitioners with a platform to exchange ideas and learn from their peers. Don't miss this exciting networking opportunity where representatives from municipalities, arts organizations, provincial and federal government agencies and others can meet to share ideas, connect, and work together to build vital infrastructure for arts and cultural development in Canada.


Registration 

London Creative City Summit - Call for Sessions

Intrested in Creative Cities?

Visit the website of the London Heritage Council for a call for session for the Creative City Summit Un-Conference being held in London, ON May 10th, 2011

Creative Communities Conference: Creative Cities Study Tour

The City of Peterborough was the site of the Heritage in Creative Communities Conference at the end of May. One of the activities at the conference was the Creative Cities Study Tour. This activity involved participants visiting 11 different stations around Peterborough. Each station illustrated a theme important to developing a creative community such as fostering creative spaces and adaptive reuse. The stations showcased these themes by not only presenting examples of how creativity had been integrated into the city, but by showing opportunities for improvement. For instance, the theme of arts infrastructure was illustrated with a station at Market Hall, which serves as venue for performing arts. An example of an opportunity for improvement was back alley courtyard that is currently being used as a parking lot, but has the potential to be more multifunctional and help to create a sense of place.

The other stations included former railway lands that were converted to green space along the waterfront, a former post office that is now an apartment building in the downtown core and a house that was being renovated to house a hi-tech industry. Another site was bridge that serves a piece of public art which has the potential to host events such as a market in its underutilized space.
At each of these stations participants were given examples of how the themes were manifested in other cities. Participants were also asked to think about they could apply the lesson to their municipality.

The hand on approach of this tour to the conference theme of Creative Communities was very effective in stimulating discussion on the easy application of some of the themes.

By: Kayla Jonas

A Tale of Big Cities: The Issues of Culture in Large Urban Centres

At the ACO/CHO conference, I had the honour of being able to sit in on the Culture in Big Cities workgroup. Consisting of members from the Region of Waterloo, Toronto, and even Winnipeg, the group was filled with vast experience in big city planning.

Two major considerations were discussed in this group; what the evolutionary steps of cultural nodes are and, how to protect them long term. It was agreed that when cultural activities take over a derelict site or neighbourhood, the area is in a state of rebound. Buildings become occupied by tenants, streets became filled with people. These are signs of a healthy neighbourhood. As areas become the “it” places to live and work, gentrification begins to occur. It was argued that in big cities this is the beginning of the end for these cultural centres. With gentrification and new development comes the displacement of those that made the neighbourhood what it is. When this occurs a dark picture was painted, one of tall condo buildings and late night bars, an area that has lost its “sense of place”. An example of this is Queen Street in Toronto. As development and gentrification happens, as every other building becomes a condo tower, the artists and working people move further west.

A City of Mississauga Heritage Committee member offered solutions to this issue. He contested that municipalities need to be active in designating/developing cultural nodes around their cities. While they do not have any direct protection such as a Part IV or V designation, they offer the municipality a tool to limit development and allow an evolution of these areas. Considerations when designating a cultural node are varied. Municipalities will have their own list, but some suggestions were rent, visibility, transportation, existing artists’ live/workplaces and number of galleries. The member finished the meeting by commenting that for a stool to stand, it needs three legs. For cities to work, they need developers, municipal governments and the community standing together.

Written by Paul Dubniak

Paul Dubniak is a graduate from the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo. He is currently employed at the Heritage Resources Centre on the Historic Places Initiative.