Shone Thistle continued their tenure as Calgary’s 7th poet laureate.
AWARENESS AND CONNECTION
Through our website, newsletter, including the popular Classifieds section, our Storytelling Project, social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Blue Sky, online Community Directory and our events listing site yycwhatson, we strive to be an information hub for the arts in Calgary.
yycwhatson.ca is a free community-wide listing that gives Calgarians and visitors a place to find out about all the amazing arts events that are happening in Calgary. In 2025 over 75,000 people checked out the listings. Both the event listing site and our Community Directory highlight the vast diversity of experiences and artists in our city. In 2025 we participated in conversations with Tourism Calgary, The City of Calgary and other partners concerning a city-wide collaborative listings resource to increase Calgarians’ awareness of the multitude of events happening in our city. Watch for its launch in 2026.
Create Calgary is a magazine that tells stories about artists, artworks and arts events in Calgary. Its purpose is to promote some of the amazing stories about creativity in our city, to act as an invitation into the arts and as a catalyst for conversation about the arts. In 2025 we printed just under 30,000 copies that were distributed through stores, libraries, community centres and other gathering places throughout the city.
Our signature events in 2025 included the Celebration for the Arts hosted by Mayor Gondek at the Jack Singer Concert Hall on April 24, including the presentation of the Cultural Leaders Legacy Arts Awards; our Report to Community at the DJD Dance Centre on June 19; and the Living a Creative Life Congress: Creating Our Calgary at the DJD Dance Centre on November 20.
The Celebration for the Arts hosted by Mayor Gondek took place at the Jack Singer Concert Hall in Arts Commons on April 24. More than 800 people were in attendance for an evening featuring several local performers and a high-spirited after-party.
Pre-show entertainment included a community art-making project supported by Tourism Calgary and led by Blackbird Healing Art Collective called We Hold up the Sky: A Visual and Narrative Celebration of Belonging.
The onstage showcase lineup included the Celebration House Band featuring JD Johnson (drums), Lisa Jacobs (bass), Kate Melvina (keyboards), Sam Coulston (guitar) and Brandon Wood (vocals) under the direction of Scott Henderson; voiceover artist Christian Goutsis; Blackfoot Elder Clarence Wolfleg Sr and Skip Wolfleg; Elizabeth Stepkowski Tarhan and Elinor Holt; Tribe Artist Society; Diversity Performing Arts Club of Calgary; and the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede Showband in a surprise appearance at the Grand Finale when Mayor Gondek performed on the bass guitar alongside Lisa Jacobs with the Celebration House Band and the Stampede Showband. Speakers included Melissa Tuplin as Acting President & CEO, Champion Sponsor representative Simon Mallet from the Rozsa Foundation and Mayor Gondek. The after-party featured DJ Goodword and a delicious buffet catered by Great Events. This much-anticipated event in Calgary’s arts community is a true celebration of artists and the arts in our city.
Our appreciation also goes out to the partners and sponsors of this year’s Celebration for the Arts.
Recipients of the 2025 Cultural Leaders Legacy Arts Awards were announced at the event in video segments featuring interviews with award-winners and sponsors. Each Legacy Award winner received a $5,000 cash prize funded by a contribution from a local philanthropist or organization. Recipients are selected by a jury of peers.
In 2025, 67 outstanding artists and organizations were nominated, representing just some of the artistry that vitalizes our city every day. We thank all the benefactors, nominators and juries of these awards, and congratulate all the nominees and the 2025 recipients:
Cultural Leaders Legacy Arts Awards are a legacy of Calgary’s year as a Cultural Capital of Canada in 2012.
Each award is funded by a contribution from a local philanthropist or organization with each recipient receiving a $5,000 cash prize. We thank the benefactors, nominators and juries of these awards congratulate all the nominees and 2025 award recipients.
The ATB Powering Possibility Through the Arts Award recognizes and supports small to mid-sized organizations that are committed to enriching Calgary through arts programming that powers possibility for the local creative community. Award Recipient East Side Dance Festival Society inspires dance artists and empowers public and private sector instructors to take socially conscious approaches to dance education, raising the public esteem of dance in society.
The Calgary Catholic Immigration Society (CCIS) New Canadian Artist Award was established to recognize that artists from all parts of the world enrich Calgary’s arts sector. This award recognizes and supports an individual artist whose cultural background and relatively recent arrival to Canada result in communication challenges, difficulties in transferring relevant credentials, and isolation from Calgary’s arts community. The award intends to help these artists pursue their artistic work and connect with the institutions and support networks that are available to all Calgary artists. The winner of this award also receives a paid residency courtesy of Calgary Public Library. Award Recipient Yeisen Chang is a Cuban artist based in Calgary. Her work explores migration, identity and cultural transformation through video art and digital media. She addresses the emotional impact of relocation, fostering dialogue on belonging, adaptation and cultural connection.
The Legacy of Doug and Lois Mitchell Outstanding Calgary Artist Award was established to honour artists who are lauded for their work and choose to make Calgary their home. Regardless of career length these artists are acknowledged by their peers around the world for the calibre of their work and their contributions to the arts. They are innovators who have significantly enriched artistic discourse in Canada. The winner of this award also receives a one-week, self-directed residency at Banff Centre’s Leighton Artist Studios. Award Recipients Mia + Eric are internationally recognized interdisciplinary, socially engaged artists. Their research-driven, participatory work reshapes how people engage with environments, histories and civic systems, fostering new ways of imagining the public realm.
The Mamdani Arts Leadership Award was established to recognize and reward the integral role of volunteer board members who lend their expertise, talent and time to supporting the work of arts organizations and festivals that make Calgary a vibrant and creative city. This award honours an arts volunteer board member who goes above and beyond to support the logistics, programming, operations and/or culture of the organization(s) they choose to support. Award recipient Eva Verity is the board chair for Swallow-a-Bicycle Theatre and goes above and beyond for the staff to have living wages and benefits, a rarity in Calgary independent arts organizations.
The RBC Emerging Artist Award was established to recognize up-and-coming Calgary-based artists. The award recognizes that a thriving cultural community includes artists who choose to live and build their careers in Calgary from the outset. The intent of the award is to bring recognition and awareness to outstanding artists in the early phases of their careers. These artists may have received public recognition already but are considered relative newcomers to their field. Award Recipient Monique Barrie is a brilliant businesswoman and filmmaker, whose emerging but impressive filmmaking career has already profoundly impacted the local film industry for the better.
The Rozsa Foundation Emerging Arts Manager Award is intended to recognize and encourage the role of emerging professional arts managers who are dedicating their careers to promoting and supporting the work of Calgary’s artists, artist collectives, and arts organizations. Given the complexity of the challenges they face, the work of these arts managers needs to be as creative as the artists and organizations they work with. The recipient also receives no-cost entry into the Rozsa Arts Management Program (RAMP). Award Recipient Cosmo Christoffersen, Managing Producer of the Festival of Animated Objects, elevates Calgary on the international stage as a hub for puppetry, supports emerging artists and builds community connections.
Sponsored by TD Bank Group, the Indigenous Artist Award was established in 2020 in partnership with the Calgary Public Library’s residency program and aims to recognize the contribution of Indigenous artists, craftspeople and Knowledge Keepers to Calgary. In response to the calls to action in The City of Calgary’s White Goose Flying report, the award seeks to honour Indigenous cultures and to promote intercultural understanding, perspective-taking and communication between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. The winner of this award also receives a paid residency courtesy of Calgary Public Library. Award Recipient Morgan Black is a St’at’imc and Secwepemc artist/curator living on Treaty 7 territory. She spends her time connecting to diverse creative processes that deepen her relationship to her ancestral cultures, the Land and all relations. Morgan is a co-founder of Crawlspace Gallery and works in Cultural Services at Miskanawah.
We acknowledge and thank the benefactors whose generosity made these awards possible.
Learn more about the Cultural Leaders Legacy Arts Awards at calgaryartsdevelopment.com.
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The 2025 Living a Creative Life Congress took place at the DJD Dance Centre on November 20. This event focused on a special project called Creating our Calgary. 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.
The artist collectives created 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. The Creating our Calgary 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.
At the congress, Rachel Gita Karp (Center for Artistic Activism) and Tyson Bankert (Recess Calgary) shared the process and some tips for activating the community with attendees. Following their presentations, the five artist collectives shared their activations and learnings with the community. Watch excerpts here.
A few examples of Shone’s dozens of appearances in 2025 included participating in a pop-up for National Poetry Month, offering a poetry reading for City Council also as part of National Poetry Month, attending Can You Hear Me Now — Alberta’s Provincial Youth Poetry Slam as a featured poet and competition judge, writing a tribute poem for the 30th Anniversary Celebration: HMCS Calgary event, providing a welcome and poetry reading at the Calgary Dyke and Trans March, delivering a new White Hat Ceremony at a Calgary on Purpose event, speaking and presenting at TEDX Calgary, and being one of two speakers to welcome in the new city council and offering a new work to set the stage for their work during their term.
We thank Calgary Foundation and Calgary Public Library for their support of the Poet Laureate Program.