Roving Festival Launch Party
January 5
Museum of Contemporary Art-Calgary (MOCA Calgary)
Celebrate the launch of the festival by seeing highlights of several visual and performing arts offerings and wind up the evening at the High Performance Rodeo’s opening bash. Travel with a guided group or create your own circuit. Tours and discussion of the exhibits will be facilitated by your TMC guides.
Eviction of the Stuart Block
January 5
Calgary Public Library
On 7th Avenue SW, off the C-Train tracks, sits a century-old building known as the Stuart Block. Over the years, it's been home to the most eclectic gathering of Calgarians imaginable... but now, it sits empty. Returning to the High Performance Rodeo, This Is My City unites a collective of professional artists and homeless Calgarians to explore a hundred years of evictions in this new, live radio play. Listen to the stories of Stuart Block residents experiencing the last few minutes in their homes before being evicted, celebrating their time in the space and mourning its loss. Featuring a remarkable cast of homeless Calgarians exploring timeless themes of house and home, through comedy, drama and music. This production is presented in partnership with One Yellow Rabbit Theatre and with support First Calgary Financial.
Artist Trading Cards
January 5 to February 1
Calgary Public Library
Artist Trading Cards were introduced to the homeless community by This Is My City artist-mentor Cat Schick through a number of workshops at various venues over the last three years. The result is an exhibition of portable and poignant miniature works of art, each one telling a story. The guidelines are simple: Artist Trading Cards can be made of any materials but must remain consistent in size; they may be traded but must never be sold.
January 5 to February 4
The New Gallery
A two-channel video installation examining what it is to call a place “home”, and the psychological shifts evoked by the experience of physically repositioning oneself in the world.
WRAP
January 5 to May 3
Various Festival Sites
Invoking textile traditions such as sewing bees and knitting circles which visually represent ideas of home and communal support, WRAP artists draw attention to the lack of affordable housing and the importance of community through acts of yarnbombing.
Out of the Shadows: New York – Calgary
January 5 to 25
Museum of Contemporary Art-Calgary (MOCA Calgary)
Curated by Jacek Malec, MOCA’s Out of the Shadows special exhibition has been devised as a flagship presentation and contribution to This Is My City.
Out of the Shadows discusses several aspects of street life—vanishing communities, urbanization, prostitution, homelessness, the working class, and the elderly—through the expressive corpus of work of three eminent artists: Bernard Safran (1924-1995), a New York-born graphic artist, painter and photographer, and George Webber and John Dean, two Calgary-based veterans of documentary photography.
January 13 to 15
Olympic Plaza and 8th Avenue SE
Limelight replaces two conventional street light heads with outdoor theatre spotlights pointing to the same single spot, creating an open invitation for the passers-by to perform, transforming the street into a stage.
This intentionally subtle alteration of street lighting suggests on one hand the latent potential of public realm as places of interaction and celebration and on the other offers an alternative approach to city’s lighting as more than securitarian.
Youth Slam Poetry
January 14, February 11, March 10 and April 14
Central Library
Experience the fun of topical poetry being proclaimed in a lively, competitive atmosphere! This event, part of the Calgary Spoken Word Festival, will weave themes relating to homelessness with other topics of interest.
Other Voices
Saturdays in January though Apri
Museum of Contemporary Art-Calgary (MOCA Calgary)
Join us for a Saturday art walk. Gallery volunteers will lead groups through various festival exhibits, all in walking range of Museum of Contemporary Art-Calgary.
Edward Burtynsky: Encounters
January 21 to March 31
Glenbow Museum
Edward Burtynsky's photographic subjects are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. He has referred to his images as reflecting pools of our times creating opportunities for viewers to create their own dialogue about humanity's impact on the landscapes he photographs. In Encounters, work by Burtynsky will be selected by over 20 Canadians, representing diverse views and life perspectives each bringing their own meaning to the artist's work.
SLAM! and Open Mike
January 26, February 23, March 29, and April 26
The Auburn Saloon
Part of the Calgary Spoken Word Festival, this event will weave themes relating to homelessness with other topics of interest. SLAM! is high-energy, competitive poetry that brings together diverse poets and an enthusiastic crowd.
January 28, February 25, March 31 and April 28
Calgary Public Library
A series of conversations among artists, community builders, cultural thinkers, and you. Explore the shifting ideas of home, the ethics of working with each other and urban renewal as it relates to our sense of history, community and shared culture.
​
The Compassionate Eye of James Bannerman
February 1 to March 31
The New Gallery +15 Window at Epcor Centre
James Bannerman (1957-2009) was uniquely situated to capture a street-level view of urban Calgary. First introduced to photography as a client at The Calgary Drop-In & Rehab Centre in 2007, he was rarely seen afterwards without the backpack containing his precious camera, laptop and photo files; picture taking was going to be his 'retirement plan'. The photographs he left behind speak compassionately about the intrinsic value of incorporating creative activity into daily life.
February 3 to 28
Calgary Public Library
This is My City Art Society (TMC), in partnership with the Calgary Drop-In and Rehab Centre (the DI), is presenting this exhibition of photographs by its clients, taken as part of the DI’s art project called ‘Photo Voice’. The images show a keen observation of life on the streets and in the Centre. This is street photography in its purest form: taken by people who know the streets intimately and spend the time observing. It makes the ‘ordinary’ of their world into the ‘extraordinary’ by capturing moments of quiet beauty and offering a glimpse into a way of life not generally seen.
This Is My City Photo Walking Tours
February 4, 18, March 24, and April 21
City Hall
A series of public walking tours through areas of the city frequented by the homeless will be co-led by a photographic artist and a photographer experiencing homelessness. See the city through the lens of a camera and through different eyes. Bring a camera and wear weather appropriate footwear for walking outdoors.
The photo walks aim to engage the public in a dialogue about photography and urban exploration as seen from the point of view of people who have the experience of homelessness.
No Cause for Concern
February 10 to March 8
TRUCK Gallery
No Cause for Concern is a series of portraits investigating the relationship between photographer, subject and environment. Karen Asher’s photographs focus on people’s interaction with public and private spaces in Winnipeg, depicting a surreal image of the city and its inhabitants.
Curatorial Internship Project: I. Me. Mine.
February 10 to March 17
The New Gallery
For this fifth annual iteration of TNG's post-secondary curatorial internship project, U of C student Evan Smibert has curated an exhibition of work from the Alberta College of Art + Design dealing with questions of personal identity. This exhibition features new work by Colby Jones, Mohammad Rezaei, and Alia Shahab.
March 1 to April 3
Calgary Public Library
The works on display here are from a This is My City collaborative art-making project that worked with the homeless community to imagine and construct interpretive maps of Calgary. These maps articulate the participants’ feelings about life in Calgary and reflect a wide variety of experiences. Workshops were held at the Calgary Drop-In and Rehab Centre, Inn from the Cold, and the Feed the Hungry Program at St. Mary’s Cathedral Hall.
​
Street Life Exhibit
March 8 to April 25
Opening Reception March 8, 6pm
Museum of Contemporary Art-Calgary (MOCA Calgary)
Organized to complement the “This is My City Festival”, Street Life surveys the range of artistic responses to the city as muse and subject matter for art. In other festival projects the focus was perhaps primarily upon problems most associated with urban life: homelessness, poverty, prostitution, alcoholism, isolation and the evidence of urban decay and the stress of modern existence. This exhibition surveys the range of artistic responses to the city as muse and subject matter, from George Pepper’s 1930’s painted cityscapes to Fred Herzog’s photographs of 1960s city environments and Ken Lum’s recent photo and text explorations of urban clashes.
Other People’s Dreams
March 23 to April 28
The New Gallery
Other People's Dreams is the culmination of performative interviews where Turner Prize (artists Jason Cawood, Blair Fornwald and John G. Hampton) asked volunteer participants to recall a dream and then share it for artistic re-interpretation.
​
BEING SEEN: Portraits from the Women’s Centre and Alpha House
April 5 to May 3
Calgary Public Library
Building on the OUT OF THE SHADOWS exhibition in MOCA, in which painter Bernard Safran depicted marginalized people in New York City scenes, the idea was born to curate an exhibition of portraits by those closest to the streets of Calgary. During the months leading up to this exhibition, workshops were organized in two very different agencies: The Women’s Centre and Alpha House.
The Women’s Centre of Calgary is a unique, street-front organization that provides a variety of services and opportunities to the women of Calgary. The women participating in the workshops were asked to create a portrait of a “Woman you Admire”. Alpha House is a community-based facility providing services for those who are under the influence of, or withdrawing from alcohol or other drugs. Several workshops were held in the shelter and detox facility.
This is My Village
April 7, 14, 21 and 28
Seafood Market Studios
Explore the past and future potential of the East Village in this series of on-site guided walks. Through telling and sharing stories, the project will give space to experiences and histories that are not adequately recognized. Conversations recorded during these walks will be collected on a website, virtually located at the site of the future Central Library in the East Village. This project by artist, curator and writer Tomas Jonsson was developed through the support of the EMMEDIA Artist in Residence program.
​
Calgary Spoken Word Festival
April 15 to April 22
The Auburn Saloon
This highly passionate festival founded by poet Sheri-D Wilson is a forum for dissemination and promotion of Spoken Word locally, provincially and nationally through performance and education.
Take Note and Take Positions
May 3
Art Central
This film screening is curated by Tomas Jonsson. It features several short artistic works exploring place and displacement. It is presented as part of the Festival Finale.
Festival Finale
May 3
Art Central
Join us on the Festival’s closing night for a spirited celebration! See live performances, film screenings, art exhibits, and more. Be inspired by artists who portray their city in innovative ways. Contribute your vision of Calgary to our collaborative mural in the back alley. Raise your voice in honour of the inaugural This is My City Festival and in anticipation of many more!
​
This is My City Thanks All the Many Supporters & Partners of the 2012 Festival