Okay, my readers. I want you to do something for me. But I’m not going to tell you what quite yet. First, you need a little background and a lot of links.

I just came from a press conference where Mayor Dave Bronconnier declared September as Culture Month in Calgary. It’s pretty exciting stuff, coinciding with the fact that September 18-20 is the second annual Alberta Arts Days, with all kinds of free events taking place province-wide. September starts with the 2009 WorldSkills Competition in Calgary, which is kind of like the Olympics of the trades (and is actually the largest international competition after the Olympics themselves, and Colin and I are planning to watch some of the competition), and then leads into Alberta Arts Days, the Mayor’s Evening for Business and the Arts, and ends with the Calgary International Film Festival, which, this year, features the largest monetary prize in a North American competition.

And, of course, in between all of that, the arts season is kicking off in a big way, with theatre companies launching new seasons, galleries and museums bringing in new exhibits, community organizations auditioning for their 2009-2010 seasons, and way more. It’s an exciting time of year — the excitement and forward motion of a new academic year carries through even if you’re not in school. All the coolest stuff runs on a September start date, right? :)

I’ve been totally immersed in Culture Month this summer — it’s everything that my internship is leading up to. Half my time is spent on Culture Month initiatives themselves — things like helping with a magazine that’s just been released, highlighting the fall arts season in Calgary (which you can find here), pulling together other support material, and getting outside and handing out postcards and other marketing materials.

And, of course, getting the new arts and culture website, CalgaryCulture.com ready to launch. I’ve spent a lot of time in the past few weeks inputting events and making sure that the calendar is as up-to-date as possible before we launched this week, and my inbox is full of emails of even more events that need to go into it. It’s an exciting site, and if you’re in Calgary, you should really bookmark it, sign up for the newsletter, and make sure you submit your own events to it. It already is — and will continue to become — the hub for arts and culture news in the city.

The other half of my time has been spent working on the Mayor’s Evening for Business and the Arts, an awards night that recognizes the partnerships between arts organizations and the businesses that support them, celebrating the fact that these two components are such a significant part of what makes any city what it is. It’s going to be a fun evening (and will really be the end of my internship — I leave for California two days after the event!), and I’ve had a lot of fun working on the steering committee, meeting people from across the arts sector.

So this is Culture Month. Calgary is the first city in Canada to designate an entire month to publicizing and advocating the arts. Several provinces have provincial arts days, and there are some long-term plans to create a national arts days, celebrating arts and culture across the country. We’ll see what happens with municipal arts days, and how other cities take up the challenge to put their arts and culture at the forefront of the city’s collective mind for 30 days.

The thing is, there’s all kinds of amazing work happening all year, and September is just the kickoff. It’s a city-wide celebration and a fantastic way to honor the creative industries that form the heart and soul of the city.

So here’s my challenge to you:

If you’re in Calgary, check out CalgaryCulture.com and find an event that you want to experience this September. If you don’t usually go to arts events, browse through and find something that looks intriguing and ask a friend to check it out with you. If you’re someone who already is invested in the arts, find something new, by a new organization or in a new genre or discipline. Add one extra event to your plate this month, ideally something that will stretch you as an audience member.

If you’re elsewhere in Alberta, check out the Alberta Arts Days website, look up your community, and find out what’s going on. There are hundreds of events taking place in dozens of communities across the province, so there’s definitely something happening wherever you are.

And if you’re not in Alberta, I think it’d be fantastic if you create your own Culture Month! Find an events listing for your city or area (Googling “arts events [your city]” is a good place to start), and add something new to your usual list of what you’d be doing in September.

Who knows — you may find an organization that you want to be a season ticket holder for, or that you’ll end up volunteering with or auditioning for. You may discover that there are more events than you thought there were. You might just have a good evening out with some friends and realize that trying something new is, if nothing else, a great conversation starter.

Your Culture Month will look totally different from mine, so leave a comment and let me know what you’re going to do to celebrate the kickoff of this new arts season!

Tags: calgary, Culture, mass appeal, recommendations, things I'm working on

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