Artists need space, Huffman says

The city’s next Cultural CafĂ© event will take a cue from the leader of a prominent and long-standing Edmonton arts organization.

Linda Huffman, the executive director of Arts Habitat Edmonton, is set to make her presentation tomorrow evening. She will offer her comments on the success of the recently completed ArtsHab One project, as well as what it takes for this community to nurture artists through a similar organization.

She said that it’s her understanding that if St. Albert is considering the option as she believes it is, there’s one ultimately compelling factor that must take precedence.

“Space is about the number one issue that artists face, and arts organizations as well. It’s a really crucial thing. If you don’t have the space, you can’t create.”

Huffman knows a thing or two or five about live/work spaces for artists. While ArtsHab One finished its lease at the end of August after a 15-year run, Arts Habitat also manages ArtsHub 118, ArtsCommon, McLuhan House and the Artist Quarters project still in development.

Arts Habitat is a non-profit organization that works to promote and encourage artists, advocating for “effective, affordable and sustainable arts spaces,” according to its website at www.artshab.com. It has creative space as its first and foremost priority. Formed in 1995 through an Edmonton Arts Council initiative, it has worked to develop co-operative artistic communities to support artists of all stripes. Its benchmark project, ArtsHab One, housed painters, musicians, filmmakers, video artists, musicians, playwrights and performing artists, among others. That project was “incredibly successful,” she stated.

It was only in the last five years that Arts Habitat received operational funding support from the City of Edmonton. She said that most of the organization’s work has been done since then and such collaborations are most likely imperative to any future artistic space development.

There were a lot of important lessons that she took from that first artists’ habitat and she hopes to impart them on tomorrow’s audience.

“We’ve realized that it’s really important that if we’re going to have facilities that we want to be sustainable over the long term, we really have to own them. When you’re dealing with a lease situation, a lease is always going to come to an end sooner or later.”

“We’re very proud of it. Sad to see it come to an end. It will certainly stand as the model of what we want to develop.”

Her message has found a lot of willing ears. Huffman was a presenter at a recent Creative Cities conference and has traveled around the country at the behest of numerous other cultural and arts groups.

From her experiences, she is pleased to see that Edmonton is still at the forefront of providing viable space for artists. The only other major organization that does the same work, she indicated, is Toronto’s Artscape.

Her stop here will give her a chance to see the new Visual Arts Studio Association, a destination that she had just learned was once a police station, complete with a still-standing jail cell.

“What a wonderful place to put artists!” she laughed, heartily.

Tomorrow’s Cultural CafĂ© takes place at 5:30 p.m. at the Hemingway Centre, the home of the Visual Arts Studio Association, located at 25 Sir Winston Churchill Avenue.

The session will include a discussion on future cultural sites in this city and how the cultural community can meet its needs as the population and the city expands. A special program called Authentic Art will also be open for a special preview during the event.

The Cultural Café is a quarterly series of presentations designed to put a spotlight on local artists, groups, and institutions. It is intended to foster the artistic atmosphere in a city already widely regarded as having a rich and diverse cultural community.

Attendance is free. For more information or to register, people are encouraged to contact Cayley McConaghy at 780-459-1600 or [email protected]. People can also visit www.stalbert.ca/experience/arts-and-culture/cultural-cafĂ© for details.

Members of the public are also invited to learn more about and participate in the city’s survey called Cultivating Our Future. This survey will be used to help develop a vision to guide the city’s planning and decision-making over the course of the next 50 years. More information is available at www.stalbert.ca/experience/stafuture. People can take the survey at www.stafuture.metroquest.ca.