All members of St. Albert’s arts and culture community will soon get their chance to learn more about the Cultural Map during a first public open house event.
Andrea Gammon, community cultural co-ordinator with the city’s Cultural Services department, said that it’s about time she had a meet and greet with everyone to talk about progress.
“I’m hoping just to be able to have a chat face-to-face with them to find out more about how they feel about the state of the art in their community as it were, what their challenges are, what they love about the artistic community, and how they see the map working for them or how they see what current and/or future uses of it could be,” she said.
People can also offer their ideas for how they want the map to look and work, too. The open house is a chance for everyone to learn not only what a culture map is in the first place but also learn about how it could be used to benefit the city and individual cultural assets.
A cultural asset is any cultural enterprise, community cultural organization, cultural facility or space, festival or event, or anything that represents the city’s cultural or natural heritage.
The cultural map project has been in the works locally for at least several months. Other communities across Canada – including Edmonton – have established their own maps on their city's websites.
"We’re about halfway up the hill in a sense. We’ve got a lot of momentum now. People out there know about it. I’ve been in direct contact with all of the people that I knew about to invite them to input their information on the map," Gammon said. "Now I think the big push is to get them to know what a map is but how is it going to be useful, what’s it going to look like and how to interact with it."
The first Cultural Mapping Open House starts at 7 p.m. on July 19 at Progress Hall at the Arden Theatre in St. Albert Place. Attendance is free. Gammon hopes to receive lots of feedback from the event, as well as lots of cultural asset submissions. The cultural map is intended to be unveiled in its finished version in the fall.
To find out more about the project, contact Gammon at [email protected] or visit www.stalbert.ca/culturemap. The website also includes a way for people to submit cultural assets.
