BANFF – The budget has been hiked to secure a long-awaited public art piece for the revitalized Bear Street following unsuccessful attempts to commission art considered appropriate for the tourist town.
Banff council has increased the original budget of $109,000 by another $38,700 to deal with high inflationary costs over the past two years associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, fees for Indigenous consultation and to pay a fair rate to the artist.
Although there were good responses from many respected artists to both calls over the past two years, Charlene Quantz-Wold, chair of the Community Art Committee, said that the group did not see the Banff community, nor the imagined uses of Bear Street, reflected in any of the proposals.
“This new direction proposes the engagement of a public art curator where we will solicit a shortlist of artists with a body of work that excites us, and begins a dialogue earlier in their creative process where we can represent the values of this project for our community,” she said.
“This is the biggest and most high-profile public art project Banff has engaged in to date, and we want to ensure our financial investment matches the high profile of the location, given it may be housed there for several decades to come.”
Just over $8,312 has been spent by the committee in pursuing the previous two calls to artists, leaving a balance of $101,577 in the original budget. Council’s approval of another $38,700 from the public art reserve gives the committee a new budget of about $140,000 to work with.
Council transfers $18,772, or $2 per resident, every year to the public art capital reserve. With approval of these additional funds, the expected balance in the unrestricted reserve at the end of the year will be $44,133.
Councillor Barb Pelham thanked members of the Community Art Committee for all their hard work.
“I wanted to thank the art committee for following their instinct and not proceeding with a project … if they didn’t feel that they were the right fit,” she said during a town council meeting on Monday (March 28).
“It took a lot of courage for them to step back and reconsider the approach and I want to commend them for taking that courage and coming up with a new approach that’s going to feel better for the whole town.”
The first call to artists resulted in 26 submissions and the second call saw 49 artists from across Canada apply. In the second call, a shortlist of 10 artists was assembled for jury consideration. The jury then selected four artists to go through a residency process.
In August 2021, each artist visited the Town of Banff individually, with volunteers from the committee hosting artists for a programmed, two-day residency program. The aim of the residency was to provide artists with a deeper perspective of the community and the project. After the residency, artists worked on concept proposals and the creation of a maquette.
A jury, which received presentations from the artists in January 2022, passed along a ranked recommendation of the pieces to the Community Art Committee for consideration. The committee deliberated the jury recommendation in mid-January and sought advice from a professional public art curator.
“After great deliberation, the Community Art Committee determined none of the shortlisted pieces were suitable,” said Emma Sanborn, the development planner for the Town of Banff, who is the committee’s point person at the Town.
After reflecting on the previous processes and based on advice from a third-party review from a professional public art curator, the committee will now move forward with an invitational approach to the Bear Street public art project.
Sanborn said an invitational approach to commission public art allows an artist shortlist to be built based on experience and knowledge of the artists’ and their practices.
“Ideally this facilitates a more thoughtful and informed process, resulting in a concept that is more directed and responsive to place,” she said.
“Such a process demonstrates a respect for the artists’ work in a non-competitive context and can produce a more successful public art commission.”
Mayor Corrie DiManno also thanked the volunteer committee for its time and energy in securing a public art piece for Bear Street.
“They tried a couple of different techniques here and it’s been good learning, but they want to get it right and it currently doesn’t feel right for them,” she said.
“It’s a very public street, it will be high prominence public art and I really appreciate them wanting to get it right.”
