In terms of successful models that we've seen around the world, I've been very fortunate. I've been involved with this organization for well over 20 years. Before we built National Music Centre, I spent 10 years looking around the world at various models. The reason the National Music Centre created a sort of a tri-model was the integration that was happening as a result of technology and this convergence, particularly in music, that continues. It's not over yet.
I'm going to build on France, again. There are lots of great facilities in France that certainly inspired the National Music Centre. La Cité de la musique is a wonderful facility—if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it—and le Centre Pompidou, as well [Technical difficulty--Editor] brings together many disciplines in a very creative way. Those are big facilities.
Getting down to much more granular level in neighbourhoods, I think that the Americans particular, as a result of trying to renew inner cities after the Second World War, have spawned this idea of looking at how we bring life back from the suburbs to the inner city. That's especially the case in the south, in Tennessee and in various parts of Mississippi.... I've spent a lot of time down in those areas looking at what Memphis, Nashville, and Austin, further to the west, have done vis-a-vis music and their cities, and learned a lot from this convergence of [Technical difficulty--Editor]. These were, in many ways, I think, a huge inspiration for East Village in Calgary and the National Music Centre. For example, if you haven't seen our facility, it's built in and around an historic hotel called the King Eddy Hotel, which was Calgary's home of the blues for many years.
There's a similar model in South Memphis, with the Stax label, an R and B label that existed from the 1960s to the mid 1970s in a really downtrodden part of south Memphis. They rebuilt that studio and built a museum and a charter school around it. Instead of putting it in the high density tourist area of Beale Street, they put it back on the original [Technical difficulty ] to be a catalyst for the neighbourhood to bring people together through the power of music and education. It's worked. Twenty years later, there are new developments around there. It's a safer place to go and visit.
Those were big inspirations to us on a more micro level. I think everyone looks at Austin and Nashville in the music space and wonders what lessons can be learned and transported to wherever you live. In the case of Calgary, we're certainly looking at ways that we could bring tech space, innovation, and music together and live and build a new ecosystem or add to the existing ecosystem here in Calgary. Those were our models.