Good morning. Thanks for the invitation to talk to you guys today.
I'm going to tell you a bit about our little arts centre that we have going on here in Jasper, the Habitat for the Arts. It was designed to provide a unique and meaningful opportunity for creative partnership arts programming. Programming ranges from studio space for the community and visiting artists to classroom space and after-school programs, and post-secondary accredited outreach education. It's also a venue for small music, theatre, and film presentations. It's a home for the Alberta Foundation for the Arts travelling exhibition. It's a volunteer-based centre and a hub of information on cultural events in the community as a comprehensive guide, and it's a resource centre for the arts and artists.
The plan is to develop a place where artists and cultural organizations can engage with each other, educate the public, and interact with the community. It is intended to be a space to be enjoyed by all demographics, whether it be for presentations or engagements with Jasper's cultural offerings.
I'll give you a little history now. In 2010 we opened Habitat 1.0. It was a vacated provincial courthouse, and we were financially viable in about 18 months, meaning that we could pay our bills with a little bit left over. We are a non-profit organization or, as I like to say, a for-purpose organization. That caught the attention of the municipal government here in Jasper.
They invited us in 2012 to come in with the architects and design a purpose-built dedicated space for the arts. In 2016 they opened the new facility and we have been programming since then. We are an effective centre of activity for our region and the centre of a network for all disciplines and everything that is related to arts and culture.
As a result of our being here, we have renewed the theatre community. We have a theatre club here.
We have established a pottery facility here at the centre, with a kiln to fire pottery. Classes are taught by professionally trained potters. There's a tremendous interest in that.
Music-wise, we have regular events. Artists who we know travel through here to perform concerts. They are well attended.
We also gained the trust of the municipal government to initiate a project to put buskers on the streets of Jasper. That was a project we started as a result of the Rozsa Foundation and arts management here in the province. We have also established Jasper's first-ever film festival, and the arts centre has a new media lab and recording studio for sound and for music.
We have the full support of our council, in that we have established events such as the Mayors Poetry Challenge. If you remember, Mayor Naheed Nenshi from Calgary was the first to start that. Our mayor picked up the baton and in fact is a poet himself.
We have annual events that the community looks forward to, such as the Bowls with Soul, where we have a local potter make and sell bowls. Local restaurants are partnering with us to provide soup to go in those bowls. We have entertainers who entertain while people dine.
We are part of the National Canadian Film Day and have multiple venues in our town. We also have Raven About the Arts, the mayor's award that celebrates local arts. As well, we are part of Culture Days, the national event of Culture Days. We've been involved in that for about 10 years.
Jasper is on the world stage. We are on the world's radar with mountains, moose, and maple syrup, but we go beyond that. We have partnered and have put our arts centre into the minds and the places that discuss these things. We have been part of the creative cities conferences and have built networks there. We also have strong connections to the Banff Centre, which is our neighbour to the south.
“Technology, tolerance, and talent” is something that is quoted in the creative philosophy. We've always had the philosophy of people, place, and process. This means people who are put into a place that's properly equipped and who are allowed to take part in a process that produces meaningful outcomes both socially and in terms of the actual product. The product of that process is really secondary to the connections that are built socially. We call it “proactive inclusion”.
Now, we are a national park in the province of Alberta and the municipality of Jasper. We are an 18-year-old town, which is kind of unique. I moved here in 2001. That's the year that Jasper became a town. The two events are not related. However, we have since established something that has never existed here, which is the arts centre. We have collaborated with the community outreach services and the family community services here in Jasper, to provide activities for staff, residents and visitors.
That's relevant because Jasper has a population of 5,000 souls year-round, but that goes up to about 30,000 a day in the summer months and now in the winter, with the skiing, to the tune of about 2.35 million visitors to Jasper National Park each year. We act locally, and we connect globally. The world comes to Jasper.
Our transient population is a bit of a challenge, but I would challenge anyone to get involved with theatre production and not come away after the production is over with a new set of connections and possibly the weirdest extended family you've ever experienced.
Socio-economics are what we talk about. We believe the arts are a viable career choice for people to apply their energies to. We believe this is a very meaningful addition to Jasper's offering to our visitors. It's also a place where we can grow. We see ourselves as a cultural hub because we exist to simply unify what is already here as well as expand upon what we can do. We have some challenges here in terms of support for the administration of the centre, as well as the edifice complex.
We would like to also talk about a quote from a friend of the Habitat. Tommy Banks, God rest his soul, said once in an interview that you can get a loan for a field full of pipe in Alberta, but you can't get a loan to put a play on, and we've taken that—