The arts from up here
Flin Flon Arts Council hosted Inspiration 3.0 – Developing a Northern Vision in March 2020. This is the third edition of the Inspiration conference which grew out of a wish to establish Flin Flon as a northern centre of excellence for Arts and Culture in Manitoba. The first conference, Inspiration – Building Knowledge, focused on actual building theory and featured among the guest speakers, Jon Allen Ph.D a classical geometrist and architect from London, England who taught the participants how ancient geometric formulae still apply to today’s building techniques; and Shabnam Dialoo from Edmonton AB, an expert on planning and designing Persian Gardens. She teaches at Athabasca University. Other presentations featured members of our indigenous community who taught both tepee and sweat lodge building. An amazing aspect of this was how closely the willow tree bending of branches for a sweat lodge adhered to the geometric patterns for geodesic dome buildings.
Inspiration 2.0 – Knowledge and Development featured conversations with several community and arts focused groups by three exceptional Canadian women, Dorothy Dobbie, former Member of Parliament for South Winnipeg (and owner/editor of this publication); Jean Guigere, recipient of the Governor General’s Award for Volunteerism in the Arts; and Janice Price, CEO and President of Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. The impetus for this conference was to promote the growth and development of the arts sector in a small community, still with a view towards actually building an arts centre in the region.
This particular goal has been put on hold by the drastic changes to the economic outlook that are now facing Flin Flon with regards to the mine closure slated for 2022. However, the Flin Flon Arts Council led by the intrepid Cultural Coordinator Crystal Kolt is committed to alternate economic diversity for the region, aided by development of arts and cultural industry in the area.
Inspiration 3.0 was led by Hazel Borys, Managing Director and Principle of PlaceMakers, a group of urban planners which prides itself on being more than just a design team. Their website states that they “address the full scope of placemaking — planning and urban design, context-specific coding, community engagement, implementation, and the marketing of great places. That put our focus on the kind of viability that turns vision into reality.” Placemaking is defined by Wikipedia! as a “multi-faceted approach to planning design and management of public spaces that capitalizes on a local community’s assets, inspiration and potential to create public spaces that promote health, happiness and well-being”.
In Flin Flon, Borys met with several groups that included Flin Flon Arts Council, Flin Flon City Council, the Chamber of Commerce, the Northern Visual Arts Centre Board, Flin Flon Aboriginal Friendship Centre, the Main Street Revitalization Committee, Look North, a group organized by the Province to grow the economy of northern Manitoba and the Visionaries group associated with the North Central Canada Centre for Arts and Environment. Out of those meetings she developed a seven-point blueprint of economic development and diversification strategies which contain action points within them.
The seven point plan: Let’s go silo-bustin’; Diversify the economy; Reinvigorate Main Street; Be a social innovation lab; Encourage geo-tourism; Be a better bedroom community; and Share your story.