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ENGAGEMENT
ENGAGEMENT DURING PREPARATION OF THE BEND IN THE BOW REDEVELOPMENT PLAN
Overview
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The Bend in the Bow Redevelopment Plan is the product of a collaborative process of design and engagement between The City of Calgary Department of Parks, internal stakeholders (staff from other City of Calgary departments), external stakeholders (representatives of nonmunicipal organizations), a team of consultants (including landscape architects, artists, wildlife bioligists, ecologists, water resource engineers, remediation scientists, and historians), and the public.
More than 250 people participated in the formulation of the Redevelopment Plan in an engagement process occurring between April 2015 and October 2016 that included 8 stakeholder workshops, 2 open houses, online surveys and onsite engagements. The Public Art Program and artist planners participated in this process.
The engagement process for preparing the Public Art Plan included meetings with representatives from the following lists of project partners, City of Calgary internal stakeholders, and nonmunicipal erxternal stakeholders
Project Partners
Suncor Energy: private energy company, producing oil, natural gas, wind-generated electricity and ethanol; Wildlands landowner and steward of natural resources
Alberta Environment & Parks: protects the province’s air, land, water and biodiversity Bow Habitat Station: educational centre in
Pearce Estate Park run by Alberta Environment and Parks
Internal Stakeholders
Arts and Culture: facilitates active participation and access to the arts for all; manages the public art program; part of
Recreation
Parks: manages Calgary’s 8,000 hectares of parkland, including public parks, pathways, civic cemeteries, and open spaces.
Recreation: plans and provides information about programs, events and festivals open to the public
Water Resources/Water Services: manages the quality and delivery of Calgary’s water supply, manages The City’s stormwater, responds to floods, and contributes to the conservation of our precious water resource
Environmental and Safety Management: implements strategies to save energy and water, remediate brownfields, expand recycling, control noxious weeds, and ensure pubic safety through emergency response
Environmental and Educational Initiatives: develops educational programming centred around Calgary’s natural areas and their environmental importance; part of Parks
Urban Conservation: develops policies and tools that guide the conservation of biodiversity Heritage Planning: identifies, protects, and manages Calgary’s Historic Resources
engage!: collects public input about city programs and projects
Communications: ensures Calgarians are aware of, understand, and can voice their opinions about City programs and services through communications and media
Community and Neighbourhood Services: addresses social needs of the individuals and communities of Calgary and fosters strong neighbourhoods and resilient Calgarians
Transportation Planning: provides information, develops plans and policies, and recommends actions to best serve The City’s current and future transportation needs
External Stakeholders
Calgary Bird Banding Society: part of the
Canadian Migration Monitoring Network, contributing to the study, protection, and conservation of migratory birds; engages in banding activities occurring in the south end of the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary to help in global studies on wild migratory birds
Calgary Heritage Initiative
Calgary Heritage Authority
Calgary River Valleys: volunteer-led, nonprofit organization that and champions stewardship of Calgary’s watershed, river valley assets and resources Calgary Disc Golf Association
Calgary River Users Alliance
Calgary River Valleys
Chinese Market Gardeners Society
Chinook County Historical Society: chapter of the Historical Society of Alberta, promotes a greater understanding of Canadian and Alberta history in Chinook Country
Inglewood Community Association: volunteer neighborhood organization with a mission to foster thoughtful, creative, high-quality development that enhances and reflects
Inglewood’s character and values
Inglewood Wildlands Development Society: non-profit organization with a mission to create a safe, vibrant and well used recreational and educational natural public space with an interpretation theme of industrial reclamation and remediation tied into the history of oil and gas in Calgary
Nature Calgary: has beginnings as the Calgary
Bird Club, non-profit organization involved in the preservation of natural areas in Calgary
Rotary Clubs of Calgary: service organizations providing volunteer hours and funds to multigenerational local and international programs; a primary partner in the Wildlands remediation
Open House and Surveys
On November 24, 2015 The City of Calgary hosted an open house focused on the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary and Inglewood Wildlands. On October 13, 2016 an Open House was held to unveil the Bend in the Bow Grand Vision, encompassing all four park areas. Both open houses were accompanied with online surveys and onsite sounding boards and engagements. In total, over 2,500 comments were gathered.
Overall, feedback gathered through the engagement meetings and online survey supported Bend in the Bow’s concept design and core values of nature, culture, and education. An overview of public comments around the values is as follows:
Nature: The public emphasized the importance of conserving and enhancing the site’s natural condition. People expressed a desire for the project to increase overall ecological value of the site, maintain the sense of “wildness” that the site provides, and design spaces that respect wildlife and their habitat.
Culture: Because of the cultural significance of this site in the ongoing development of
Calgary, sharing its cultural history was important to the public and stakeholders.
They wanted the redevelopment plan to share the stories of this site and to educate visitors about the significant events that have occurred throughout the site.
Education: Stakeholders recognized the importance of incorporating both formal education programs and informal education opportunities into the redevelopment plan.
In doing so, education can play a key role in creating citizen stewards for the site, and appreciate the natural and cultural significanceof Bend in the Bow.
Comments from the Public
Key comments:
Prioritize habitat conservation and wildlife protection over human use
Improved connectivity for both people and wildlife
Improve wayfinding, site circulation, and connectivity to the surrounding neighborhood
Build less infrastructure in the Sanctuary
Include more educational programs, especially in the Wildlands where there is significant opportunity to tell stories about the site
Consider how to avoid impacts of recreational use
Ensure that design elements comply with regulatory requirements and site constraints and are resilient to flooding
Include public art that is sensitive to the site in locations that are appropriate for art
A general comment was that art should work with wildlife in terms of themes as well as pragmatics of how wildlife will affect the art and vice versa. There was a common interest in creating art that uses natural materials.
Potential stories for art identified by the public included seasonality, bird migration, wildlife, water, importance of the natural world to society, preservation and our role as citizens, interface of nature and industry, industrial heritage, remediation and the healing of the land, historic events, First Nations, Colonel Walker sawmill and homestead, William Pearce legacy, western land surveyors, irrigation, changing river landscape and flooding, trees and experimentation, and urban and wild.
Art elements most often cited by the public as a positive addition included: wildlife hides that are artistic and non-obtrusive, tank traces recalled in an artful and subtle manner, transformer beacon as long as it retains its functionality as a raptor perch, and screens to control public access into sensitive areas.
When comments were not supportive, the focus was on preserving the Bird Sanctuary, and ensuring people’s experience of nature was not impeded or the natural environment damaged. Several responses indicated that art was more appropriate in the Wildlands than in the Bird Sanctuary and that art included in the Sanctuary should be kept to a minimum. This type of comment was often accompanied by a statement to avoid public art in the vein of large, free-standing sculpture.
The Public Art Plan has incorporated feedback heard from the stakeholders and public by prioritizing art in the Wildlands. It is suggested that the Wildlands be a site for public art that has a larger impact or is, in some cases, art for art’s sake (i.e., not-utilitarian); whereas public art proposed for the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary and Pearce Estate Park should be incorporated with functional elements that are already part of the Redevelopment Plan, such as picnic furniture, playground amenities, wildlife hides, screens, gates, and landforms.
The Public Art Plan is proposing that artists collaborate with Project Partners to conceive these discrete, functional elements in unique
and imaginative ways that tell stories and register in visitors the importance and value of the natural habitat. Involving artists who work in collaborative and site-sensitive ways to make these functional elements as memorable and one-of-a-kind as possible is an opportunity to create moments that capture the public’s imagination and draw out emotional connection with the place and its stories. Throughout this process there will be a need to find the appropriate balance between environmental preservation, public use, and education.
The City of Calgary Public Art Program places a high value on community engagement and strives to provide a variety of opportunities for public input, involvement, and enjoyment in the development of public art. Public Art works with Engage! to follow The City’s process for engagment. Programs for engagement can include artists discussing their work with the public, focus groups between artists and key stakeholders, oneon-one interviews, participatory events to generate either a public experience or content for public artworks in development, or other methods.
As art projects develop for Bend in the Bow, the Public Art Program will work with the commissioned artists and project stakeholders to define a process for engagement that makes sense for the individual project. In some cases engagement might occur during the concept design process to generate information that could be useful to the artist in their development of the project. In other cases, particularly for temporary art projects or an artist in residence, engagement might include a participatory event with an artist or artwork. In yet other cases, particularly for urban forestry and remediation-based work, engagement might be an ongoing process drawing on citizens to participate in the implementation of the artwork, and rehabilitation of the land, over a long time period.
For all of the artworks proposed in the Public Art Plan, there is a mission to enrich and diversify the public’s understanding and experience of Bend in the Bow’s core values of nature, culture, and education. Artists are highly encouraged to create work that invites direct engagement with the public.
