Last Monday, I attended a session led by Vancouver’s Office of Cultural Affairs and also attended by a diverse cross section of Vancouver’s cultural sector as well as several City Councillors. The purpose was to discuss how best to create a civic Arts and Culture Advisory panel that would report directly to Mayor and Council as well as the Office of Cultural Affairs – and would have as yet to be thought through role in shaping how Vancouver’s civic government relates to and embraces the individuals and organizations who strive to animate our civic life with visual art, dance, theatre, music, and film.

There supposedly are more self-described “artists” per capita in Vancouver than any other Canadian city, and frankly, I can’t think of a better measure of success for a civic government than attracting art-makers to be resident. The challenge for us as artists and as a community of art-makers and appreciators is to make accessible art that raises our individual and collective level of understanding and empathy towards each other, locally, nationally, and internationally.

Turning Point’s Colourful World presentation is striving to do that in several ways – firstly – bringing to Vancouver for the first time large-scale, ambitious work by local and international creators (e.g. Claude Debussy, Rodney Sharman, Toru Takemitsu, Michael Bushnell) who are recognized by colleagues in their fields for their imagination and craft – and to bring forth music that inspires curiosity and unpredictability so that we can share together the thrill of exploration. And then together, we can compare what we knew before the concert with what we know after – and feel invigorated, more emotionally and intellectually intelligent, and part of a community who share a peak experience with which we move forward together.

Please join us next week for our exciting concert next week at SFU Woodwards- so proud to be part of an incredible festival of art makers from multiple disciplines under the PuSH Festival umbrella.

- Jeremy