Art Matters Forum held in Conjunction with the
High Performance Rodeo

Calgary, Sunday, January 24, 2010

This week, on the radio, we heard an old woman singing as she wandered, like so many others, through the devastated streets of Port-au-Prince. Other voices, shy at first, joined in the singing, growing louder and stronger.

This song of hope rose from the wreckage and travelled over the airwaves to reach us.

And I thought: even when we have nothing left, there is always music, words and dance steps to bring us back to life, to bring us together and to provide hope.

Art has the power to inspire, the power to heal, to transform, to rehabilitate, to bear witness, and to make us believe that there are better days ahead.

In times like these, that is what the young people of Jacmel, my hometown, in Haiti, remind us, young people who were able to recover their audiovisual equipment from the rubble and have since used it to bear witness to the human tragedy and the efforts made to overcome it.

Their testimony is living proof of what art can do, even in the direst circumstances.

Art has the power to elicit compassion and generosity.

Art has become an expression of solidarity in the call for action issued by so many artists from across the country and around the world since the first unbearable images of the destruction and desolation in Haiti reached us.

It is these spontaneous gestures of friendship, this great display of solidarity on a planetary scale—shown also by artists with all their heart and talent—that help ward off our pessimism and feelings of helplessness.

Because art transforms despair and indifference into glimmers of hope and action.

And this deep conviction led to the creation of the This is My City project, managed by the City of Calgary and designed to be an innovation solution to homelessness.

In 2008, here in Calgary, I took part in a round table on poverty and homelessness at the Mustard Seed Street Ministry.

I remember how impressed I was by the colossal work that had been done to help all the men, women and young people for whom homelessness was the culmination of a long history of exclusion.

I also remember how obvious it was that this was a joint effort by all the stakeholders, from law enforcement to the municipalities and community organizations from all sectors of activity.

Homelessness has now become a national crisis and today you are proposing a multidisciplinary, artistic approach to resolving the issue.

I believe this approach will be very successful.

And it is in this same spirit that I organize Urban Arts Forums all across the country.

These forums give voice to young people for whom the arts have been a lifeline and help them to now make their communities, cities and environments more just and more human.

A number of these young people—some, former gang members—have told me straight out that urban arts saved their lives.

This power that the arts have to stir our bodies and spirits, to transform us from the inside out and to turn us into agents of change in our communities, in society—we must use this power, and more often.  

How?

Jean-Daniel and I cannot wait to hear your points of view and about the projects you have initiated to make things happen.

Five panellists have agreed to join us today to guide and inspire us, and to lead the discussion. For this, we sincerely thank them.

It always gives Jean-Daniel and me great pleasure to find ourselves in the bubbling cultural environment found all around the city of Calgary during the High Performance Rodeo—expertly organized by the One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre and supported by Jean-Daniel.

It’s good to be here with you! It’s good to be a part of this remarkable project.