by Jini Stolk
With the opening of The Citadel, the coming launch of the Regent Park Arts & Cultural Centre, and the Theatre Centre’s projected September groundbreaking, we have to think seriously about the need to guard the ongoing health of each newly-housed company – as diligently as we’ve supported their construction projects.
Andrew Taylor in his usually fascinating Artful Manager blog cites his colleague Paul Beard of the Smith Centre for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas. Beard says that an arts organization that goes through a major capital project is like an insect entering a chrysalis: it enters as one kind of animal and departs as another. There are new skills required, new goals and new demands on your time once you’re running a new space.
Taylor says we need to respect and provide space and time for the energy required for these transformations. Let’s learn from the hard lessons of some of our colleagues around the country, and make every Toronto capital project a success past the champagne and flowers.
