Casa celebrating 10 years as city’s home for the arts

By Lethbridge Herald on May 12, 2023.

Mayor Blaine Hyggen speaks about the newly installed sun shade sails Friday morning at Casa’s Rotary Square, as the city art centre celebrates its 10 year anniversary this weekend. Herald photo by Alejandra Pulido-Guzman

Alejandra Pulido-Guzman – LETHBRIDGE HERALD – apulido@lethbridgeherald.com

Casa is turning 10 years old today with many reasons to celebrate. The most recent one being the installation of sun shade sails in the Rotary Square celebrated Friday morning. 

Executive Director of the Allied Arts Council, Jana MacKenzie said it is hard to believe it has been 10 years already. 

“I was part of the staff team when we were at the Bowman Art Centre, so it was very exciting days when the ground-breaking of Casa and the building of Casa and the planning of the building with all of the arts groups involved. We knew immediately coming into the building what it would do for the community, because the Bowman at that time was over capacity for decades,” said MacKenzie. 

She said the moment they moved in the building was full of people creating art, since it was a  much more accessible space than the Bowman Art Centre. 

“We created programming that was priced at a rate that was accessible to everyone, rental spaces that are accessible to everyone, and it’s a broad spectrum of the arts that are represented,’ said MacKenzie. 

She said the sun shade sails were the result of some of that programming and they were in the works for the last couple of years. She said they are very happy to finally have them installed. 

“They are the result of some of the COVID programming that we did. We needed to provide more outdoor programming so we started our Thursday afternoon upside downtown concert series, Thursday 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. but it would get hot so we knew pretty quickly that we needed to provide shade for audience members,” said MacKenzie. 

She said the ability to have a shaded area will impact multiple people who use the space during the summer.

“This is huge. This will also impact people who rent this space, the Lethbridge Shakespeare Society and things like that,” said MacKenzie. 

She explained that the shade sails will only be up for the duration of the summer to be able to preserve them and extend their lifespan. 

Mayor Blaine Hyggen spoke during the event and congratulated the Allied Arts Council for levering the available resources to complete the project. 

“When it was said that it was a multi-level collaborative effort, (they) truly meant it. Lots of different groups all pulled together by the leadership of Allied Arts Council and today we see the results,” said Hyggen. 

To celebrate Casa’s 10 year anniversary, Casa is offering multiple activities throughout the building today from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

“Studio demonstrations, tours of the building, there’s going to be free mini classes in a range of programs and just a ton of activities. This place is going to be buzzing with people. There will be free cake at noon and then in the evening at 7:00 p.m. we’ll have Oscar Lopez, music singer-songwriter from Calgary… he actually performed 10 years ago at our opening, so we’re very excited to have him back,” said MacKenzie. 

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