City looking for Indigenous artists to help with commemoration project

By Tim Kalinowski on April 20, 2021.

Tim Kalinowski
Lethbridge Herald
tkalinowski@lethbridgeherald.com
The City of Lethbridge is looking for expressions of interest from Indigenous artists to help complete a commemoration project for residential school survivors as well as missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirited peoples.
“The purpose is to hire Indigenous artists to work with the community and basically document what their hopes, expectations and ideas are around these (tragedies),” says City of Lethbridge Indigenous relations adviser Perry Stein. “In the end, it might result in one project that kind of combines the conversation– or it could be multiple projects across multiple sites.”
Artists will have until May 14 to submit expressions of interest for the project.
“The public art committee, in particular, has been working very closely to kind of develop greater interest in the local Indigenous arts community into Lethbridge for arts projects,” Stein says. “We are developing those stronger relationships, we are creating more opportunities.
“We are really trying to be open-minded and let the community determine what is the outcome of this (EOI process),” he adds.
Stein says the City is taking a cue from its ATB Centre proposal in determining which Indigenous artist or artists will complete the project. They will hire artists who will consult with the local Indigenous community about what elements of commemoration they would like to see present in the final work, and the artist will create a conception based on the feedback he or she receives instead of coming in with ready-made ideas in advance.
Stein says getting the process to this point has taken over three years, and the Reconciliation Lethbridge Advisory Committee is excited to finally get there.
“Back in 2017 when the City adopted the reconciliation implementation plan one of the recommendations was to advance a commemorative project for victims, families and survivors of the residential school system,” he recalls. “And then when city council adopted the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls work plan in January this year, there was a similar recommendation to advance a commemorative project about that national tragedy. We are really excited to kind of pull those two together, and use it as a point to have a really interesting conversation with the community about their expectations.”

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